DailyMail Online
By SIMON PARRY
Last updated at 22:03 09 February 2008
The lone security guard could
only stand aside helplessly, cowering as an angry crowd of 400 surged forward,
smashing down the steel barricades outside the factory in southern
Some yelling, some crying tears
of frustration, they fanned out across the deserted concrete complex, aiming
kicks at their boss's abandoned 4x4. Then they ran through the workshops,
offices and dormitories seeking some kind of retribution.
Thirty minutes later, their fury
spent, they drifted back out across the trampled barricades, leaving for the
last time the place where many of them had spent years of their working lives,
carrying the only thing they could plunder: armfuls of shoes.
"What could I do? I was just
one old man against a mob," recalls 66-year-old security guard Can Don Yi.
"Of course I didn't try to stop them. In any case, they had a right to be
angry. I felt sorry for them."
Two days before, the workers had
been busy on the production lines of Dingfu factory
in the town of
Penniless and cut off from their
homes and families, the migrant workers – owed an average of four months' wages
– found themselves shut out as the factory doors were
sealed and court notices put up saying the Taiwanese owners were hundreds of
thousands of pounds in debt.
At first they waited patiently at
the factory gates. Then, when it was clear there would be no jobs to return to
and no one to help them get back the money they were owed, they took matters
into their own hands.
Minutes after storming the
factory gates, it became clear that anything of value at Dingfu
had gone. The boss had fled
But the factory closure is a
scenario that has been repeated across southern
Suddenly the
nation's astonishing growth, which over the past decade and a half has been
based on its ability to provide the world with cheap labour,
is under threat and experts are questioning whether China will become the 21st
Century superpower everyone predicted.
"Peer beneath the surface,
and there is a weak
The principal reason for the
decline is a simple refusal by migrant workers to put up with
Jenny Chan is chief co-ordinator of the pressure group Students and Scholars
against Corporate Misbehaviour, which investigates
factory conditions in southern
She says: "In the past,
workers would just swallow all the insults and humiliation they suffered. Now
they resist and there are a lot of innovative ways for them to fight back.
"They collect money and they
gather signatures. They use the shop floors and the dormitories to gather the
collective forces to put themselves in better negotiating positions with
factory owners and managers.
"They're also more mobile
today. They have a network of contacts and they tend to hop from one job to
another. They may not have high education levels but they have more knowledge.
They have new horizons and far more possibilities in life than their parents
had."
She adds: "They are able to
use their mobile phones to receive news and send messages. Internet cafes are
very important, too. They exchange news about which cities or which factories
are recruiting and what they are offering, and that news spreads very
quickly."
As a result, Ms Chan says,
factories are seeing huge turnover rates.
"One electronics factory I
visited had 36,000 workers and was experiencing a six per cent monthly turnover
rate. That means about 2,000 workers leaving every month."
The contrast to the meek,
submissive migrant worker of the Nineties could not be more pronounced.
In Houjie,
scene of the uprising last November, some factories have tripled workers'
salaries but there are still more than 100,000 vacancies.
At one factory a woman sits alone
at a small wooden table on the pavement. Behind her is a large red banner
announcing: "Workers wanted. Good rates of pay. Generous overtime
allowances." It's already 2pm and she admits: "It's been a slow day.
No one has stopped by so far."
The factory makes baby shoes for
export to
"They used to queue up outside
for jobs but now we have to advertise in the street for employees," says Cseng.
"We have 500 workers here
and we have vacancies for 700 more, but I don't see any way we are going to be
able to fill them. The migrant workers simply aren't here any more."
As he leads us around the
half-empty factory floor, it is clear that even when they do find workers, they
are not the ones who would have been recruited five years ago. Then, young
women were preferred because they would work harder, learn faster and cause
less trouble than older workers.
Now, the production lines are
staffed by men in their 30s and 40s.
"My daughter used to come
here to work and leave her baby son with me and my wife," one 43-year-old
male worker from
Other factories in southern
At last year's Chinese New Year
holiday, an estimated 1.7million people went home from southern
"Our workforce is getting
older and production costs are getting higher," says Cseng
with a shrug. "We used to pay 500 yuan a month
[£34.50]. Now even if we offer three times that, with guaranteed overtime, we
can't get the people we need to fill the vacancies."
He says the solution will be for
his company to leave the increasingly expensive factory belt in southern
"We will have to move either
inland or out of
The impact of the exodus has
already been devastating for Houjie. The town is
littered with empty factories, and shop owners whose livelihoods used to depend
on customers from the factories are now struggling to survive.
"It's frightening how quiet
it's suddenly become," says Li Xiao, who runs a small shop opposite one
deserted plant. "We used to have so many customers from the factory. They
would come out and buy cigarettes and food and drinks, especially in the
evenings.
"Now there are no customers.
They've all gone away. We're waiting for another factory to move in and for
workers to come back so we can get some business back. But it's been two months
now and no one has even come to look at the place."
Until October last year, the
factory turned out sports shoes at the rate of almost one million pairs a
month. Today, the four-storey complex looks as if a bomb has been detonated
inside it. Most of the windows are smashed and the old factory floors are
covered in rubble, broken glass, shoe soles and empty boxes.
"When it closed, the owner
sold everything inside and then rubbish collectors plundered the place,"
explains Li Xiao. "Anything they didn't take, they smashed. That's why it
looks the way it does."
Houjie and other towns like it across southern
And with the foundation of its economic
success in decline,
But unlike Japan and India, which
have built their success largely on technology industries, China lacks both the
skilled workers to step up to the challenge and the captains of industry to
oversee the necessary change.
Its factory owners are mostly
privileged children of party officials – 90 per cent of
Experts fear this lack of
imagination and flair, combined with the country's widespread corruption and
abuse of power, could soon bring about a calamity in the world's
fastest-growing economy.
Of course, the end of
"The working class in China
will get stronger and bring about some major changes," says Ms Chan.
"These forces from the bottom up are very important in making a better
China; a China that is more democratic and participatory."
Meanwhile, time stands stubbornly
still at the Dingfu factory complex in Houjie. Behind the sealed iron doors, shoe boxes lie in
untidy piles, dusty racks of unwanted clothes hang outside deserted dormitories
and half-finished shoes sit on the production line waiting for an army of
workers who will never return.
Fearing more unrest, the local
government paid token compensation out of its own funds to the workers who were
shut out of the factory, and all but a handful have taken jobs at other firms
or returned home.
Some of those left behind
continue to stop by every day, however, to watch for the return of their
runaway boss, whose 4x4 stands, coated in dust, on deflating tyres in the factory forecourt.
"Is he here? Have you seen
him?" a 40-year-old man asks in hope rather than expectation as he watches
us emerge from the factory. "I just want the money he owes me and I'll
keep coming back.
"I'm not frightened of him
any more. None of us is."