Tale from Two Rivers
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CCZ-8 • CHINA • 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 District in local officials are eager to tout northern Chongqing, 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 Shanghai’s Pudong New Area and and foreign investment in China’s manufacturing sector. Tianjin’s Binhai 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.