Alexandra Harney

What has driven manufacturers from around the world to shift jobs from their countries into China; kept prices consistently low for consumer goods in developed countries; and hugely increased China’s share of global manufacturing? It is ‘the China price.’

A huge diverse range of goods are manufactured in China, but this book focuses on the production of consumer goods – shoes, clothes, toys, light electronics – and what the real prices are, that are being paid by Chinese people as well as consumers, when investors have goods produced at cheap cost in China.

It would not be hard to imagine reference being made to the oppressive and likely illegally sub-standard work conditions, the low or even unpaid wages of workers, as well as environmental damage resulting from ‘the China price.’ This book takes us beyond stock phrases and gives us frank and close views of factories from inside as well as from the view of inspectors come to audit for ‘decent’ work conditions. For instance, we find that after a generation of workers have worked in southern China, many have become quite conscious of their rights and are willing and able to force improvements and higher wages from their employers - in spite of an ineffectual single state-run official trade union which is mostly ineffectual in defending worker rights. But the fact remains that most employers still pay their workers even below minimum wage. Illnesses and accidents arising from work remain of a massive scale; Beijing estimates they cost the country more than $13 billion a year. Indirect costs would double the figure. Yet government supervision of workplaces remains lax.

One whole chapter is given to following the lives of a group of women who share one factory room. The book also takes a fascinating close look at the experiments of two local managers, to maintain a worker-friendly atmosphere at their clothing factories supplying to international buyers like Timberland and Adidas. One, for instance, has allowed a workers’ committee to be formed and offered safety and labour law trainings for workers. While costs have risen, staff turnover has declined, and workers don’t show the fear of the manager that is prevalent at other factories.

The book also focuses on how investors try to address the known problems of labour exploitation – underpayment of workers, use of underage workers and other inhumane or illegal work conditions, in the factories supplying the major global brands. What interviews reveal is that companies rely heavily on external audits, yet audits are regularly cheated on so that they become virtually meaningless; rather, companies spend a great deal of time and effort to falsify records. Social responsibility schemes based on audits are a breeze to fake and undermine. Moreover, whole factories ­– ‘shadow factories’ – exist, which employ thousands of workers yet are completely off the record and closed from inspection. These effectively ‘subsidize’ the better working conditions of the ‘good factories’ where pay and work conditions at least come close to the legal minimum.

The author views the state to be the only organization with the capacity to ensure compliance with the law; this is surely a matter of dispute for labour activists. Workers also have become far more aware of their individual rights and of their potential collective power through protests and strikes, even without strong independent western-style unions; the author does recognize this, but sees the contribution mainly for its indirect influence on the state to protect workers and the public.

Though sparse on analysis, this book tells in brisk journalistic style not only about tough work conditions in China, ‘the factory of the world’, but about the dynamics and tensions on the ground, as pressure to produce cheaply contends with various laws, public pressure, and concepts, both international and local, of human and individual rights.