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Posted

What is the point of this post Ian? There's not context or explanation. You're not explaining what the story is about, or even that there is a story. You've not even managed a link. You've been asked not to do this before. Why even bother?

Posted

Roddy:

That is the story that everybody knows about. (The pic is from NYT.) And don't you think it is too sensitive to further elaborate about it?

Posted

I think I am not one of the "everyone". I do not really read NYT. What is the story?

Posted

Nonsense Ian, there are many people who don't know about it. And if it's 'too sensitive' to elaborate about it, why even post about it in the first place? "Hey, look everyone. Here's something we can't talk about". Frankly it looks like a poor and lazy attempt at making a political point.

Posted

That photo is all over the western press and western-based news web sites. However, I'm not sure how widely known it is in China.

As for the story being too sensitive ... it isn't. It's being widely discussed I think.

See here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/176-chinese-poetry47

Even Hu Jintao has publicly made a statement on this.

From the BBC (do your firewall stuff)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6761217.stm

Quoted bits : "Police in northern China say they have now arrested more than 160 people accused of involvement in slave labour in illegal mines and brick factories .... President Hu Jintao has ordered an inquiry amid widespread media outrage."

Posted

It's apparently (I'm in the UK currently) been extensively covered. From the BBC (no proxy required :D )

widespread media outrage. . . .unusually strong criticism in the state-run media
Posted

Roddy, I apologize if not everybody is not aware about the news. Since this is a Chinese forum, I assume that everyone who browses this forum is not only just interested in practicing some pinyin or simplified characters but is interested in major headline story about China.

And the slave society is definitely a major headline story nowadays.

And why did I upload that picture? Because a picture says a thousand words. I browse most related articles and none of the media has offered any coverage more shaking than this NYT picture.

(And by the way, this is the very FIRST time that I uploaded a photo in this forum.)

After all, no wonder Beijing will send its Ballet troupe to perform Mme Mao's sample opera "White Hair Girl" in Hong Kong for the 10th anniversary of return. Probably it is because there are still many "White Hair Girls" in China nowadays!

Posted

What surprised me in this whole story is the shock that followed the discovery of the slaves. I wasn't one bit surprised that there is this kind of slavery in China, I was just surprised that apparently it had not been in the news before. In a country where women are kidnapped to be sold as wives, why stop at women? Why not sell men to factories, that keeps bringing in money!

Same for the story on the knick-knacks for the Olympics being made in factories that employ children, have forced unpaid overtime, pay less than the minimum wage, etc etc. Duh, what did they expect?? If I see a piece of clothing saying 'Made in Bangladesh' or 'Made in China', I immediately get an image of women standing to their ankles in the dye (actually, my image with 'Made in China' is a bit different: I see people working their ass off to be able to send their children to school). Did people really have the illusion that for the Olympics, all those factories would suddenly start paying their workers decent salaries? We wouldn't be able to afford all the knick-knacks anymore. Isn't it common knowledge that workers in China are treated badly? In my opinion it's pretty hypocritical of Hu to say that this is an outrage or anything, it's been around all along, and he must have known it.

Wah, so much criticism on China... this free speech thing that they have here in Taiwan must have a bad influence on me...

Posted

Yeah, I'm a bit unshocked by any of this. I haven't read that much about this particular story out here, but that guy in the photo looks like one of the guys I see on a tianqiao every so often...

Posted

Like Heifeng and Lu, I was also really not suprised, although that is not to say that it is not a horrible case. The problem is all systematic. If you kill off the independent meida, basically allow corruption to the point that it is seen as normal (潜规则), screw over the 农民 (who are a socially constructed class), ban independept labor unions, don't give enough money to schools in poor areas, then how can you possibly expect that extreme cases of injustice like this won't show up?

Of course, any country in the world can produce horrible cases like this. There is a ton of forced prostitution in the EU, and I would bet that many Mexicans and other illegals get exploited in the US all the time. There is no need to blame any particular group of people or nationality. But I still think that the institutions that can be built to combat these problems are the most vital way to prevent these disasters.

Posted

In In the quest for money, and therefore to meet deadlines due to the major major development that is going on in china, I guess the 'system' just forces those it power to do what they like. It is just greed!! This may just be the tip of the iceberg. The pic posted is not that bad, I will look for the one in another newpaper which showed a worker sleeping in a featus position.

Posted

This sounds like it's taken straight from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, a fictional novel about real life working conditions in factories. Child labor in abysmal, unsanitary conditions under very low wages, working for factory owners with ties to corrupt local politicians.

It took years of social commentary and "muckraker" literary criticism, and a president to read this novel, before the national government enacted legislation to curb these abuses.

I don't think this is an issue related to flaws inherent of a particular political system, but more of an issue related to global economic integration. These kind of abuses happened in the UK and US during the Industrial Revolution, before legislative and institutional reforms were enacted.

What is refreshing to see is the Chinese press reporting freely on this "embarassing" news topic.

Posted
What is refreshing to see is the Chinese press reporting freely on this "embarassing" news topic.
Well, almost.
Posted

China is booming now and the world is watching, so it is not surprising that the incident is reported all over the world. Karl Marx was very vocal about this kind of abuses in the west leading to marxism and one of the issue was between the have (those in control) and the have not (the workers). Similar abuses can also be seen in other parts of the world and recently it was reported in one of the Malaysian's paper that an Indonesian maid tried to escape from her employer by climbing out from the window of their 15th floor apartment building. In another word, China is not alone in the world of abuse!

Posted

The Mainland press has freedom in reporting the kiln case till a certain point -- if anyone questions the legitimacy of the regime based on this incident -- then that is it.

One last word. From the very beginning, Beijing defined the incident as "Illegal employment of child labor" (habit of socialism w/ Chinese characteristics which loves to make conclusion before investigation). But is this incident merely a case of illegal employment?

Posted

I used to be a child labor in the village kiln factory, actually, I was already 15 then so I do know if I qualified as a 'child labor'. It was not that bad actually. The owner is from the same village, and the all the employees are from the nearby 3 or 4 villages. People know each other. Sure the owner was greedy and wanted to make as money as possible. However since people all knew each other he couldn't treat people too badly. There were children of my age who worked there and the adults at work always kept on eye on us to stop us from doing anything dangerous or stupid. Now I think about it, it's a good thing that we would work there to pay my school fees. Actually my mother was my coworker there and there were quite a few parent-son or brothers coworkers there. People tell jokes on the work and it could be quite fun.

I think one problem in this this slavery labor case is that the workers are from other provinces so the bosses could treat them as horribly as he wanted. In a small rural community like mine, the 'face' and Confucious values served as the supervision purpose of free media and free speech. that's why it couldn't get too bad.

That's also why in general Chinese soliders don't serve in their home provinces. They may have difficulty committing their tasks if they face their own 父老乡亲. When Manchus conquered China they massacred 扬州(yangzhou) city in Jiangsu province. The army was composed of Manchu soliders and Han soliders from Shannxi. I guess it's easier to slaughter women and children who speak an incomprehensible dialect than killing people who speak the same Shannxi dialect.

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