CCZ-8 • • MAY 29, 2013 ICWA Letters Institute of Current World Affairs Tale from Two Rivers

By Chi-Chi Zhang

CHONGQING, China – To en- housing projects. As expected, ter Liangjiang New in local officials are eager to tout northern , is to take their accomplishments about a peek into China’s future. creating jobs and providing The district was established low-income housing to factory in 2010 and is now home to workers. I met deputy director nearly three million residents, Du Shulin of the Liangjiang most of them migrant work- propaganda (public relations) ers. They contributed to the office on a drizzly May morn- district’s economic output of ing in his downtown Chongq- US$26 billion in 2012, which ing office. He was eager to talk is estimated to reach US$100 and apologized for the terrible billion by 2020 according to weather as if he were respon- the Liangjiang government. sible. “Don’t go to Liangjiang All thanks to multinational today. You should visit when giants like Ford, Microsoft the sun is out when it is much and Honeywell, Liangjiang is prettier,” he said. also fast becoming a research Liangjiang has invested billions of dollars in public housing and development hub along projects for resettled farmers and young workers. Teacher Du, or Du laoshi, with being home to factories as he liked to be addressed, sat manufacturing goods to fuel the country’s growing domes- on the edge of his leather office chair as he waved his arms tic demand. The district is now home to a new generation of around wildly while rattling off facts about Liangjiang. The migrants looking and asking for more than just a paycheck. region spans more than 1,200 square kilometers of develop- ment area and is located north of the Yangtze River and east Liangjiang is an early illustration of the economic growth of the Jialing River, hence its name which translates into “two challenges that China will face over the next two decades. Is- rivers.” Liangjiang is the only national development area in sues such as a looming labor shortage and drought of skilled inland China and the third official new development area ap- workers play a significant role in China’s domestic growth proved by Beijing after ’s New Area and and foreign investment in China’s manufacturing sector. ’s New Area. As part of the region’s 2020 de- Already, workers are becoming increasingly aware of their velopment plan, over the next seven years Liangjiang will rights, unhappy with poor working conditions and gaining be home to six million residents, mostly those from outside more clout against employers. What is happening in Liangji- of Chongqing. He added that the district saw hundreds of ang is just a small slice of the labor issues facing China today. thousands of new residents each year, flooding in from rural areas for job opportunities—hence the 2020 projection. Lianjiang’s phenomenal growth over the past three years has been driven by an onslaught of international investment, “Liangjiang New District is the future of Chongqing. as a result of substantial tax breaks and government initia- The rural residents of this area never imagined in their life- tives such as eco-friendly waste treatment plants and public time, their community would see this type of development.

Based in southwestern China, ICWA Fellow Chi-Chi Zhang is working in an urban- izing landscape impacted by incredible social change, mass migration, and a growing yet potentially problematic economy. She will be writing about China’s next generation and its role in the country’s political, economic and social development. As a producer The Information contained in this publication may not for CNN in Beijing, Chi-Chi covered ethnic dilution in Inner Mongolia, traveled to the be reprinted or republished without the express written North Korean border for Kim Jong-il’s death and documented Tibetan unrest in Sichuan consent of the Institute of Current World Affairs. Province. She previously worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press in Beijing. ©2013 Institute of Current World Affairs, The Crane-Rogers Foundation Technical workers manufacturing brake pads at the Honeywell plant in Liangjiang

These changes have benefitted residents greatly. We now training. “In Shanghai and Guangzhou, it may be easier to account for 15 percent of Chongqing’s economic output,” find qualified employees for technical jobs, but we have a he said without skipping a beat. Occasionally, Teacher Du hard time attracting candidates inland,” said Fortier. “As would stop to take a breath while wiping beads of sweat a result, we hire candidates with potential who may not off his receding hairline. I was pleasantly surprised by his have prior automotive experience in pad manufacturing jovial manner, which made our conversation flow with and train them up to speed.” ease, unlike the rehearsed Chinese official spiel I’ve had to swallow as a journalist in the past. Teacher Du said the lo- Technical workers are not the only ones in demand. cal government hopes Liangjiang’s job opportunities and Laborers and factory workers are also becoming more public housing projects are enough to attract migrants in- wary of their rights and flocking to jobs that not only pay land amid a projected national labor shortage. well, but also offer growth opportunities. Beyond univer- sity graduates, even high school and vocational school Based on China’s fertility rate and population growth graduates as said below, are seeking jobs with upward statistics, China is expected to experience a labor short- mobility—be it a factory assembly line or supermarket age by 2020, according the International Monetary Fund.1 job. While Ford may be introducing their latest factory in By 2025, the country could face a shortage of 28 million Chongqing equipped with air conditioning in the summer workers. In sectors such as research and development and and a cafeteria with dozens of dishes to choose from for technical jobs, attractive candidates can be hard to come each meal, Chinese workers now want and expect more by, according to Patrice Fortier, a plant manager I talked to from their employers. at the Honeywell brake pad factory in Liangjiang. Fortier, a stout French native in his 40s, led me around the factory Today, we see a new generation of young workers that houses about 40 engineers in the research and devel- emerging: some have a college degree while others are high opment center, many whom are shipped off to Europe for school or vocational school graduates. Most are children

1 Mitali Das and Papa N’Diaye, “Chronicle of a Decline Foretold: Has China Reached the Lewis Turning Point?” IMF Working Pa- per, Jan. 2013, http://bit.ly/14tzpNa 2 CCZ-8 Assembly line in Ford’s Liangjiang “Chongqing 2” plant, which carries out the same processes and automation as other Ford factories around the world. of migrant workers—a term translated from the Chinese cal officials have promised multinationals that there will words “nong min gong”or “farmers turned workers.” Un- be enough qualified workers for their jobs, but companies like their parents, these young people have never worked like Foxconn and HP have resorted to contracts with local on a farm. They’re a generation that has been raised with vocational schools to provide temporary workers who are more information than ever thanks to technology and students to meet their supply demands. Students at local has witnessed uninterrupted economic prosperity. As a vocational schools are required to complete a one summer result, referring to young workers as “migrant workers” or year-long “internship” to graduate with an undergrad- has become outdated. Academics have labeled the new uate degree. Those who are unable to find internships on generation as “second generation workers” or “technical their own are assigned an assembly line job at Foxconn or workers.” Now, these young people in their 20s and early a nearby factory. For companies like Ford and Honeywell, 30s are the future of China’s workforce. the challenge has been to hire reliable employees who want to stay. And many young employees are finding it Sitting on what was rice paddies less than a year ago difficult to see a future on a factory assembly line. is the construction site of Ford’s $600 million transmission and engine manufacturing plant in Liangjiang’s industrial Ford factory worker Sun Jinshan identifies himself as zone. The completion of the “Chongqing 3” plant in June, a second-generation worker. The 25-year-old has never will make Liangjiang Ford’s largest global manufacturing plowed a field or planted a seed in his life. Even though location outside of its Dearborn Michigan headquarters. he only has a vocational education, it was more school- With this new endeavor, Ford will also create thousands ing than his elementary-educated parents could ever af- of new jobs, hoping to attract second-generation workers ford. His education and quick learning abilities were good from across China. Ford is one of dozens of multinational enough to land him a job on Ford’s assembly line at the companies in the region, including Microsoft,2 which is “Chongqing 2” car assembly plant nearly five years ago. planning to a build a US$200 million IT training and re- search and development center in the coming years. The I met Sun while touring the “Chongqing 2” plant Chongqing government has actively lobbied for foreign during Ford’s media blitz ahead of Shanghai Auto Week investment over the past decade. As part of the plan, lo- and the grand opening of “Chongqing 3.” Ford’s PR team

2 Zhang Yi, “Liangjiang New Area to see world top-end IT technical educational project,” Chongqing News, Jun. 18, 2012, http:// bit.ly/18AcCB8 © INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS 3 raved about bonuses, ten-minute breaks every few hours, free buses and air conditioned rooms for all of their local employees, but not once did I see an employee smile. Sun caught my eye because as someone who was the last per- son on the assembly line, he looked incredibly stressed. Sun’s movements were swift as he tested the Ford Es- cape’s SUV engine, windshield wipers, and lights—one after another. His job was simple, but mundane. His shift was one of two 10-hour shifts a day, with a new car driven off the lot every ten seconds totaling more than 1,000 Ford cars daily.

“I’m stressed because every ten seconds, I have to drive a car off the line. If I don’t move quickly enough, then we won’t meet our targets,” said Sun, chewing on a spicy piece of leftover fish as we chatted in his kitchen. I watched him hungrily devour rice with spoonfuls of chili oil that the fish dish, now mostly bones, was drowned in. He assured me he ate better meals normally, as if he were embarrassed by the meal.

At home about an hour away from the Ford factory, Sun lives with four single men who also work in automotive factories, two of whom sleep in one room together to save money. Their landlord split an 800 square-foot apartment into four rooms, charging each person 500 yuan (US$80) a month to share one bathroom and a kitchen. Cigarette butts, dirty tissues and dust-caked grease cover the com- mon areas. On Sun’s door, a rusty padlock keeps intruders Sun at work in the Ford factory parking lot. from entering and taking his most prized possessions—a

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4 CCZ-8 laptop and a US$90 MP3 of personal interest in the topic of urbanization. player. With little privacy or time for a social life, it’s “So you chose to be poor?” he asked. not surprising that Sun “Yeah, I guess,” I said. has no girlfriend. During “Well, at least you had a choice,” he said and contin- a good month, he works ued eating. ten hours a day, six days a week earning about ¥3,000 With a diligent work ethic, handsome smile and tall (US$490) a month. 5’10” frame, Sun towers over his colleagues and looks like a natural leader who could have garnered their re- Sun grew up in the spect long ago. But hard work in China only goes so far. western Chongqing town Ford had provided Sun with a stable job and health in- of Xiyong, which was once surance, but no upward mobility even after five years. farmland, but’s now also Sun said he had not developed enough guanxi or “cam- converted into a massive raderie” with his bosses, which meant he had not show- industrial park near Chong- A red and gold poster with the ered them with adequate presents on special occasions or qing University, dotted word “wealth” hangs on Sun’s treated them to enough dinners for him to deserve any with factories manufactur- door for good luck. kind of upward mobility. I told him that health insurance ing auto parts and electri- and retirement plan were good perks, too—to which he cal appliances. Sun struck me as smart and capable, so it responded, “If I die working so hard to support a family, was unsurprising that he saw his future as more than an then what’s the point?” As I was leaving his house, Sun assembly-line worker. Sun was hired at Ford partly because asked me to put in a good word with the Ford folks to he had worked one year at an auto-parts factory. He learned boost his guanxi status. quickly as Ford trained him to work on three different as- sembly lines over the course of five years. Withoutguanxi or The life Sun wants isn’t a pipe dream. It’s in his face a formal college education, Sun felt that he was passed over every day. From the shiny cars he drives off the lot to the several times for a promotion. He says he’s ready to move rich Chinese he reads about in the papers, a prosperous on, but doesn’t have the time to look for a new job, much life of plenty and excess is no longer a one-in-a-million less time to sleep. With commuting time, Sun arrives home story in China. At night, Sun dreams of owning such by bus at about 8:00 p.m. each day and gets up at 6:00 a.m. a car; each costs at least US$20,000, equivalent to more in the morning to do it all over again. than three years of his salary. Sun’s parents couldn’t even dream of owning a home, a car, and paying for a college On Sundays, he’s often too tired to leave the house education. But for Sun, those aspirations, including a life and tries to catch up on sleep. I was just grateful that he where quality is as important as material possession, are a agreed to give me a portion of his precious Sunday off to daily reminder of the rut that a supposedly desirable job better get to know him. He found it difficult to grasp why at a fancy multinational company has placed him in. Sun I had decided to do what I do. I explained that I had quit a is China’s modern day Sisyphus, only the hill that was a stable job in Beijing to conduct research in Chongqing out farm to his parents is now a factory for him. o

(Endnotes) 1 Mitali Das and Papa N’Diaye, “Chronicle of a Decline Foretold: Has China Reached the Lewis Turn- ing Point?” IMF Working Paper, Jan. 2013, http://bit. ly/14tzpNa Sun getting ready 2 Zhang Yi, “Liangjiang New Area to see world to drive another top-end IT technical educational project,” Chongqing Ford off the lot, News, Jun. 18, 2012, http://bit.ly/18AcCB8 one of about 500 cars he tests in per day.

© INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS 5 6 CCZ-8 © INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS 7 2013 Since 1925 the Institute of ­Current FELLOWS World Affairs (the Hannah Armstrong (2012-2014) W. AFRICA Crane-Rogers Foun- dation) has provided Topic: State-building and security in the Sahel Region long-term fellowships to enable outstanding Hannah is a recent graduate of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies with an M.A. Distinction in International Studies and Diplomacy. She previously worked as a freelance foreign correspondent, reporting on young women and politics, economic development, and security from Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, and Haiti. Her work has appeared men to live outside in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, the Christian Science Monitor, and Monocle Magazine, among others. Fluent in the United States and French and proficient in Moroccan Colloquial and Modern Standard Arabic, she served as a Fulbright Scholar in write about inter- Morocco, where she researched tensions between Islamist feminism and liberal feminism in civil society. She holds a B.A. in Political Philosophy from New College of Florida. national areas and issues. An exempt Amelia Frank-Vitale (2012-2014) MEXICO operating foundation endowed by the late Topic: Unauthorized migrants en route Charles R. Crane, Amelia is looking at the intersections among the war on drugs, organized crime groups, party politics, and the the Institute is also varieties of violence faced by Central American migrants who are passing through Mexico in hopes of reaching supported by contri- the United States. Amelia graduated from Yale in 2005 with a degree in Anthropology. A former union organizer, butions from like- she completed a master’s degree in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs at American University in 2011. minded individuals and foundations. Malia Politzer (2013 - 2015) INDIA Topic: Internal and international migration trends, remittances, citizenship issues and identity in India.

Formerly a writer for Mint, an Indian business and economics news daily paper, Malia wrote on a variety of social ICWA Letters(ISSN 1083- issues including disability issues, internal migration, gender, social entrepreneurship and development trends. As 4265) are published by the a fellow at the Village Voice, she wrote primarily about immigration. She has won multiple awards for her reporting Institute of Current World and published articles in the Wall Street Journal Asia, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy Magazine, Reason Affairs Inc., a 501(c)(3) ex- Magazine, and Migration Policy Institute’s monthly magazine The Source. She has also reported from China, the empt operating foundation US-Mexico border and South Korea, and speaks fluent Spanish, conversational Mandarin, and working on learning incorporated in New York Hindi. Malia holds an M.S. in multimedia and investigative journalism from Columbia University Graduate School State with offices located of Journalism, where she was a Stabile Fellow, and a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Hampshire College. at 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite 615, Washington, Shannon Sims (2012-2014) BRAZIL DC 20036. The letters are provided free of charge to Topic: Stakerholder involvement in the governance of South Atlantic Coastal Forest, the Mata Atlantica members of ICWA and are available to libraries and Shannon is a 2011 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law. Shannon holds a B.A. in International professional researchers on Relations with Politics concentration from Pomona College in 2005 and attended Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey with University of the Aegean, Mytiline, Greece, in 2004. Following the BP Oil Spill in April our web site. 2010, she was nominated for an environmental law internship with the United States Coast Guard District 8 Legal Division in New Orleans, where she helped draft unique legal regulations defining the role of the Coast CONTACT: Guard during a drilling moratorium. In 2009, through the Rapoport Fellowship from the Rapoport Center Phone: (202) 364-4068 for International Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law, Shannon completed a Fax: (202) 364-0498 legal clerkship with the Attorney General’s Office of the Ministry of the Environment of Brazil (IBAMA). She E-mail: [email protected] researched concessions management in environmentally protected areas along the coast, and documented Website: www.icwa.org small Brazilian fishing communities. STAFF: Executive Director: Chi-Chi Zhang (2012-2014) CHINA Steven Butler Topic: China’s next generation and its role in the country’s political, economic and social development. Program & Publications Manager: Ellen Kozak Based in southwestern China, Chi-Chi will be working in an urbanizing landscape impacted by incredible Program Assistant: social change, mass migration, and a growing yet potentially problematic economy. As a producer for CNN in Stephanie Creed Beijing, Chi-Chi covered ethnic dilution in Inner Mongolia, traveled to the North Korean border for Kim Jong-il’s death and documented Tibetan unrest in Sichuan Province. She previously worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press in Beijing, covering events such as the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Xinjiang © 2013 Institute of riots and China’s 60th anniversary. A Utah native who moved back to China in 2005, she has also lived in Hong ­Current World Affairs, The Kong and Shanghai. Follow her on Twitter @chi2zhang. Crane-Rogers Foundation