In this issue of Asian Labour Update we focus on one of our recurring themes: global supply chains. By now in 2011, the world has faced the enormous costs of an economic system that spreads production and consumption all around the world, forcing countries of various levels of economic development to open and ‘free’ their economies and markets – and begun to recognize the fundamental risks, unsustainability and injustice arising from it. In spite of this, the ‘global supply chains’ have continued expanding in the world, not least in Asia, where the uneven levels of development have attracted those multinationals searching for ever lower costs of doing business and hiring and controlling workers.

In 2010, major strikes took place in the automobile industry in China, most notably at Honda Motors parts-producing factories, and a tragic and widely reported spate of worker suicides took place at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, producing electronics for Apple. Yet no major changes to this global economic production system have been made in response to these revelations of worker exploitation and deep labour conflicts. In Asia, workers and people continue suffer severe income gaps, long working hours, low wages, and poor safety and health conditions in the factories producing for multinational corporations. The continuation of such conditions give lie to the claim that the supply chains ‘inherently’ or ‘automatically’ elevate the material and essential conditions of the workers and society where the chains are operating. Instead, they contribute to the privatization of all elements of our lives and our society. As the articles in this issue point out, the inflow of capital to developing countries, rather than being used to benefit the workers who are actually producing the wealth for the country, ends up drafting and mobilizing all social elements of the society - labour, raw materials and even water/electricity - in those countries in service of the needs of capital(foreign and/or local), and only a small elitewithin the local society.The result is that only a small wealth elite draws the benefits from the global supply chains while the poor are forced to pay for the most basic of provisionsand even more deeply entrench themselves in global supply chains - as consumers as well as producing workers.

The costs of global supply chains in Asiaincludenot only the enforced dependence of Asian societies on an exploitative production system, but rampant environmental destruction, the value of whichhardly gets calculated –certainly an intentional oversight. In Western countries social movements and even governments are recognizing the need to correct this failure to put a value to environmental resources. The British government, in June this year, for instance, releasedits first UK National Ecosystem Assessment. It placed value of £300 per year for persons living next to a green space. Environmentalists have hailed the report as making ‘a compelling case for a step change in the way we value our environment’. Of course the value measurement is subjective and debatable; however it highlightsthe deep injustice and ‘democratic deficit’ of basic decisions, economic and other,being taken without any concern for impacts other thaneconomic ones, and without genuine (or any) consultation of theaffectedpopulation.

Governments throughout the world give lip service to environmental protection and to the importance of human rights for all; however the reality is that the governments collude with or appease international capital,to extract profits from the unfree labour of its people and forcibly grab land and other resources of local peoplein the service of capital. Thus governments end up submitting their people to the dictates and needs of global supply chains precisely, and often rather blatantly, depriving the workers and citizens of their democratic rights to be deciders regarding their own selves and own societies.

The conversion of large parts of society in developing countries for the service of capital – both foreign and local – is most clearly visible in mainland China, where employment in large factories in export processing zones has been a norm for well over a decade and has been taken for granted as part of state policy. As shown in the article on student internsby Liang Shumei, the state has become complicit in even depriving students of their right to education and of their rights as workers, giving schools subsidies and explicit instructionstostudents to workin factories where they are placed by the schools, in the name of doing ‘vocational training’.

As the situation in Indonesia also does clearly reveal, as described in the article by Sri Wulandari, global capital’s arrival in developing countries to establish their supply chains are not merely ‘free market’ economic decisions but the result of political negotiations between states and local elites. Without such direct and undemocratic arrangements, truly free workers and communities would not be allowing their whole societies to be put under the control of foreign corporations.

Realizing the true nature of global supply chains and their failure to bring real and substantial improvements to workers’ lives and even to national industrial development and autonomy, the labour movement should change course. On the one hand, direct battles in the workplace must continue; on the other hand, in the long term, labour movements should be proactively searching for production models which serve the needs of the society, and in the process, should also be strengthening workers and communities’ capacity to mobilize in unity against undemocratic capitals and governments. As the article by Boy Lüthje has shown, even in a former? formally? state-socialist country like China, workers do assert their power and accumulate awareness  of their rights and willingness to demand full exercise of them. But some groups of workers and policy-makers still bear the illusion that global supply chains offer developing countries ‘a way up’ and out of poverty and isolation. There is also divided opinion among labour groups, as some of them believe that the global supply chain can be ‘cleaned ’ and ‘policed’ for the benefit of workers, and self-regulatory corporate codes of conduct play a major role in reinforcing that view. However, as the lead article by Fahmi portrays, two decades of voluntary codes have not resulted in any effective changes at the ground in Asia, Africa or Latin America. Foxconn, for example, had problems of low wages and excessive overtime as long before as 2006, and public pressure then prompted cosmetic changes but did not change the core problem. Such a weak response to a deeper problem boomeranged in 2010, prompting a letter by eight Chinese sociologists (http://www.cineresie.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CLNT_Foxconn_sociol...) challenging the model of supply chain structurally and ‘calling the nation to put an end to this development model leveraged  upon the sacrifice of people’s basic dignity’.We believe, and the articles in this issue add evidence in support, that the struggle to achieve true freedom and equality of workers in the region (and really, worldwide) requiresnot only joint struggles against multinational corporations that violate workers’ rights but struggle against the model of global supply chains itself.