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China's Boomtowns
JUNE 2007
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China's Boomtowns
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By Peter Hessler
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Photographs by Mark Leong
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On paper, it looked untenable, but the Chinese economic and social environment is unlike anything else in the world. Real estate laws are skewed in the government's favor, and migration and the export economy create a constant demand for expanding cities. After the hard times of the 20th century, the average citizen is willing to tolerate unfairness as long as his living standard improves. In Jiangbin, I met Zhang Qiaoping, whose family had formerly farmed one-third of an acre (0.13 hectare) on the site. The government paid him $15,000 for a plot of land that was worth at least $200,000. Zhang wasn't happy, but he hadn't protested; instead, he invested in a small shop next to the site. Most customers were construction workers. There wasn't much money trickling down to the lowest levels, but Zhang had tapped into enough to support his family.
Some peasants even made it to the top. Yintai is owned by the Ji family, whose patriarch had been a farmer before engaging in small-scale construction work in the 1980s. Eventually, he expanded into real estate, and now his three sons help manage the company. I met the youngest, Ji Shengjun, at the nightclub he owns. Flanked by his bodyguard, the 26-year-old was drinking Matisse scotch mixed with green tea, and listening patiently to the entreaties of a pretty young woman. Ji wore Prada trousers and a Versace shirt; his Piaget watch had cost $10,000. He told me that Yintai expected to profit 19 million dollars from Jiangbin. The apartment complex would feature a musical fountain bigger than a football field. The pretty young woman was begging Ji to help her acquire a visa to Portugal.
a negotiated child
Much of China's economy depends on peasants who have left the land, and that was also true at the Yashun factory. Boss Wang and Boss Gao come from rice-growing families; Mechanic Luo was born on a cotton plot. A former orange grower worked the metal punch machine, and the chemist had grown up with tea, tobacco, and peanuts. The assembly-line women knew wheat and soybeans. The accountant came from pear country. Despite their varied rural backgrounds, now everybody concentrated on the production of exactly two things: underwire and bra rings that weigh half a gram each.
Even the bosses were willing to work like peasants—every day, the men spent long hours on the factory floor. Each had invested his life savings in the business—cash—and only Boss Gao had borrowed a little from the bank. There was no management board, no investment schedule, no business plan. They began production without a single guaranteed customer. Throughout March and April, Boss Wang traveled to bra assembly plants, bearing gifts: Chunghwa cigarettes, Wuliangye alcohol, yellow croaker fish (a Wenzhou favorite). But potential customers were slow to make orders, and by summer the factory had over one million bra rings in storage. They laid off most unskilled workers and slashed the technicians' salaries in half.
Initially, the bosses had moved with remarkable speed, but now they paid for the lack of a system. Such institutional weaknesses are becoming more apparent in Chinese businesses because of the increasingly competitive environment. And the nation's next desired economic stage—innovative products and the creation of international brands—will require more creativity and logical organization.
At Yashun, only Boss Gao had as much as a trade-school education, and Mechanic Luo, the most important employee, hadn't finished elementary school. When he began working full-time at the age of 14, he was nearly illiterate, but he enrolled in night classes in Shenzhen. Such courses are common in Chinese boomtowns, and Luo eventually received his high school certification. He also acquired technical skills that allowed him to work with the Machine, and over the years he had been poached three times from bra-ring jobs. Along the way, his salary had risen to $760 a month, a high wage in China. As is common in the cutthroat factory world, he left every job without notice. Each time, he simply asked for a few days' vacation, changed his cell phone number, and never returned.
When Yashun struggled, the bosses cut Mechanic Luo's salary in half, and then they stopped paying him at all. Perversely, this reflected his value—he was the only person who understood the Machine. During a crisis, small Chinese factories sometimes withhold salaries, because workers won't leave when they're owed money. Everything came to a head in July, when Mechanic Luo's wife was about to give birth. She was in his hometown in Hubei Province, and he told me that this would be their second child.
The bosses refused to grant leave. On July 27, the baby was delivered by C-section, and Mechanic Luo told the bosses that he absolutely needed to return, to help his wife recover from surgery. Finally, they agreed, but they balked on paying the back salary. That evening, when I took Mechanic Luo out for a celebratory dinner, negotiations were still in progress. In the end, the bosses paid one-third of what they owed him, and he promised to return within a week.
Later, the mother and baby traveled 21 hours by bus to Lishui. They shared the factory dorm room with Mechanic Luo, who proudly introduced me. I asked how the child's brother was doing; I assumed he was still in the village with his grandparents. But the man's face fell, and I feared that something terrible had happened.
"This is actually our first child," he said, dropping his voice. "When Boss Wang and Boss Gao hired me, I told them I already had a son, so I could ask for a higher salary. I didn't want to lie to you, but they were around when we were talking."
After two months, his wife took the baby back to her home province of Guizhou. At the Guiyang rail station, two women approached and offered her a ride. They led her to a minivan that contained two men. After they left the city, she noticed a strong chemical smell and felt disoriented. The next thing she knew, they had robbed her of $120 in cash, her cell phone, and her earrings. Afterward, the baby was unusually sleepy, and the mother called Mechanic Luo in a panic. He told her to wash the child immediately. Since then, the baby had seemed healthy. Not yet four months old, he'd lived in a factory, served as a pawn in salary negotiations, and been drugged and robbed. Mechanic Luo had named him Wen, "cultured," because he dreamed of his son becoming an educated man.
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