Saam mou everywhere
In his second article, based on interviews with workers at a sofa factory in southern China, Ossi Rask reveals the plight of those who are caught up in — and often at the receiving end of — the dash for profit. The author travelled to China during the summer.
OSSI RASK — Stockholm, 17 August 1993 hours for lunch. They then continue from seven in the evening until eleven at night. The last four hours are counted as overtime with a fifty percent addition to the wages.
How many days a week?
"Seven days. But at the moment there are not many orders. Therefore we work
CHING does not want to continue his job at the sofa-factory in Sai Heung. He will quit in August after only four months.
"There is nothing for me to do here" he says when we enter his department.
Some thirty workers make the sofas ready for sale in Hong Kong. Swiftly and with skill they wrap the foam-rubber to fit inside the wooden frame. The leather covering is fixed with a stapling gun.
We are inside the Peoples Republic of China. Sai Heung lies ten kilometres outside its bigger neighbour, Shenzhen, close to the Hong Kong border.
Shenzhen is a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). But in the southern province of Canton the difference between a SEZ and any other area is no longer clear; at least if you are a capitalist.
### Seething
The whole of south-eastern China is seething with private business. Everywhere, the authorities say that they want to make it easy for you. It is better of course, if you have contacts; even better if you have relatives in the Party.
However, if you are one of the millions of Chinese on exodus from the countryside and towns, to the south to find a job, then you will notice the difference. You must show your work permit and identity-card to enter Shenzhen or some ten other SEZs in Canton.
On our way out of Shenzhen we drove straight across the borderline between the SEZ and the rest of the province. But on our way back, some days later, the border had become more like a customs point. Everyone must leave the bus and show their documents.
*The Party-line is steady for one hundred years!" , a huge picture of Deng Hsiao Ping declares.
It was in Shenzhen that a riot took place in August last year when the second stockmarket opened in China. Half-a-million people made a pilgrimage to this city, bribing their way across the border, only to discover that the lottery tickets, of which one in ten gave the right to buy shares, were already "sold out".
"Down with corruption!" This was the slogan that appeared on the home-made banners carried by the rioting crowd - an echo from Beijing 1989.
A Ching lives in Hong Kong. This is the second sofa-factory in mainland China where he has borne the title "technician". He did not stay long at the other factory either. The other place was a ramshackle house. "They treated the workers like dogs", he says with disgust.
At his present factory there is a high ceiling and bright light to work in. But what is A Ching's role? It seems a long time since any of the workers required any "technical advice". A Ching is a foreman with nothing to do. Foremen are not usually so honest as to admit this. Certainly, they do not quit for this reason.
The factory has had a new manager since January — Chinese, from the province of Fukkien on the east coast who is now living in Hong Kong. He has asked A Ching to stay. He reasons that it is much better to have someone from Hong Kong as foreman.
A Ching's wage is around $HK 12 thousand. This is a good wage considering the cost of living in Hong Kong. It compares with the average earnings of a wellpayed white-collar worker, more than double what a factory worker in Hong Kong earns — and twenty-one times more than what the best payed workers in his department at the factory earn. And of course, their wages are in yuan.
Chuen is in his twenties. He takes a short break to answer our questions. His piece-meal wages are fourteen yuan per sofa. If it is a month with a lot of work he will earn around eight-hundred yuan. Working hours are normally from eight in the morning to six in the evening with two six days and not always twelve hours."
Chuen works with a boy, perhaps fifteen-years old. He is new and has a starting wage of 250 yuan. We carefully ask Chuen if he has heard about trade unions. No, he has not. A Ching, who has been listening, smiles: "No, no. In this town a trade union would never work. If we put up a notice for vacancies at the factory gate we would have fifty applications within two hours.
Upstairs, where they sew the leather for the sofas, the workers are almost all women. At the most they earn around 500 yuan a month. "Our work is more simple", Bing says. She smiles, a little embarrassed, when we do not agree.
She points to the fact that their work takes a shorter amount of time than the other departments. Sometimes they only work six hours a day. Otherwise the other departments would not be able to keep up with their pace.
### Relatives
Almost all of the hundred workers at the sofa-factory have come from other provinces. We understand after a while that the manager recruited several relatives in Fukkien, paying them more than the other workers. Bing is one such relative. She has just returned from a month's maternity leave and has now been working at the factory for six years. The annual holiday is normally about ten days around the Chinese New Year.
Her mother-in-law is taking care of the baby. Bing's companion is working at another factory in Sai Heung. They will soon return to Fukkien.
"Are there not any jobs back home?" we ask.
"Oh yes. There are many textile-factories in Fukkien. The wages are similar to Sai Heung, but we wanted to see the SEZ. It is so famous. We wanted to experience the prosperity of the Canton province for ourselves. Many people want to come here just to see how things are."
29
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
A woman sits in the back of the large room and tears foam rubber in to small pieces to be used as filling for pillows. She is almost the only older worker we have seen on our visit. Everyone else is about thirty — or younger. All of the hundred workers, except four, are from outside of Sai Heung. It has been stipulated that companies funded by foreign capital must employ some people from the local area. These employees are appointed by the local authorities. The site manager is said to be one of the four. He is, however, from north-eastern China. He is a former highranking officer in the Peoples' Liberation Army and, presumably, one of the 45 million Party members. That is A Ching's guess.
Perhaps he is. Perhaps not. If he is, it means the local bureaucracy can keep a eye on the factory.
We bump into him on our way out. He is supervising work at a machine cutting the foam-rubber. Our presence had not been announced beforehand and he is clearly irritated. But we are escorted by A Ching, so everything is okay.
### Control
In China today, a lot of things are escaping the control of the Party. The new private companies are nothing like the state-owned. There are no Party cells. At hundreds and hundreds of new foreign owned companies there are no longer small workteams, "units", each and everyone of them with a political secretary and a group leader.
Is there any control needed now? People seem to put their hearts into their work.
We try to touch upon some more sensitive subjects with one of the men in the sewing department: "Couldn't the workers strike to improve their wages?" His wage is four hundred yuan a month. He has, he says, heard about strikes but thinks it would not be easy to succeed
In the evening we invite some of the workers to a restaurant nearby. Three, we thought, or it will be too expensive. Eleven turn up! To our relief more than a dozen people can eat a meal with ten dishes for two-hundred and thirty-five yuan (SHK 170). To our new friends though, this must seem insane to spend half a months wages on one meal. No one shows or tells us what they think.
A discussion begins in which a lot more is said now they are away from the factory floor.
"Yes, there are strikes in Sai Heung, from time to time" , says Chuen. "Some months ago our department was on strike.
We demanded that there should be a new contract for piece-meal work. The sofas should be worth sixteen yuan instead of fourteen. Yes, we should have demanded more but we never thought it would be approved."
Six workers were chosen to go and speak with the management. The answer was no.
"We went on strike for one day. Management called Hong Kong."
The manager decided to sack the six - and sacked they were. The strike finished with no results.
"The demand was correct", says Wu. He says this despite being one of the manager's relatives and a foreman in one of the other departments (his wage is a thousand yuan a month). He probably wants to mark out where he stands. "There are strikes now and again, but it is difficult to win. There are too many people looking for jobs."
But what do all the people who come here do if they cannot find a job?
"They stay for a few weeks and then they must go home."
"Some have killed themselves" someone else adds.
That morning, travelling out of Shenzhen, we had seen people hard-at-work on road projects. The sheds where they stay are close by. The children play outside and the washing hangs out to dry.
They are "saam mou" , says Jiu who is travelling with us. Saam mou means "three have not". They have no identity card, work permit or money.
"They work for five yuan a day— may be less. They are not allowed to be here in Shenzhen but the authorities turn a blind eye." Yet on a long red banner, hanging from a viaduct the Party proclaims: "We shall rinse Shenzhen clean of the saam mou!!"
Jiu explains: "As you know, what they say is one thing — what they do is another."
On the outskirts of Shenzhen the saam mou are everywhere. Grey squatter shacks in groups often. Sometimes, only four poles and a tarpaulin. At one place there are a hundred houses — a small village with a main street and even a market too. Just as it should be!
On our way back from Sai Heung our eyes have accustomed and we begin to see more. On the edge of a building site, in the centre of Shenzhen, with modern hotels as neighbours, several hundred metres of pavement just disappear under a continual row of shacks, with corrugated iron as roofs. We can glimpse bunk-beds through the door-holes. Are there five, ten or twenty-thousand saam mou in Shenzhen?
Our friends in Sai Heung are better off. This evening they are in a good mood.
They have worked at the factory for between one and three years. When they explain to us who they are the new proletarians state that: "I raise pigs", "I grow rice", ', "I am a student". The student, for the moment, does not have the money to continue his studies. The others, for the moment, find that it does not pay to work back home. They seem to look upon the factory as a station in life — a transition between two places.
"We have to follow the road of the western countries", is the opinion of a "china-seller" from Hunan.
And will you be rich? As promised by Deng Hsiao Ping?
"The one who lives will see" , a young woman answers coyly.
When we ask if this is really socialism - do the workers really have the power to decide? — they fall silent.
### Hawkish
"I don't think you should ask any political questions" , a hawkish A Ching says. We look at the other guests in the restaurant. They have been looking at us, listening. No "political" questions, but strangely it is alright to talk loudly about strikes, unions, wages and the new manager.
"He is a lot worse" , Chuen says. "In January he changed the notice to quit from seven days to nothing."
"And the subsidies for lunch have been reduced from seventy five to fifty yuan per month." Food is at least three yuan per day.
And if you rent an apartment?
"That costs three-hundred yuan. Only businessmen from Hong Kong can afford that. They usually have an extra wife in Sai Heung and live with them when they are here.
Does the wife in Hong Kong know that?!
"Of course not!"
We pay the bill and make our way towards the workers dormitory. The only light outside comes from the street-kitchens and small shops. On the pedestrians viaduct over the mainstreet, where heavy lorries are roaring by in the dark at speeds that seem tremendous, people are assembling in groups for a chat.
A Ching asks us to be excused, goes into a barber shop and sits in front of the mirror.
"He has his hair cut three times a week."
Someone explains that this is one good way of meeting a woman. No-one seems to think there is anything funny about this.
30
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
The dormitory building we visit is four-storeys high. From a dark stairway each floor has a long balcony where washing is hung out. It is open to the street on one side and on the other you enter rooms no more than twenty metres-square. There are up to five bunk beds (ten people) in each room. Behind the beds is a little pantry with cold water and a gas stove. There is no air-conditioning but for three fans in the ceiling.
For several months now, Wu has been trying to get an extra fan installed. "But nothing happens." He shows us where he thinks they should put it. The temperature in southern China during the summer can be between twenty-five and thirty-five centigrade.
Men and women live apart, even if they are married. The women's rooms look nicer. It is only when you look into the men's rooms that you notice that the floors are bare cement.
Two weeks after our visit to Sai Heung a workers' dormitory in Shenzhen collapsed. The building fell to pieces during a night of heavy rain. Seventeen workers were killed, ten were seriously injured.
Injured workers complained that they had to pay for their own food at the hospital and that the employer did not even come to visit them. An Associated Press report published in the bourgeois Hong Kong Standard was succinct: "It was the latest of several such accidents in recent months in southern China, where safety standards have been pushed aside in the rush to make money."
Everybody though is friendly. A boy — he is not shy — wants to join in the discussions. He is nine and still at school.
And what do you want to be when you grow up?
"A businessman", he replies with a happy grin. * марта
HAITI