On Saturday 27. August 2016 18.32.07 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
there's a story about that - how a chinese factory manager was extremely annoyed at the effects the well-meaning idiot journalists had - explaining that the factories had to be moved to northern china where prices are lower and journalists and gwailo foreigners don't get granted visas - because prices being raised by westerners demands for "fairer wages" pushed up the price of labour across the *entire* guangdong area... and now foxconn and others are going fully-automated thus putting people *out* of work.
Certainly, it is often reported that wage demands are making China (as a whole) less competitive than other countries, and so the forces of globalisation are happy to move factories to those other countries, instead. It shouldn't be a surprise that, China being a big place, factories get moved around in China to take advantage of economic (and other) conditions.
Nor should it really be a surprise that automation is seen as a more economic alternative. That was supposed to be the dream in the West, where everyone could then live lives of leisure (or do other work instead) while the machines did all the work, but naturally, neither the factory owners nor the state want to pass on the benefits to the people they've put out of work. (The UK government's idiotic response to people affected by this kind of thing seems to have been "move to London" for several decades while actually encouraging the disappearance of manufacturing.)
she also explained to this idiotic western journalist that the standard of living has gone up by 100 to 1,000 times compared to 2-3 generations ago, where her grandparents for example lived in a corner of a field to tend crops, they slept in the shed with the animals to keep warm and they literally starved for 3 months during winter because there wasn't any food available.
by contrast having electricity, walls surrounding the roof that's over your head and access to clean water is...
Yes, there are different measures of development: this is also a topic that recurs a lot with regard to how China interacts with various African nations. Interestingly, in the context of how lifestyles and standards of living change, similar things happened during the Industrial Revolution in the West.
Some journalists may just be looking for a sensational story, perhaps with ulterior motives, but others - particularly genuine advocates of things like better working conditions - are not necessarily operating to shame China or to coerce the country in some way. They may merely be pointing to history and be attempting to show that some bad things happened in the past - and in their very own countries, too! - that could happen again, but could also be avoided.
If publicity causes an increase in wages and better working conditions, that is a good thing, but it needs to be accompanied by a commitment by the corporate customers of the affected factories to not dump them for cheaper and less scrupulous manufacturers. And consumers have to accept that better conditions cost more, and that they should not follow their outrage at worker exploitation by then only wanting the cheapest possible product.
Had Chinese journalists (or equivalent) visited British factories two-hundred years ago, I'm sure the factory managers would have been just as upset. The trick is to take advantage of other people's perspectives and knowledge, and thus to break the vicious cycle.
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But just as Fairphone could have had a productive conversation with Luke, maybe Luke could have a productive conversation with Fairphone. At least then, such other concerns will at least have been openly acknowledged. Maybe he already has spoken to them about their core area of expertise:
i have.. they didn't listen... the results we've seen are the train-wrecks that are still ongoing.
With regard to manufacturing or materials sourcing? Their traditional core areas of expertise, I mean.
From a casual perspective their work seems well-intentioned, but not being familiar with either area (and I have particular respect for those working in very dangerous or difficult places to investigate such things), I can't say whether they make a real difference or not. Their attempts to commit to manufacturers and form relationships seem to make sense.
Paul