8 Articles Worth Reading
8 Articles Worth Reading
Date: Saturday, January 01, 2005 3:33 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
January 01, 2005 No. 1171
Article 1:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5872.shtml
Ain't This America. . .
Suicidal Outsourcing
It is naive to believe that U.S. firms can maintain their global
dominance by delegating the dirty work of managing factories to
subcontractors. To halt the technology bleeding, they must deploy foot
soldiers to set up production around the globe, as Japanese and German
manufacturers have been doing all along. If the current trend of
outsourcing is allowed to go on, the victim list will get even longer.
The next firm to fall could well be Boeing, Motorola, Oracle, H&R Block
- or any other company we can think of.
Article 2:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0412260374dec26,1,637934
.story
TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT: THE GREAT MIGRATION OF CHINA
PART 1 OF 3: Migration of a nation
Tens of millions of former farmers now work in China's urban factories.
They build the industrial equipment, sew the clothing and make the toys
that are sold around the world. Many if not all of these products once
were manufactured in the United States. Now many of those jobs have
gone to China, where a vast workforce is willing to endure harsh
conditions and low pay out of a desperate desire to get ahead.
Article 3:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0412270225dec27,1,6933988.story
PART 2 OF 3: The factory nuns of urban China
Bai Lin is a factory nun. She lives cloistered in the dreary compound
of the medical instruments company, where she works 11 or 12 hours a
day, seven days a week, for 11 months straight until the New Year's
break. When she returns home for a month, her year's wages in her
pocket, it amounts to about $500.
Article 4:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0412280342dec28,1,7917030.story
PART 3 OF 3: The road to Double Happiness
China has freewheeling capitalism now. It is a land of opportunity for
migrants who come not from the villages of Europe but the villages of
the Chinese landscape. Many migrants fail, beaten down by a system
that, also like the industrialized nations of the late 19th Century,
offers few protections. There are no unions or easily obtainable health
insurance, and job safety regulations are lax. There is no independent
judiciary and no guarantees that wages will be paid. People work at
their own risk, but there are few limits to what they can achieve. Most
migrants consider themselves lucky to land jobs as cogs in the wheels
of a factory, to work amazingly hard and get paid enough to finance a
better life for themselves and their families back home on the farm.
Article 5:
http://www.bxa.doc.gov/News/2004/IndiaNov19.htm
For Immediate Release: Nov 19, 2004
United States and India Hold Talks on Stimulating High-Technology
Commerce
Under Secretary of Commerce Kenneth I. Juster said today that
significant progress has been made on developing a work plan to expand
high-technology trade between the United States and India.
Article 6:
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1221-10.htm
FTAA Negotiations Miss Jan. 1, 2005, Completion Deadline; Free Trade
Theory Runs Aground on Reality of NAFTAs Harsh Results Global
Justice Activists Celebrate New Year with FTAA Talks Dead in Water and
CAFTA Facing Congressional Defeat
With talks to establish a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) dead
for more than a year, the anticipated passing of the Jan 1, 2005,
deadline for negotiating a pact marks the end of corporate
globalizations decade-long Shermans March across the hemisphere,
Public Citizen said today.
Article 7:
http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/958289.cms
Will India take over the world?
Article 8:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/977577.cms
US visas dry up for healthcare pros
January 1, 05 doesnt bring good news for Indians applying for
employment-based (EB3) immigrant visas to the US. And the news is
especially bad for nurses and other healthcare professionals who have
been enjoying fast-track access to the coveted Green Card .
1. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5872.shtml
Ain't This America. . .
Suicidal Outsourcing
By SHIH-FEN S. CHEN
The Providence Journal
Dec 20, 2004, 02:26
International Business Machines' recent decision to put its
personal-computer business up for sale is another sad day in American
corporate history. Having long ago outsourced the development and
manufacturing of the product it helped to create, IBM is not even
interested in carrying the personal computer anymore. So, following
RCA, Schwinn and the like, another iconic U.S. brand is falling into
foreign hands.
The buyer of IBM's PC division is its subcontractor Levono, China's
leading computer maker. Last April, a similar deal was cut between RCA
and TCL, the largest TV-set maker in China, which for years had been
the subcontractor of RCA.
In both cases, is the acquisition of a hollowed-out business by its
subcontractor a coincidence? If not, something must be terribly wrong
with outsourcing.
Outsourcing emerges when products developed and consumed in the United
States can be more cheaply made abroad. In a typical sourcing
arrangement - called original-equipment manufacturing - U.S. firms
transfer all design and production know-how to subcontractors, then buy
back the output for sale at home.
At first glance, original-equipment manufacturing is a perfect
offshore-sourcing structure. It lets U.S. firms enjoy low factory
prices overseas without the hassles of managing their production
facilities. And by taking back the finished product, the U.S. firms can
transfer all technologies to subcontractors for free - thus eliminating
the contracting problems in licensing.
The beauty of outsourcing is that the parties can each perform the
functions at which they excel: U.S. firms control development and
marketing; foreign subcontractors take on manufacturing.
Critics of outsourcing focus mainly on the loss of production jobs to
low-wage countries - a non-issue in the eyes of free-trade advocates.
The debate, however, misses a hidden danger in outsourcing: free and
complete flows of technology to subcontractors. The risk of technology
loss in outsourcing has been overlooked in the business world, but it
does catch the attention of the intelligence community.
In a recent op-ed piece in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a former CIA
contractor pointed out that Boeing is outsourcing components from
several foreign countries. According to a source within the firm,
Boeing not only transfers complex machinery to subcontractors, but also
sends engineers to train foreign operators. Such subcontractors receive
lucrative contracts, advanced technologies, and professional
instruction from Boeing - all for free.
Furthermore, technology transfer in outsourcing is thorough. For
subcontracting to work, U.S. firms must disclose all technical
information to their foreign manufacturers, as incomplete knowledge
transfer will harm the quality of the bought-back product.
For the same reason, the U.S. firms must also provide full and
continuous technical support, to ensure that their subcontractors
maintain quality.
Unlike with licensing, U.S. firms cannot withhold information from
foreign subcontractors to prolong their technological leadership.
Outsourcing, indeed, provides an excellent platform for foreign
manufacturers to absorb advanced technologies.
After closing its Chicago plant, in 1981, Schwinn sent equipment and
engineers to Taiwan, and thereafter outsourced millions of bicycles
from its supplier, Giant. Only six years into this alliance, Giant was
able to introduce the world's first mass-produced carbon-fiber bicycle
frame. In 2001, its non-resonance suspension system won the Bike of the
Year award from Mountain Biking magazine.
Giant now sells such innovative products under its own brand - in more
than 50 countries - charging a higher price than its former mentor did.
Without attempting to regain technological leadership, U.S. firms
further farm out product development to subcontractors, making a bad
situation worse. Through a new sourcing mechanism - called
original-design manufacturing (ODM) - Giant develops and assembles
bicycles for its Western clients without receiving any technical
assistance from them. Taiwanese laptop makers (e.g., Asustek, Mitac and
Quanta) provide similar services for Apple, Dell and HP.
Yet even with the losses of both technology lead and production edge,
U.S. firms can leverage their brand power to rein in subcontractors -
if they enjoy enormous consumer loyalty, as do Apple, Nike and Levi's.
Those lacking a strong brand, however, face harsh competition, from
which they can defend themselves sometimes only through bankruptcy
protection.
This was what happened to Schwinn, which pedaled into Chapter 11 twice,
in 1993 and 2001. To avoid the unavoidable, RCA and IBM each offered to
sell their businesses to subcontractors, to try to squeeze a few more
miles from their empty tanks before their cars stopped.
Ironically, the most valuable asset in such hollowed-out companies is
their brand name - which foreign acquirers can use to fool consumers
who preach and practice "Buy America," to keep jobs at home.
It is naive to believe that U.S. firms can maintain their global
dominance by delegating the dirty work of managing factories to
subcontractors. To halt the technology bleeding, they must deploy foot
soldiers to set up production around the globe, as Japanese and German
manufacturers have been doing all along.
If the current trend of outsourcing is allowed to go on, the victim
list will get even longer. The next firm to fall could well be Boeing,
Motorola, Oracle, H&R Block - or any other company we can think of.
(Shih-Fen S. Chen is an international-marketing professor in Brandeis
University's International Business School. His study establishing the
role of outsourcing in international technology transfer is forthcoming
in the Journal of International Business Studies. His e-mail address is
shihfen@brandeis.edu.)
2. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.in
tercept
TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT: THE GREAT MIGRATION OF CHINA
PART 1 OF 3: Migration of a nation
For rural China's destitute farmers such as the Bai family, jobs
exported to the cities--many from America--offer a profound new hope
for a better life
By Michael A. Lev
Tribune foreign correspondent
December 26, 2004
TWO DRAGONS, China -- Along a narrow mud road that cuts through the
unending farmland of central China sits a peasant village so modest it
hardly deserves its evocative name.
At the end of the lane is the dirt-floored hovel of Bai Li Yun, an
illiterate farmer who cannot afford to support his five children.
Until recently, Bai, 46, had left Two Dragons only once before. Ten
years ago he rode a bus two hours to the provincial capital to buy a
15-inch black-and-white television, which pulls in the fuzzy signal of
just one channel.
For at least eight generations, members of the extended Bai clan have
lived in Two Dragons, the rhythm of their lives almost unchanged as
they have struggled to survive as farmers in a poor, overpopulated
country. There have been years of famine and of bounty, eras of
political upheaval and of calm. Yet always they have lived and worked
with "our eyes facing the yellow earth, our backs pointed toward
heaven," according to a proverb quoted by one Bai.
There is no ancient saying to describe the changes sweeping through the
Bai clan of today. One by one they are fleeing the land.
Their destination is the city, where many in the family have found
opportunity and heartbreak as tiny, nearly anonymous contributors to
the modern economic boom that is reshaping China.
The migration of the Bai family and millions more from the countryside
is transforming a vast communist country that is still, at its heart, a
fiefdom of lords and peasants into a fierce competitor for the West.
Tens of millions of former farmers now work in China's urban factories.
They build the industrial equipment, sew the clothing and make the toys
that are sold around the world. Many if not all of these products once
were manufactured in the United States. Now many of those jobs have
gone to China, where a vast workforce is willing to endure harsh
conditions and low pay out of a desperate desire to get ahead.
A double-edged sword
The peasants have always defined China. They have been the cause of its
strength and the source of its despair. They built the Great Wall and
defended the empires that rose to become some of the world's great
civilizations. Yet time and again they have proved ungovernable through
their unmanageable numbers.
Once more, the 1.3 billion people of the world's most populous nation
present both strength and weakness. They are the largest pool of cheap,
uneducated labor on the planet, but they also are an extraordinary,
perhaps unsupportable burden on themselves. That is especially true for
the 900 million Chinese from the countryside, many of whom--like those
in Two Dragons--eke out meager existences.
China's own economy never could provide work for them all. But perhaps
the rest of the world can employ enough of them to sustain the country
and keep the Communist Party in power.
That was part of the logic behind the Chinese government's decision to
abandon rote communism 25 years ago and open itself to the outside
world. It was China's good fortune to get the timing just right, laying
the groundwork to become the world's factory at the moment countries
were becoming more interconnected economically. Companies from the
United States, Europe and elsewhere in Asia were recognizing that it
made sense to search the globe for the cheapest, most efficient workers
to manufacture their products. They found what they were looking for in
China.
China's great advantage is not just a low-cost labor force but the
people's desperation to succeed. Over the past decade or so, more than
100 million peasants have left their villages for China's cities, so
hungry for work that they accept nearly any wage and will tolerate
nearly any living condition if it means a job.
It is an exodus that constitutes one of the greatest mass migrations of
all time.
Members of the Bai family have become determined and resourceful
participants in this extraordinary journey. Though it has been terribly
difficult at times, they have discovered that the dirt road through
their village connects them to the outside world and the possibility of
a more lucrative life.
The patriarch and matriarch of the family are Bai He Ping and Wang Fu
Ying. It is their children, five adult brothers and one sister, who are
changing family history. Illiterate farmer Bai Li Yun is the
second-oldest son. The oldest brother also is illiterate. The next two
younger brothers went to middle school. The youngest graduated from
high school.
All of them grew up in a home much like the one now occupied by the
second brother. There is no indoor plumbing. The family draws water
from a well and uses a walled-off bit of back yard for a toilet. During
winter, the house is freezing cold. At night, the six chickens that
share the living space huddle quietly in a covered basket.
In their windowless home, lighted by a single bulb, cooking is a
two-woman operation: A daughter crouches behind a concrete oven in the
corner of the main room, stoking the fire with fistfuls of hay as Bai's
wife stirs the wok that rests over a hole on top. Smoke fills the room
and soot collects on the mud-and-straw walls.
This is the life being abandoned. Today, three of the five adult Bai
brothers are working in the city. Wives, children, cousins, aunts,
uncles, nephews, nieces: All have gone, many leaving Two Dragons for
the first time in their lives in the past year or so. Of about 40 men
in the Bais' neighborhood, 30 have gone down the dirt road that leads
to the modern highway toward Hefei, the capital of Anhui province. From
there they head by train or bus to Shanghai or Beijing or Nanjing or
Shenzhen, where growth offers unprecedented opportunities to migrant
workers.
The first member of the Bai family to leave was the eldest daughter of
the eldest brother. She began working in a clothing factory 10 years
ago. But the harsh experiences and eventual success of the youngest Bai
brother redefined what is possible for this peasant clan in the era of
economic globalization.
Rags to relative riches
Nine years after first leaving home, the youngest brother, 32-year-old
Bai Li Peng, is about as far as he can be from Two Dragons and still be
in China. The former peasant boy is an assembly line foreman in
Shenzhen, the boom town just across the border from Hong Kong. He works
for McQuay International, a Minnesota-based, Malaysian-owned
manufacturer of industrial heating and air-conditioning equipment.
He and his wife, who is also from Two Dragons, work together at McQuay.
She has a job on the assembly line. They live in a small apartment in a
concrete-block building with their newborn son. They have a big color
television set. They carry cell phones.
To get where he is now, Bai endured what he assumes was a fairly
typical experience for migrant workers. It nearly killed him.
"I've got some bad memories," he said, reflecting on his journey while
sitting in the clean, comfortable cafeteria at McQuay's Shenzhen plant.
He was just finishing high school when he decided to leave home for the
first time. He was 24--not an uncommon age for graduation in the
countryside--and eager to explore the world.
"A young man should be ambitious and have his own goals," he said. "I
did not want to be a farmer. The life of a farmer is really poor."
Bai's parents opposed his dream because they were afraid of what he
might face in a big city. So he borrowed about $25 from classmates and
ran away in the direction of Shanghai, where his cousin worked. He
wanted to leave a note for his parents but didn't want to risk getting
caught. He contacted his family a month later.
"I didn't know anything about the outside world," Bai said. "It was all
so fresh and exciting."
Getting work was easy, but survival was a struggle. In the industrial
city of Changshu, he put in slave's hours at a Dickensian factory as a
human machine component, working with a team of 10 men to drag a hot,
heavy pressing machine across enormous sheets of fabric to make
wallpaper.
He lived in a squalid dormitory, earning about $30 a month. The factory
promised no career; it drained what it could from its migrant laborers
and then hired more.
"I had to work at least 14 hours a day," he said. "They deducted salary
for defects. I spent my time grabbing a hot iron to print floral
patterns. My hands could feel nothing. They went numb."
After working seven days a week for two months, he found a job hauling
timber at a hardwood floor manufacturer for $1.25 a day. Shortly before
the factory shut down for the monthlong Chinese New Year holiday, his
boss saw how diligently Bai worked and gave him the opportunity to try
to sell hardwood floors in Shanghai. But the market was not very good,
and when the holiday came he headed home, exhausted and discouraged but
not defeated.
Bai's next plan was to take the college entrance exam, a punishing
mental exercise based on rote memorization that must be passed to gain
acceptance to a university. High schoolers study for years, dedicating
their lives to succeeding. The stress is so great that a few students
turn up for the test with parents carting oxygen tanks.
In despair's grip
Bai didn't want to give up his freedom or burden his family with this
decision. So he made up a story that he was working in Hefei to cover
for himself while he studied for the exam. He had saved nearly $90 and
planned to spend $125 on a test-preparation class. He borrowed the rest
and found himself alone in Hefei, sleeping fitfully on the floor of a
small, dark room in a shared apartment, trying to study for the exam
without having enough money to eat more than rice and pickled cabbage.
He went to bed hungry each night, too weak to study properly.
"I didn't pass the exam," he said, smiling ruefully at the memory of
putting himself in a no-win situation. "I lost confidence completely. I
went home."
A few weeks later, on a hot July day, Bai sat on a bed in his parents'
house in Two Dragons and felt he couldn't face the shame of having
failed in his dream, and didn't think he would get another chance. He
knew he could not spend the rest of his life on the farm. He slashed
his wrist with a knife and slipped into semiconsciousness as he bled.
"If I hadn't found him, he'd be dead for sure," said the third-oldest
brother, Bai Li Yin, who happened by the room. He roused his brother,
wrapped his wrist in a towel and tried to convince him that there was
life to be had even without college, a life full of opportunities
beyond the village in the new China.
"My brother is a very quiet man, and very honest," Bai Li Yin, 38, said
of his despondent younger sibling. "He should have had the chance to go
to college, but because of the family he couldn't afford it. He's very
stubborn. The reason he's succeeded is he never gave up."
A month later, the young Bai was ready to go again, this time to
Shenzhen, where survival was even tougher.
He spent an unsatisfying stint as a security guard, frustrated because
he was learning no skills and earning no respect. After that he
suffered through months of dangerous and menial jobs. He endured toxic
fumes in a back-alley assembly line filling disposable lighters with
fluid, and found day work dangling out of windows painting walls at
construction sites.
In his worst experience, he got a job on a construction crew doing
interior renovation work. The working conditions were pitiable; he was
provided terrible food and lived in squalor. And then, after three
months--and before payday--the boss disappeared, fleecing Bai of nearly
$200.
There were weeks and weeks without work when he survived on a few bread
buns a day or was forced to scavenge food from garbage. When he no
longer could pay rent, his sympathetic landlord helped him build a
temporary shelter on the roof.
Then, with the help of a cousin, Bai found a temporary job as a painter
at the McQuay International air conditioner plant. Because he had no
place to sleep, he hid in a corner of the factory at night, afraid he
would be discovered and his hope of a real job would end.
But his bosses at McQuay liked him, hired him full time and gave him
several promotions. He is the pride of his family, doing the kind of
responsible blue-collar work that once defined the American middle
class, but he does it for about $6,000 a year.
Bai's wife, Wang Jun Mei, who is from Two Dragons but did not meet him
until moving to Shenzhen, said she had trouble believing his hard-luck
story.
"I was surprised at first at what he had gone through, but when I
realized it was true I was very touched," she said. "I thought it was
completely impossible that he would refuse all help and eat two buns a
day."
Now, she thinks of Bai as "courageous, diligent, pragmatic and never
boastful."
True to his character, Bai dismisses the compliments.
"I don't think I'm very successful," he said. "My story is very typical
in Shenzhen."
3. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0412270225dec27,1,6933988.story
PART 2 OF 3: The factory nuns of urban China
Mon Dec 27, 9:40 AM ET
By Michael A. Lev Tribune foreign correspondent
Bai Lin is a sad-faced 19-year-old who seems to carry the weight of the
world on her shoulders.
She works in a small industrial town for a factory that makes
intravenous drip kits for hospitals. Once she lived with her family in
a dirt-floored hovel at the end of a mud road in a forgotten hamlet
called Two Dragons.
She left home at age 15 because her father decided she must. The family
was poor, but there was an option: Every day, it seemed, more people
from the villages were leaving for work in the city.
Bai Lin remembers clearly the day her father took her to the bus
station. He cried. She held in her tears.
Her stoic nature defines her still. Bai Lin is a factory nun. She lives
cloistered in the dreary compound of the medical instruments company,
where she works 11 or 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for 11 months
straight until the New Year's break. When she returns home for a month,
her year's wages in her pocket, it amounts to about $500.
Bai Lin belongs to one family from one village that represents an
infinitesimal piece of a very large story: one of the largest
industrial migration trends in human history.
Over the past decade or so, legions of Chinese have left their farms
for cities as China's communist government relaxed the travel and
housing restrictions that once kept a strict divide between urban
workers and country peasants.
Without the rise of a flexible migrant labor force, China's economy
never would have developed into the formidable international competitor
it has become. China's cities today teem with these domestic migrants,
some comfortably settled in jobs, others arriving daily, risking
everything--though often they have nothing to lose.
Many of the people working in China's newly established factories are
from the countryside.
The men living and working round-the-clock at construction sites often
are migrants.
The food hawker on a street corner in Nanjing, who rises at 3:30 each
morning in his tiny apartment to make the noodles for his stand and
doesn't close up and go home until 8:30 at night, is a migrant.
So, too, are three poorly dressed women, each hoisting over a shoulder
a rotund, 80-pound sack stuffed with potential recyclables. They march
single-file down a street, bent by the strain, cartoonishly tiny under
their heavy, bobbing loads, hoping to earn a few pennies for a full
afternoon of rummaging.
A shifting demographic
Counting or even defining migrants isn't easy. The Chinese talk about a
"floating population," meaning anyone who has left the city in which
they are officially registered. At some level, a destitute farmer
collecting garbage on the streets can be considered part of the same
mobile phenomenon as a lawyer from Beijing living in Shanghai.
Today there are more than 100 million peasants in the cities, but so
many have come and gone through the years that the total number of
participants likely is far higher. These migrant workers fit different
categories. Some are seasonal workers who go home for the harvest.
Others have been living in the city for years but are not recognized as
official city dwellers because residency laws are murky and changing.
China's plunge into migrant-based employment represents capitalism that
is basic and unfettered, which can mean exploitative.
Industrial workers typically put in punishing hours, often for little
or no overtime pay, in factories that can rely on antiquated equipment
and provide little training. China has one of the world's highest rates
of industrial accidents; at least 5,000 workers die each year in the
coal-mining industry alone. Stories are common of inadequately trained
machine operators who lose limbs in accidents.
Migrants tend to fare the worst. They're unsophisticated, desperate and
thus especially vulnerable to unscrupulous bosses who will work them to
the bone and then refuse to pay them.
There are national labor laws governing workplace conditions, but
oversight and enforcement often are lax or non-existent and there are
no minimum-wage rules. There also are no independent unions and no
labor activists to defend workers' rights because the Communist Party
does not allow challenges to its authority.
Sometimes workers revolt, but mostly they endure, surviving lives in
the city that are grueling and lonely. But at the end of the year there
is money their pockets, where there would be little or none at home on
the farm.
This is what the Bai family understood.
Wrenching sacrifice
Bai Lin's father, the second-oldest of the five Bai brothers of Two
Dragons, is illiterate and realized he could not make it in the city.
So he needed to make a wrenching decision: One of his older daughters
would leave home.
The obvious girl to send first was the eldest, Bai Li Hua, but she was
valuable on the farm and seemed a bit too quiet and insecure. The
second daughter, however, responsible student Bai Lin, might handle
herself better.
So it was decided that Bai Lin should go to Changshu, where an older
cousin was employed with her husband. At least there would be someone
to look out for her if things went badly.
Bai Lin wanted to stay home, but if she went to work in the city,
perhaps her younger siblings would have a chance to at least finish
middle school. Her dream to go to high school had been dashed years ago
when it was clear that the family could not afford it. She had no real
plan for her future.
"Who would want to marry a poor peasant girl with two younger sisters
and a younger brother to support?" she asked.
Changshu is a city of 1 million people. On its outskirts is a small
industrial suburb built on farming fields. There is no commercial
center, no high-rise buildings. At night it's dark along the roads
except for the bright fluorescent lights from small factory compounds.
These are mainly garmentmakers, along with a few medical instrument
companies. This is where Bai Lin found work.
Petite and dimpled, she is in her fourth year as a factory drone at
Changshu Medical Instruments Ltd. Day after day she sits quietly alone
in her factory's "clean room," covered head to toe in surgical garb,
carefully snipping and stacking pieces of threadlike rubber hose that
will become feed tubes and IV drips for hospitals in Switzerland,
France and other countries. An unpleasant odor of glue permeates the
room.
There is little escape from the drudgery. Bai Lin never ventures
outside the walls of the factory and knows little of the real world,
having visited no place beyond Two Dragons or Changshu. She has never
used the Internet. She doesn't own a cellular phone. She has seen
perhaps one or two Hollywood movies on television; she recalls seeing
"Titanic." She has never eaten at a McDonald's. In fact, she never has
gone to a restaurant in the factory town. She doesn't read newspapers.
Or magazines. There is no dating at the factory--there are few males
working there--so there is no chance to meet men.
She just works.
When work is over, Bai Lin walks the few yards to the factory
dormitory, a squalid line of concrete rooms that look like connected
sheds. They are dusty and foul-smelling. It is cold inside. The walls
are peeling. An unframed mirror sits on a bureau. Boxes and discarded
luggage are strewn about.
The only personal decor Bai Lin has added to her room is a photograph
of a pretty woman from a package of socks; she attached it to her bunk
bed. The woman on the package smiles out at a view that otherwise is
utterly depressing. Outside Bai Lin's door, in the concrete courtyard,
sits a jumble of discarded sinks and chairs.
When the factory owner wanders into Bai Lin's room, as if for the first
time, he acts embarrassed by what he sees and scolds her for not doing
more to tidy it.
"I'd like to build better housing, maybe with two stories," he offers,
but it doesn't seem likely.
Yet when Bai Lin's mother and father see photographs of their daughter
at work and in her dorm, nothing seems amiss. To them the factory looks
clean, and her dorm room seems a step up from home. At least there is a
concrete floor.
"The conditions seem pretty good," her mother says, satisfied.
Bai Lin makes life harder on herself by watching every penny. She
rarely buys clothes; her most expensive item is a $7.50 winter coat.
She will not eat in the company cafeteria because it charges 40 cents a
meal. She prefers to make her own rice and eat it in her room with some
vegetables. She doesn't buy meat; she considers it too expensive.
She gets about $12 a month for living expenses and $500 a year in
annual salary, paid in January just before the New Year's break. If she
tries to quit and go home before the end of the year, she risks not
getting paid at all. This is the system of migrant laborers in China.
They are trapped.
Missing home
When Bai Lin went home for the last Chinese New Year holiday, she
turned over her entire year's earnings to her father. About half went
to help pay for the wedding of her older sister, who subsequently left
Two Dragons for the first time and moved to the city with her husband.
The other half went to help pay for school fees for her two younger
sisters and youngest brother.
Bai loved being at home at New Year's, helping her mother keep house by
pumping well water to wash dishes, stoking the stove fire and chopping
vegetables for dinner. Yet her facial expression rarely seemed to
change. She looked worried, unable to hide her sadness at being home
for so short a time, but also feeling guilty that she could not earn
more for her family.
She returned in February to start another year at the factory.
If she could make one suggestion to the owner, it would be to put a hot
water dispenser in the clean room so workers could have tea. But he
frets so much about the cost of electricity that she doubts he would
agree. He already has tried to ban television from the dorm because of
the cost, but at least one of the girls has a small, illicit set.
The boss has problems of his own. Sales are booming--up 20 percent in
the past year--but the medical supply business is highly competitive
and he believes he needs to watch costs like a hawk.
He started work at the factory nearly 20 years ago as a painter when it
was a government-owned manufacturer of clocks and radios. It switched
product lines several times and eventually failed, allowing him to
invest in the factory and take it over as a private enterprise.
He got the deal because he was ambitious and studied management in
night school, but the fact that his father is a local Communist Party
chief certainly helped, he admits.
Perhaps in an attempt to rectify the incongruity of a party boss' son
going capitalist, local officials rewarded him with membership in the
party. Chinese citizens are not all members of the Communist Party.
Only about 6 percent have this exclusive distinction.
Today the government is even more actively recruiting entrepreneurs to
join the party as a means of modernizing the image of China's
leadership and keeping the party relevant by merging the identities of
communism and capitalism.
The prevailing philosophy is the statement widely attributed to Deng
Xiaoping when he was first trying to engineer China's shift from
socialism to modernity: "To get rich is glorious."
As Bai Lin sits there, keeping up her little responsibility on an
assembly line that employs several dozen women, there is little to
think about except how miserable it all seems.
"I just want to go home--the sooner the better," Bai Lin often says to
herself.
4. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0412280342dec28,1,7917030.story
PART 3 OF 3: The road to Double Happiness
While most Chinese migrants hope to land jobs as cogs in a factory,
several Bai family members embrace entrepreneurship as a way of
advancing
By Michael A. Lev
Tribune foreign correspondent
December 28, 2004
NANJING, China -- Early this year, when the wheat had yet to rise in
the fields of her hometown, Wang Run Chin was just another farmer's
wife. She was a member of the Bai family, living in a peasant village
called Two Dragons, and she had never left home.
A short time later she is a world away--in a city, with a new career.
Meet Wang Run Chin, office manager.
As she tidied her desk, Wang rearranged the plastic flowers in a vase
and answered the telephone. It was another customer on the line wanting
the services of her husband, Bai Li Yin, a newly minted independent
truck driver for the Double Happiness Moving Co. of Nanjing.
Wang spoke loudly over the noise of a passing vehicle because, flower
vase aside, these are less than glamorous surroundings. The couple live
and work at street level, in a small concrete storage garage on a busy
street in the fast-growing outskirts of this bustling metropolis of 7
million people.
The Bai couple have squeezed in a desk, a couch and a bed. During the
day they keep the garage door open, but at night they bring it down and
seal themselves inside the windowless room to protect against robbery.
In summer it is too hot and stuffy to get a decent night's sleep. When
winter arrives, they bundle up under a comforter while wearing three
layers of clothing to keep warm.
It is a makeshift office and a makeshift life, but what a change from
Two Dragons, their forgotten hamlet at the end of a dirt road, where
time is measured in terms of seasons, not a 2 p.m. deadline to deliver
a load of nails.
Longing for the quiet life
For Wang there was a moment between telephone calls to marvel at her
transformation from peasant woman to clerical worker. But she'd prefer
not to dwell on her situation. If this is what she must do to fulfill
the family's dream of moving off the land to the city, then fine. But
she prefers the quiet life of Two Dragons.
"My hope for this life is for my sons to go to college and get good
jobs," she said.
Wang doesn't find anything exotic about the city, and in fact she has
seen almost none of it. After four months she could not recall having
gone farther from the office than the outdoor food market a block away.
She can't stand the city noise, and she has new pressures now: The
monthly payments on the couple's new $12,000 blue flatbed truck.
She also is a little jealous that some members of the family haven't
been uprooted to this new and stressful existence and are still at home
in Two Dragons.
Wang's husband is the third brother in a family of five sons.
The oldest two are illiterate and remain tied to the land. But Bai Li
Yin and a younger brother have middle-school educations and are giving
up farming. The youngest brother, with a high-school education, is
furthest ahead: He is an assembly manager at an air conditioning
company in Shenzhen.
Wang pictures her sister-in-law, the wife of the second-oldest brother,
back in Two Dragons, playing mah-jongg, idling away her days. The fact
that "Old No. 2" is trapped, permanently poor, in Two Dragons gets
overlooked.
"They slaughtered 40 ducks for New Year's this year. We only
slaughtered four," Wang said, still using a peasant calculation of
wealth.
Earning freedom
Wang's husband, the No. 3 brother, has a completely different mind-set.
"The reason I left home is to make money--not enjoy life," he said. He
has been focused for years on getting off the farm, away from the
backbreaking work and poor standard of living. Spending his days in a
delivery truck and living in a garage may have its hardships, but it is
a step toward a real city life.
With his own business, he has earned freedom from the vagaries of the
season and won a feeling of independence unimaginable to previous
generations of his family. He conducts business where he chooses, not
bending over a field of mud. If he needs to meet a client, he can do so
at a small neighborhood restaurant. Paying someone else to cook was an
unattainable luxury in Two Dragons.
"I am never going to live on the farm again," he declared.
Bai got where he is because he has some talent and education, and
because China is changing. It still is an authoritarian country ruled
by a centralized Communist Party, but the philosophy of shared burdens
and shared wealth is dead. If anything, for members of the Bai family
the economic opportunities resemble those found in America at the turn
of the last century.
China has freewheeling capitalism now. It is a land of opportunity for
migrants who come not from the villages of Europe but the villages of
the Chinese landscape.
Many migrants fail, beaten down by a system that, also like the
industrialized nations of the late 19th Century, offers few
protections. There are no unions or easily obtainable health insurance,
and job safety regulations are lax. There is no independent judiciary
and no guarantees that wages will be paid. People work at their own
risk, but there are few limits to what they can achieve.
Most migrants consider themselves lucky to land jobs as cogs in the
wheels of a factory, to work amazingly hard and get paid enough to
finance a better life for themselves and their families back home on
the farm. Building a house and affording a wife are the goals of most
young men who come to the city.
In that respect, the Bai family is extraordinary. Its members see
themselves as entrepreneurs. When he still was a farmer, the third Bai
brother started a sideline business as a peanut wholesaler. That gave
him the confidence and experience he needed for his big plan.
Bai began his trucking venture through a family connection. Exchanging
favors with a family member or friend--the practice is called
guanxi--is a deep-rooted social and economic practice in China. People
from the same clan or village or school can be counted on for support.
A model for success
Help for Bai came from a first cousin in Two Dragons who started the
Double Happiness Moving Co. in Nanjing 10 years ago. Offering
franchises in exchange for a monthly fee, his company provides a
business blueprint to anyone who wants to buy a truck.
The owner built his business by recruiting other Bai clan members from
around Two Dragons. He could trust them, and if anyone reneged on a
loan he could track them down.
Today the cousin is not only the most successful businessman in the
clan, he is the toast of Two Dragons. The Communist Party asked him to
join several years ago and gave him an award for being a "Model Wealthy
Migrant." The cousin owns three apartments in Nanjing, and a local
television station in his home county is planning to produce a news
profile on him.
When Bai got his truck it still was winter and there was nothing to do
around Two Dragons, so he invited his second-youngest brother and a
brother-in-law to come along and help him get off the ground. They
enjoyed a roaring start in a roaring economy, moving furniture and
delivering motorcycle parts, dishwashers and whatever else needed
hauling in Nanjing. Preholiday business was particularly good; they
charged premium rates and worked 16-hour days in the weeks leading up
to Chinese New Year last February.
Then, in the middle of the night on New Year's Eve, they made their
triumphant return to Two Dragons.
For the brother-in-law, Do Gua Ren, who never had left the village
before, the completion of his first big adventure almost was too much.
It was bitter cold when he arrived at the house of the second-oldest
brother. The only bit of warmth in the hovel was provided by a tiny
charcoal stove used to keep the teakettle hot.
Once the commotion of their homecoming was over, Do could not settle
down. He paced in the dark of the bedraggled farmhouse, smoking
cigarettes and repeating for family members the tales he had read in
the Nanjing newspapers. Do had never had a chance to see a newspaper
regularly before, and he retold in rapid fashion some of the anecdotes
he had collected as if he were honing a stand-up comedy act.
"There was a cop who was shaking down hookers," he related. "And there
was a Canadian guy who got drunk and got into a fight with a Chinese
guy on the street. The Canadian guy beat up the Chinese guy. Imagine
that, a foreigner beating up a Chinese!"
Sea change in Two Dragons
The Chinese New Year of 2004 represented a watershed in the history of
the Bai family of Two Dragons. It was the dividing line between a
family experimenting with life off the farm and one committed to the
exodus.
With the third brother's successful entry into trucking and the
youngest brother working in Shenzhen, the second-youngest brother was
about to go to driving school and then buy his own Double Happiness
truck. The brother-in-law, Do, also was ready to buy, as was a nephew.
Even the grandparents were on the move. The brothers' parents were off
to Shenzhen to live for a time with the youngest brother, his wife and
newborn baby.
Life never was like this before. Generations had passed without one
member of the family ever leaving Two Dragons.
Now, on an evening not long ago, members of the Bai clan working out of
Nanjing meet up at the storage garage.
The big blue Double Happiness truck owned by the third brother is
parked out front. Next to it is the newly purchased truck of Bai's
nephew, the son of the oldest brother. Another truck, owned by Do the
brother-in-law, is on the road doing a job in Shanghai.
It becomes an almost ostentatious show of achievement when another clan
member arrives driving a shiny red South Korean compact car. He is a
cousin who got his start earlier in the city and works for an air
conditioner factory in Nanjing, a competitor to the one in Shenzhen
where the youngest brother works.
When the group is assembled, there is only one obvious topic of
discussion: how far the Bai clan has come and how far they will go.
The cousin already is looking ahead. A life in the factories would not
be good enough for the next generation, he declares. He dreams of
sending his child to one of the best universities in China, or even
abroad to the United States or England.
"In China, if you work hard, you can become rich," says the cousin. "At
our company the boss is always trying to tell us: Life is what you make
of it."
Everyone in the clan says they hope to gather for a 2005 Chinese New
Year's celebration at home in Two Dragons, where some in the family
think it will be an auspicious time to erect a family monument.
It will be a lasting symbol to declare both the family's attachment to
its land and its achievements in escaping from it.
5. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.bxa.doc.gov/News/2004/IndiaNov19.htm
For Immediate Release: Nov 19, 2004
Contact - BIS Public Affairs 202-482-2721
United States and India Hold Talks
on Stimulating High-Technology Commerce
Washington, D.C. - Under Secretary of Commerce Kenneth I. Juster said
today that significant progress has been made on developing a work plan
to expand high-technology trade between the United States and India.
The U.S.-India High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG) co-chaired by
Juster and Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran met today to discuss
practical steps to reduce the barriers to bilateral high-technology
while enhancing the security of such trade.
"Todays meeting built on the progress that has been made in
increasing U.S.-India high-technology trade since the HTCG was
established two years ago. The HTCG has proven to be a very effective
forum through which to reduce barriers to bilateral high-technology
trade while safeguarding trade in sensitive items," said Juster. "We
look forward to further meetings of the HTCG in 2005."
Since the establishment of the HTCG, high-technology trade between the
United States and India, including licensed trade in dual-use items,
has grown substantially. In Fiscal Year 2004, the Commerce Department
received more than twice as many export license applications as in
2002, and the approval rate increased from 84 percent to 90 percent.
The Commerce Department approved 912 applications, and the overall
value of licensed dual-use exports from the United States to India
exceeded $90 million. This is more than triple the value of such
exports just two years earlier. In addition, the Commerce Department
has posted a representative at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to further
facilitate U.S.-India high-technology trade.
Todays meeting included a break-out session on trade facilitation,
which focused on specific, near-term steps the two governments could
take to reduce the tariff and non-tariff barriers to bilateral trade.
Another session on strategic trade focused on ways to enhance the
security of bilateral high-technology trade. During todays HTCG
meeting, the two governments reviewed progress on a previous action
plan for expanding high-technology trade, and developed new action
items. These new action items include continuing high-level dialogue on
data privacy issues, supporting an industry-sponsored forum on
Indias data privacy regime, hosting export promotion events in
India, exchanging information to expedite end-use visits, and
organizing an export control outreach seminar in India in 2005.
Todays meeting of U.S. and Indian government representatives
followed yesterdays public-private forum held at the Commerce
Department under the auspices of the HTCG. The forum focused on defense
trade, data privacy, and export licensing. During yesterdays forum,
industry representatives developed recommendations for the two
governments on defense technology and data privacy issues, which were
reviewed during the government meetings today.
In addition, as a follow-up to the industry discussions, the U.S.-India
Business Council will be leading a delegation of U.S. defense firms to
the Aero India 2005 Conference on February 7-9, 2005 in Bangalore,
India and a delegation of U.S. life sciences firms to the Biotech India
2005 Conference on February 9-12, 2005 in New Delhi, India.
6. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1221-10.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 21, 2004
11:20 AM
CONTACT: Public Citizen
Main Office: 202-588-1000
FTAA Negotiations Miss Jan. 1, 2005, Completion Deadline; Free Trade
Theory Runs Aground on Reality of NAFTAs Harsh Results
Global Justice Activists Celebrate New Year with FTAA Talks Dead in
Water and CAFTA Facing Congressional Defeat
WASHINGTON -- December 21 -- With talks to establish a Free Trade Area
of the Americas (FTAA) dead for more than a year, the anticipated
passing of the Jan 1, 2005, deadline for negotiating a pact marks the
end of corporate globalizations decade-long Shermans March across
the hemisphere, Public Citizen said today.
The sweeping proposal for the FTAA, dubbed "NAFTA on Steroids," would
have extended NAFTA to 31 more countries in the hemisphere. It has met
increasing resistance since negotiations began in 1994, with talks in
crisis since a 2002 FTAA Ministerial in Quito, Ecuador. At an FTAA
Ministerial in Miami last year, proponents of a NAFTA expansion were
forced to dramatically scale back the scope of the proposed agreement
to avoid total implosion of the negotiations. Although the outcome of
the Miami summit cast serious doubt on the FTAAs future, the Bush
administration clung to the notion that the Jan. 1, 2005, FTAA deadline
could be met.
"The administration must face the fact that NAFTA was a radical
experiment that failed," said Lori Wallach, director of Public
Citizens Global Trade Watch. "Citizens and legislators in the United
States, Latin America and the Caribbean have seen NAFTAs result in
the United States, Canada and Mexico, and have said no to the
expansion of these policies, which harm workers, threaten our
environment and undermine our democracy."
NAFTAs harsh track record, combined with the rise of massive
opposition movements in Latin America and the election of critics of
unfettered corporate globalization in many of the 31 countries, point
to the reality that this agreement, envisioned to be the crowning glory
of a NAFTA-based trade policy, may never see the light of day.
The failure to meet the January deadline is just the latest blow to the
Bush administrations attempts to expand the NAFTA model. The Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was signed in May 2004; however,
CAFTA remains in limbo, with a majority in the U.S. House of
Representatives opposing the agreement.
"NAFTA, CAFTA and the FTAA embody a failed model of corporate
globalization that has been widely rejected," Wallach said. "We should
look to alternative trade rules that lift standards of living and
environmental and consumer protections throughout the hemisphere. It is
time for the administration to admit that NAFTA expansion is a
non-starter - in this case, if at first you dont succeed, its
time to try something different."
7. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/958289.cms
Will India take over the world?
GOTHAM CHOPRA
[ TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2004 02:43:08 PM ]
Sign into earnIndiatimes points
Which has been the West's biggest export in the last 50 years? Its
culture or its arms? Which has been more powerful? It's easy to make a
solid argument either way. Was it Reagan's stubbornness that tore down
the Berlin Wall and Soviet-style communism or was it the infiltration
of Marlboro cigarettes, Levis jeans, and American-style soap operas
into the streets of Moscow? How about the rise of Islamists? Is it
backlash against American political self-interest and the vast
underground arms trade regulated by the CIA or against boobs, Baywatch
and Barbie?
It's a hard argument to win either way. But let's leave the past behind
for a moment and look into the future. What will be the most powerful
weapon of the future? War, as we see it, is less and less fought on the
battlefield. Nowadays wars are waged with high-tech weapons, launched
from hundreds and thousands of miles away, dropped with precision-point
accuracy on unsuspecting so-called villains during dull moments (those
caught in the fray are dismissed as "collateral damage").
Today, wars are like video games, filled with "shock and awe", casualty
counts and jingoistic slogans and anthems resembling less the old
ravages of war and more the extravagant creations of today's best film
directors.
Ah yes - the collision of firefights and film studios, power struggles
and premieres. Indeed, today all things are colliding. Our cultural
exports are indeed becoming our greatest weapons in shaping the hearts
and minds of people around the world (don't be fooled though, many of
those hearts and minds are being shaped in opposition to our apparent
"modernity").
But my assumption is that military mite will increasingly become
irrelevant. The wars of the future will be waged through the invisible
worlds of satellite TV, the internet, and digital technology. Whose
cultural heroes and villains, shaped on movies sets, in edit rooms and
animation houses will emerge supreme? That may indeed determine the
next Global Superpower.
The question then is: Will the West once again dominate this era? Or,
will Asia - and India in particular - rise to the challenge? Will a
culture that has been around for thousands of years, that is home to
the most cultural diverse nation in the world, the soon-to-be most
populace place on planet Earth, and the source of the most successful
minority group to have proliferated around the world into the "South
Asian Diaspora," will WE take hold?
I hope so.
But only if we embrace the qualities that make our culture so
powerfully dynamic - it's colour, pageantry, rich history, spiritual
legacy, religious, cultural, and racial diversity and tolerance while
acknowledging and always addressing the shadow of our own inequities
(religious polarity, social delineation, corruption, and environmental
to name a few) for they will never fully go away.
I, for one, am excited about the opportunity that lies ahead, to be a
part of the army that is already marching. For it is a challenge and a
privilege to be working along the "cross-over" frontier. Not Hollywood
... not Bollywood ... but a landscape that fuses both traditions and
forges a bold, new complexion for a world in dire need of new
direction.
It's not easy. It requires our collective effort and support. It
requires creativity, imagination, and as always, financial backing!
And it's already happening. Just remember, as they say, Rome...I mean
Rajasthan...wasn't built in a day.
8. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/977577.cms
US visas dry up for healthcare pros
URMI A GOSWAMI
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JANUARY 01, 2005 12:59:32 AM]
Sign into earnIndiatimes points
NEW DELHI: January 1, 05 doesnt bring good news for Indians
applying for employment-based (EB3) immigrant visas to the US.
And the news is especially bad for nurses and other healthcare
professionals who have been enjoying fast-track access to the coveted
Green Card .
India, along with China and the Philippines have utilised their share
of EB3 visas. Nationals from these countries, who have a labour
certification in the EB3 category filed on or after January 1, 02,
will not be permitted to file the adjustment of status (I-485)
application, or have a consular interview for an immigrant visa , until
the numbers move beyond this priority date (January 1, 02).
Priority dates determine when a foreign national can file the final
stage of the application for the Green Card, known as the adjustment of
status or I-485 application.
While the EB3 category is open to professional and skilled workers as
well, it has been extremely popular with healthcare workers.
For nurses, it was a fast-track to a Green Card, instead of the longer
route of a temporary H visa and then an adjustment of status. Given
that a majority of foreign nurses are from the Philippines and India,
the retrogression will only intensify the shortage of nurses in US.
This change will now not allow nurses to wait and work in US while
their status is changed. For foreign nurses, it could mean a long wait.
Projections show that US could face a shortage of 275,000 nurses by
10.
A 03 study found that the number of foreign born nurses in US
increased at an average of 6% between 94 and 01 while the rate
went up to 14% between 01 and 02.
While the backlog will affect Indian, Chinese and Filipino nationals,
experts say that it will extend to all other nationalities within a few
months.
For the 109th Congress this is an issue to address. Immigration experts
suggest that a remedy would be to extend the "borrowing" provision in
the AC21 immigration law, which allowed the US State Department to
utilise unused Green Card numbers from 99 and 00.
"Congress could extend that provision and free up enough visas to make
this problem go away. These are Green Card slots that Congress
allocated already and a provision like this is not the same as raising
the green card caps."
www.ZaZona.com
Support this Newsletter and ZaZona.com by donating:
www.zazona.com/Donations.htm
To Subscribe, Unsubscribe or to view the Archive go to:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/JobDestructionNews.htm
Back to archives