Factory Girls By Leslie Chang

However, Deng tried to notify that “Socialism does not mean shared poverty.” Deng’s reform policy consisted the introduction of centralized and planned arrangement of the Macro economy, which abolished Mao’s economic construction. However, Deng preserved Mao’s legacy to the point where he emboldened decentralization of decision making for the rural economic groups, and illuminated the primacy of agricultural output. China relied heavily on its agricultural industry during the 1960s, and the goal of this first Four Modernization was to advance the agriculture in China. This meant that China must have a stronger economic foundation. Not only that, millions of people in China were facing starvation ad poverty due to the failure of the cultural revolution. The economic structure of China had to change. To advance the living standards of the citizens in China, and produce a healthier society with access to food, this consisted of introducing new and advanced farming technology, and producing more irrigation systems. To accomplish this, China must operate within the global economy, therefore, open its doors to other nations. This was called the Open-Door Policy, Deng had invited European and American politicians to invest in Chinese industrial development, when they agreed to do so, the Four Modernizations were commenced. Under the Household Responsibility System, each peasant household received a plot of land in which they must sustain, this had provided them with economic as well as political benefits. Moreover, in 1989, 90 percent of households had joined this system. Rather than concentrating on political appeals, which were encouragements for the labor force, such as influencing peasants to earn more money by selling products of their private property at the free market. Deng concentrated on dividing the

In the source, “Mao: The Unknown Story,” the writer argued that Mao mainly focused on improving all Chinese to work whether if they are in the rural or urban places. Mao advised the Communist Party of China to promote the development of technology to rural producers.  However, the Great Leap Forward was also recognized as cutting government responsibilities and the result were expected in lower investment than the Five-Year Plan. Before the Great Leap Forward was created, Mao made the rural population “voluntarily” where all of the technologies were directly out of the surplus.

Now some of the strict Hukou rules are not in place anymore. Zhan’s actions have now allowed more rural people to go to urban areas without as much discrimination and ostracism. Now the rural population has dropped drastically and the Chinese government is dealing with overpopulation in areas like Hong Kong and Beijing. The Hukou system has been a problem in China for many years and now people are willing to stand up and fix the restrictions of the

The unfortunate influx of young immigrants working in Chinese factories lies a fact that is bizarre to our opinions behind the creators of our beloved everyday items: the workers choose the “factory life”. This statement is especially true of women of rural China. Leslie T Chang’s Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, tells harsh stories of life in China’s chaotic industrial city, Dongguan. She tells the lives of two girls closely, Min and Ming, on their journey to the “environmental ruin, corruption, traffic, pollution, noise, prostitution, bad driving, short term thinking, stress, striving, and chaos… (27)” that is of the city life. By doing so, Chang makes her case compelling enough that turns the immoral practices of

The definition of the Global Commodity Chain is that it is the network created among the global south and the corporations of the global north in order to produce and deliver products to consumers. It has four key elements, Intellectual property rights, communication, transportation, and the structure of factories in the third world. A great example of the global commodity chain is the rise of China. In 1994, China passed a law that allowed the privatization of state owned enterprises, the end of welfare programs, and the relaxation of FDI barriers. This completely changed the landscape of the working class in China. The number of rural enterprises sharply declined in favor for these new, inner city manufacturing jobs. Social goods like medical care and education went from being free to being obtained at a price. Peasants from the countryside where suddenly dropping everything they had and trying to become a part of this new commodity chain. The workers appreciated the fact that the urban wages where three times as much as the rural. Through the 1990s, the Chinese industry was making products in all sectors. But, these products weren’t being consumed by the millions that produced these products. It was being consumed by the north. The products went directly into the shipping containers that head for Los Angeles and San Francisco. This cycle worked because the North’s average consumer ate up the idea of the same products that where produced locally, but at a remarkably lower

Urbanization brings with it a disparity between rural and urban living standards. Nonetheless, in China this gap has started to become quite severe and has become a cause for concern (Naughton 113). Chinas Gini coefficient is currently at .415, which displays the increasing disparity in the country ("DISTRIBUTION OF FAMILY"). The rural-urban divide begun with the different ways the Chinese government ran the rural and urban areas. The urban areas were fully under control of the central government and since they were seen as the building blocks of the country they received many governmental subsidies. Workers in urban areas received pensions, healthcare, had job security, cheaper consumer goods due to subsidies and often had access to

The changes in China’s economy can be traced to between 1976 to 1978, when the Cultural Revolution had effectively ended and widespread social, economic, and political conflict that accompanied it. The Culture Revolution was motivated in large part by revolution ideology and an attempt to purge the state of its “liberal bourgeoisie” elements, hence the forced reeducation and relocation from the cities to rural areas of millions of Chinese citizens . As the havoc wrought by the Cultural Revolution dissipated, China’s leaders focused on the goal of enriching their impoverished nation. The nation had been paralyzed economically by the chaos that had ensued . While there was agreement among China’s political leaders regarding the need for economic change, the road forward for the nation was unclear.

Due to Mao’s aspirations of industrialization and modernization, the Chinese leader drastically devastated the working class by enforcing collectivization and labor-intensive methods. In order to achieve Mao’s vision, “to forbid privately owned plots and to push all farmers into agricultural collectives” Mao,

There are many changes that have occurred in the Peoples Republic of China over a short period of time. This is mainly because of the changing climate in relation to a number of areas and perspectives. For instance, there are varied factors that have led to the changes that have been experienced in the social, political, and economic culture. Since 1949 there have been many changes in the social aspect in China. These changes are related to a number of events that will be explained in different sections.

The formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 started extensive development in China. This was all or-castrated by China's communist leader Mao Zedong. There were many positive developments socially in China. For example, due to the great support from the peasants Mao decided to reward them by giving them land that was once leased to them by the landlords. This lead to about 500000 landlords being prosecuted and sentenced to death or forced labor camps. These reforms in 1951 were a big development in china as it was the first time the peasants seemed to be represented let alone a stake in China. Along with this development of Chinese peasants owning their own land there was a 22% increase in grain yield the following year after their reforms however, this is limited in that during the great leap forward in 1958-62, Mao brought in new legislation that all farms would be made into large communes under state control, run by the PLA (People's liberation army). The limitation showed in this point is that Mao was reversing his decision to give the land to the peasants but also this lead to the great famine where 30,000,000 people died as a result due to production of food falling by 63% and

The significant economic growth of China happened after China adopted Economic Reform and Opening-up Policy in 1978 (see Appendix 1). Under this policy, China opened its door to the foreign investment and began to emerge in the global market. Its economic system has since then been transformed from socialist economy into a capitalist economy (Szamosszegi and Kyle, 2011, p.4; Paltiel. 2009). If the period between the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the Reform in 1978 can be regarded as the first industrialisation process towards heavy industry monitored by central planning, then the

Industrialization was a period that brought about many changes. One of the changes that happened during this period was the change of working atmospheres from farms and homes to factories. Industrialization in both England and China had a massive impact on the working conditions in both countries. In England, the percentage of population living in urban areas saw an increase from 17% to 72% in during the Industrial Revolution (Watson). China’s urban population rose from 26% to 53% in 2012 which brings the total urban population to 712 million people (Juan). Among these 712 million urban residents, nearly 250 million are migrant workers from rural areas (“The Great Transition”). In this paper I will explore urban migration during the industrialization, and the numerous impacts it had on the workers in England and China during this time period.

Hukou is a household registration system that the government uses it to control migration of the population (Zhang, 29). Simply put, hukou is a migration control system. Typologically speaking, hukou is an official identification system that records a resident's presence including his or her name, birth, economic power and rank, employment status, and other relevant information. The establishment of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) Regulations on Household Registration in 1958 classifies the population into two types – Agriculture and non-agriculture hukou. This dual classification determines one’s entitlements to state-provided goods and services. Hukou

The movie “In the Mood for Love” was a Chinese movie which was released in the year 2000 and it was directed by Wong Kar-wai. The movie premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film festival and it was nominated for Palme d 'Or in the best picture category. The picture stars Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in the lead roles. The film revolves around two married couples who were undergoing a tumultuous marriage as they were not able to find time for each other and as a resulting the emotional attachment and bonding which is a necessary aspect of a healthy relationship was missing from their lives. The title of the film might indicate that there would be a lot of steamy intimate love making scenes but contrary to popular perceptions the film does not have any single intimate scenes. This film was considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time by film critics and it has got a rating of 4 out of 5 stars in IMDb (Gemser et al. 2007).

During the great leap forward, Mao was putting in communes which were a village made up of a group of people and who were to work in the agriculture industry. He went around and stipped land, animals, and tools from small individual farmer, and then forced them to work in the communes. Eventually, nobody owned their own land. The ideas of the great leap forward and the communes eventually fell apart. The equipment that was being made was so poorly made that is was falling apart as soon as it was put to use, the furnaces that were used to make steal would not get hot enough making the steal weak. After first couple years of good growing conditions and huge number of grain harvested, they finally had some bad years making it very hard for the communes to survive. There became a large number people that were starving from the low amounts of grain produced.