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Off topic: Pathology of low working rates (China)
Thread poster: Lingua 5B
Ty Kendall
Ty Kendall  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:18
Hebrew to English
Not too hard to verify... Dec 12, 2011

There is no basis for this type of so called "statistics"


It shouldn't be too hard to verify this company's number of employees, chances are the Wired article is accurate and that they do employ close to a million employees.

The article presupposes that somehow this is unique to China. A uniquely Chinese phenomenon. I can guarantee it isn't. I'm under no illusions that China has its problems, but manufacturing pretty much anywhere is a bleak and monotonous job which people rarely go into out of a love of manufacturing, but economic necessity.

To be blunt, there is nothing especially shocking about this article (other than the bad journalistic style which is to be expected from a tabloid). If you can tell me that suicide isn't prevalent in the poorer sections of most societies (even in so-called "developed" countries) then I'll start being shocked.


 
Phil Hand
Phil Hand  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 14:18
Chinese to English
Thanks, Ty! Dec 13, 2011

I was wondering where I'd read that stat, and hadn't had time to go and Google it out yet.

Stella, you're right that my wording was a little callous. The high suicide rate in my adopted country is an ongoing scandal, and there is nothing "unlucky" about the deaths of these young people. I hope we manage to do something about it soon.

But your history is wrong. To quote myself (sorry!):

"China's industrialisation is not like Britain's (and presumable Germany
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I was wondering where I'd read that stat, and hadn't had time to go and Google it out yet.

Stella, you're right that my wording was a little callous. The high suicide rate in my adopted country is an ongoing scandal, and there is nothing "unlucky" about the deaths of these young people. I hope we manage to do something about it soon.

But your history is wrong. To quote myself (sorry!):

"China's industrialisation is not like Britain's (and presumable Germany's). In the UK, the industrial revolution saw life expectancy drop, saw living conditions that were just hellish, and involved slums and crime and great suffering. Hence the satanic mills.

In China the process has been much more controlled, and much better supported (by American/European money). It helps that China at the beginning of its industrialisation was dirt dirt poor, stone age, but urbanisation and industrialisation in China has been a pretty much entirely positive process. Health is improving, living conditions are improving, wages are rising. There are very few slums in China, not like Indian cities."

China is not Europe. Nor is it the Americas, where the dirty history of slavery taints the notion of work in ways that remain difficult to process, culturally.

China is different, historically, culturally, and economically. It's facing a bunch of different challenges, and facing them in different ways, and this Mail article is not enlightening. Of course, sweatshops do exist here, and there is constant work to name and shame them - work by locals, by international NGOs, and often by international buyers, who do act to make sure their suppliers are compliant.

But seeing as I'm here writing, let me tell you something about how work actually is here.

Poor people leave their rural homes and travel hundreds of miles to big cities, where they find work in factories. The work is tough, but better than farm work. On the farms, they would have earned maybe a few hundred yuan a year; in a factory they will make between 1500 and 2000 (~300 USD) per month. They do not have private lives. They live in the factory, eat in the canteen, and rarely go out. The factory serves as a community: movie screenings are organised, leisure activities, even education in the larger facilities. The workers go home once per year, at Chinese new year, to see their families. When they have children, the children are left on the farm with the grandparents, and the parents will see them once a year only. They do this despite the fact that it causes horrific emotional pain to both parents and children because they believe that it is the only way to ensure a good future. If the parents earn enough money, they will be able to buy a flat in a city, and obtain urban residence for their children which will give them access to better education and the kind of future the parents didn't get.

This is a way of life for perhaps 100 million people.

The problems are bigger than "long hours" or "low wages" or "sweatshops" can really encapsulate.

You don't have to throw away your western values. But you have to throw away simplistic understandings of what is happening in this country. China is the size of a continent. Think first about the problems that beset your own continent - and how silly it would be to attempt to dismiss "South American" goods as "cheap and nasty" (though many are); or to dismiss South American cities as "favelas" (though that problem undoubtedly exists).
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Evonymus (Ewa Kazmierczak)
Evonymus (Ewa Kazmierczak)  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 07:18
Member (2010)
English to Polish
+ ...
made in China Dec 13, 2011

Phil Hand wrote:
and how silly it would be to attempt to dismiss "South American" goods as "cheap and nasty" (though many are)


ok, but then I do not read news from SA about intentionally poisoned milk, glasses painted with toxic paint, etc. Whereas I do read this kind of news about Chinese products.
I'm afraid to buy a toy made in China (for that reason). But then, if you try to find one not made in China, you have to spend hours. But even then, as Lingua mentioned above, you cannot be sure that it was not produced in China. Polish shops are flooded with products made in China, unfortunately most of them, if not all, are of poor quality.
I try to avoid Chinese staff, but then it seems impossible to find anything that was NOT made in China. My favorite jeans I made in China, but unfortunately they are not of the same quality any longer, although the price remains the same.
Ewa


 
Ty Kendall
Ty Kendall  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:18
Hebrew to English
Perhaps the media might play a role here Dec 13, 2011

Evonymus (Ewa Kazmierczak) wrote:

ok, but then I do not read news from SA about intentionally poisoned milk, glasses painted with toxic paint, etc. Whereas I do read this kind of news about Chinese products.


I can't attest to the Polish media, but for the English media, South America is practically non-existent, it would take something pretty drastic to happen there for it to appear in the mainstream media.

China, on the other hand, is of great interest to the English media, and consequently, is a much easier target.

I also remember the incidents you mention, but they are no different than any other corporate/commercial scandal. Take the BP oil-leak mess, now there's corporate incompetence on a massive scale! ...Or those lethal German beansprouts (the blame for which was like a game of pass-the-parcel). - I remember my German friends telling me about this LONG before it ever appeared in the English media (and even then, coverage was hardly extensive - people were just suspicious of Spanish cucumbers - since that was what was initially blamed incorrectly).

The Chinese aren't the only players in this game, but they do make good villans in the media pantomime.


 
Phil Hand
Phil Hand  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 14:18
Chinese to English
Seriously, Ewa? The perception fallacy? Dec 14, 2011

Come on, as translators we need to be a little bit more media-savvy than this. You see a lot of newspaper articles about something, and you then believe that it's a "fact"? You need to be reading past the headlines.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10476115

"Toys made in countries other than China had a hig
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Come on, as translators we need to be a little bit more media-savvy than this. You see a lot of newspaper articles about something, and you then believe that it's a "fact"? You need to be reading past the headlines.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10476115

"Toys made in countries other than China had a higher rate of recalls"
"So while Chinese-made toys dominate the global marketplace, accounting for 86 per cent of those imported by the United States in 2006, the study found they were no more a danger than toys made elsewhere."
"'It's astounding to us, this disconnect between the general perception that most of the problems are manufacturing and most of the problems are lead,' said Beamish. 'People have got to get lead paint off the mind.'"

The point shouldn't be exaggerated, because there are loads of China quality problems. But a quick Google will tell you that Eastern Europe has loads of quality problems too, and the UK... e coli Coke, anyone?
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Aisha Maniar
Aisha Maniar  Identity Verified
Member
Arabic to English
+ ...
Other extremes Dec 14, 2011

With respect to the role of the media, as we (me too!) type away right now on our computers/laptops and chat away on mobile/smart phones, the country that makes this possible for most of us and at an “affordable” price(to us, at least) – the Democratic Republic of Congo – stands on the verge of all-out civil war. This has largely been ignored by the mainstream international media whereas others pay a high price for our modern technology: it is dubbed the “world’s most dangerous place... See more
With respect to the role of the media, as we (me too!) type away right now on our computers/laptops and chat away on mobile/smart phones, the country that makes this possible for most of us and at an “affordable” price(to us, at least) – the Democratic Republic of Congo – stands on the verge of all-out civil war. This has largely been ignored by the mainstream international media whereas others pay a high price for our modern technology: it is dubbed the “world’s most dangerous place for women” (not by my reckoning, but the title of various reports and a BBC documentary - and probably one of the most dangerous places to be a man/child too). The raw material wealth it has filters into factories and then into homes all around the world.

As for suicide, at the other extreme, a few years ago, there was a media furore about a spate of suicides among bankers at a top French bank and it is not uncommon at all among workers (bankers, solicitors, others) in the City of London and other major financial centres around the world. Usually kept quiet, I’m sure the stats for some firms (not just banks or financial sector, but City companies in general) would be worrying. Of course, as already stated, that's not to say the cause is work-related.

The rant here essentially seems to be about consumer culture, which is global, and which we as translators are a part of, however we choose to look at it and deal with it through lifestyle/professional choices, etc. but that’s a story for another day/thread … after all, “the public gets what the public wants…”
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Pathology of low working rates (China)






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