Fragmented Production
On the Dehumanization of Factory Workers in China
Since the 1980s, China's embrace of capitalism and mass production has been a turning point in its economic evolution. Coupled with globalization and technological advancement, China's ability to produce mass quantities of products through cheap labor made it a global economic power. International corporations shifted manufacturing operations to China, lured by rapid production methods and cost efficiency. Western powers capitalized on China's burgeoning industrial infrastructure and abundant labor force. The influx of foreign investment fueled mass production growth, enabling an unprecedented proliferation of consumer goods. The rise of the internet further accelerated this trend by facilitating advertising on a global scale. Platforms like TikTok emerged as international arbiters, shaping consumer preferences and driving demand. The relatively recent liberalization of the Chinese economy, the push towards industrialization, the accessibility of international travel, and the birth of a globalized economy gave rise to an era of unparalleled consumerism. The urgency of competing with global economic powers has pushed China to advance mass production technologies and open hundreds of factories, allowing it to surpass the United States in 2011 to become the world's largest manufacturer, driving growth in the nation's GDP by 40%.
The mass production model creates a disconnect between makers and users. Through the fragmentation of the supply chain, lack of transparency around labor conditions, and marketing strategies that prioritize profit over ethical considerations, businesses create a disconnect between fabricator and consumer. The anonymity of the mass production model dehumanizes workers, allowing companies to absolve themselves of any responsibilities to their staff and avoid accountability to their consumer base.
In order to limit the consumer’s understanding of the making processes of the objects they buy, big companies hyper-fragment the supply chain. Workers in mass production facilities are often assigned small, repetitive tasks that offer them little insight into the overall production process. These tiresome, often physically demanding tasks can be excruciating to perform for hours on end. There are very few opportunities to move up in the company, so factory workers can often only do one task for the duration of their employment. In the China Blue documentary published by PBS, the main interviewee, a 16-year-old girl named Jasmine, risks her job to feel connected with the consumer by slipping a handwritten note in the pair of jeans she is preparing for shipping. In this note, she says, "My friends and I made these jeans for you. Liping made the back pockets, (...) installed the zipper, and I cut the loose threads." The bravery of taking this risk illustrates Jasmine's need to feel like her work is valued and her desire to connect with the person on the other side of the supply chain. The nomination of "The Chinese Worker " as the runner-up in Time magazine's 2009 Person of the Year issue serves as a reminder of the lack of consideration within the discourse surrounding mass production. This nomination was attributed thanks to China’s tremendous economic growth, reaching an 8% annual rate that year. In an excerpt from the issue found online, journalist Austin Ramzy states: “Who deserves the credit? Above all, the tens of millions of workers who have left their homes, and often their families, to find work in the factories of China's booming coastal cities”. While intended to acknowledge their role in global economic recovery, the phrase inadvertently perpetuates their anonymity and further obscures their identities. By failing to mention specific workers, the makers are reduced to mere cogs in a vast, impersonal machine. This detachment from the human element of production demonstrates the broader societal disconnect from the origins of the products present in everyday life.
Mass production involves outsourcing the making process to various regions and countries. This fragmentation not only distances workers from the final product but also creates legal ambiguities, making it difficult to enforce labor standards across borders. Although Western CEOs regularly conduct inspections to verify labor conditions and quality control in factories, these inspections are pre-planned and designed purely to reassure customers, who are growing increasingly concerned about the notoriously inhumane working conditions in Chinese factories. Factory owners train their employees to lie about the quality of their environment, also hiding their underage employees when clients come to visit. In the China Blue documentary, Dr. Liu Kaiming from the Institute of Contemporary Observation in Shenzhen told the interviewers: "The factories get advance notice and coach their workers to lie to inspectors. They only want to reassure consumers, not actually to improve conditions." A former manager at a nearby factory said: "They gave us a memo to teach the workers what to say. They asked if we got any breaks at work, and we had to say yes. Actually, we couldn't even go freely to the bathroom. (...) My real pay was 300 Yuan, but the paper I had to sign said I was paid 800 Yuan. It was fake!".
Chinese factories are under pressure to achieve hyper-productivity goals, pushing workers to meet demanding quotas at the expense of their well-being. This relentless pursuit of output leads to overworking and exhaustion among workers. In order to compete with their rivals and provide the quantities of products for the extremely low prices required by Western businesses, factories are often forced to violate international labor laws. Indeed, the "workers at Lifeng work seven days a week for months at a time. They do not receive overtime pay or the minimum wage required by law. Such abuses are common in export factories." The constant abuse that workers undergo is incredibly dehumanizing; they are unable to meet their needs and are often forced to work with only 4 hours of sleep a night during peak production season.
Another tool that factories use to control their employees is hyper surveillance. Any mistake or slowness is penalized by removing money from their paycheck, and it is a common practice to deduct pay for lateness as well. Workers often cannot use the bathroom more than a couple of times per shift. At the Lifeng factory, workers are monitored via security cameras filming twenty-four hours a day. The factory owner admits that these cameras are not intended for security, they are there to make sure that the factory is running as he sees fit. The article "Dying for an iPhone," written by Jenny Chen, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai, details the conditions of migrant factory workers, specifically at Foxconn, a large factory located in Shenzhen that manufactures Apple products. Workers are forced to live within factory compounds, further blurring the lines between work and personal life. This living arrangement deprives workers of privacy and freedom, furthering their dehumanization within the mass production system. They live in deplorable conditions, having to choose between spending 3⁄4 of their paycheck on external housing in the city or sharing dormitory rooms with seven other employees. If they are married, they are separated from their spouses, either by gendered dormitories or by life circumstances that force them to work far away from each other to make ends meet. In the factory housing, they are constantly surveilled, forced to stay overtime, and unable to cultivate a healthy work/life balance. Indeed, at Foxconn, "Workers entering the dormitory are required to swipe an electronic staff card and then wait for a green light before walking up the staircase or taking an elevator. Security officers monitor the dormitory gate around the clock and periodically inspect every floor". These inhumane conditions impact the mental and physical health of employees. Instead of addressing the root of these issues, Foxconn installs nets around their facilities to prevent workers from committing suicide. Xiaoxiao, an employee of the factory, writes this in a poem titled "Grieving for Our Martyred Foxconn Workmates," commemorating the twelve workers who committed suicide: "Leap, I use my life to seek human dignity." This phrase
encapsulates the indifference companies like Apple have regarding their primary source of labor, perceiving them not as people but as disposable assets.
A large demographic of factory workers is under the legal working age in China. For example, the "internships" at Foxconn allowed them to hire tech students to do labor without the actual learning experience usually expected when undertaking an internship position. This loophole allowed them to utilize unpaid child labor, and the government had to create laws to ensure that the interns were paid at least 80% of an adult worker's minimum wage and could only work for six months at a time. Still, it is common for child workers to lie about their age in their desperation to support themselves and their families. These children are usually coming from low-income families in rural environments. They need money to support their family and are looking for the perceived freedom of city life. Their lack of education and financial situation makes them especially vulnerable to abuse in the workplace, with authority figures withholding payment and threatening contract termination to force them into obedience. They cannot speak up even if their employers are violating their rights.
Companies also use various marketing tactics to escape accountability within the labor conditions crisis. Consumers have become increasingly aware of the implications of the "Made in China" label on the objects they buy: it is associated with worker abuse, child labor, and unfair treatment of factory staff. Thanks to activism and whistleblowing campaigns, consumers have been made increasingly aware of their power and responsibility. They are more careful about the conditions in which the objects they purchase are produced. However, companies have begun bypassing these attempts at making better choices by relocating their production, outsourcing to countries like Italy instead of China. In places like Prato, Italy, Chinese immigrants have begun to create fashion companies that reproduce Chinese mass-production models. These fast fashion companies, or "pronto moda" in Italian, follow
the same goals as Chinese factories: making large quantities of clothes for low prices. Although labor conditions are slightly more regulated in Italy, these businesses still partake in inhumane working conditions and excessive waste. However, the "made in Italy" label allows companies to give their buyers an illusion of luxury: because of Italy's history of small batch, high-quality fashion production, and focus on family businesses, consumers do not realize that their choices have almost as much of a negative impact on the environment as something with a "Made in China" label. Brands now rely on existing stereotypes surrounding manufacturing in China to sell their product. In reality, the working conditions in a factory have little to do with a label on a clothing item. The perceived transparency of the label relies on the consumer's ignorance, perpetuating racist stereotypes instead of making real change.
Moreover, luxury companies use specific language to promote their products. This language is harmful because it creates the myth that the production line is entirely mechanized. This narrative participates in the dehumanization of the production process. For example, the use of words such as "hand-sewn" aims to differentiate luxury from fast fashion. This differentiation implies that the clothes made by mass-production factories are not hand-sewn by workers as well but are instead made by a fully automated production line with robotized sewing machines. This narrative is also pushed by fast fashion companies such as Shein, which recently partnered with TikTok influencers in a marketing campaign. Shein provided an all-expenses paid trip to Guangzhou, in southeast China, to tour some of its manufacturing facilities. This trip aimed to disprove the accusations that the company's extremely low prices were achieved by violating human rights in their factories. Influencer Dani Carbonari reported, "There is a lot of technology and automation here compared to the other places, but this is less human-run, and more technology and automation are put into the actual process. (...) Now I can go home feeling confident and reassured with my partnership with Shein, working for Shein, and being a consumer of Shein". The influencer has since
released a public apology and terminated her contract with Shein. Considering the company's refusal to comply with American officials' demands to prove that it does not rely on forced labor before launching an IPO, it is unlikely that its production line is entirely automated and that the working conditions resemble those depicted in the TikTok video content published by the influencers.
The prioritization of consumer comfort over workers' well-being presents many dangers for labor safety. By consistently putting convenience over fair treatment of factory employees, companies further increase the disconnect between the consumers and the production chain. The birth of e-commerce has only furthered the imbalance of the hierarchy between maker and client. Indeed, websites like Amazon and Alibaba feature an extensive range of products that can easily be purchased online with a few clicks. Buyers are given little to no information about where and how the products are made before purchase. The simplicity and convenience of these e-commerce business models encourage overconsumption by popularizing micro-trends on social media, pushing consumers to buy excessive amounts. This increase in demand puts pressure on factories to respond to the never-ending desires of their consumers. This worsens the workers' living conditions as they are forced to do compulsory underpaid overtime work, increasing global waste. Indeed, China produces 20 Million tons of waste annually; clothing and textiles currently make up at least 7% of the total waste in global landfill space." The use of non-biodegradable materials such as polyester, and the illegal dumping of toxic dyes and bleaching chemicals have a severe environmental impact both nationally and internationally. Moreover, constant contact with these chemicals, both in the workplace and their environment, physically harms workers.
In conclusion, the hyper-fragmentation of supply chains, lack of transparency around labor conditions, and marketing strategies that prioritize profit over ethics all contribute to a disconnect between makers and consumers. The exploitation of child labor in Chinese factories and the environmental impact of mass production further exacerbate these issues, illustrating the cost of prioritizing output over human lives. The hierarchical structure of modern industrial systems fosters a dynamic where each stakeholder, from the workers at the bottom, to the factory managers and owners, to the CEOs at the top, operate within their own motives, often at odds with one another. The disconnect caused by geographical fragmentation and bureaucratic imperfections amplifies this discord. Much like in the game Telephone, valuable information slips through the cracks, allowing CEOs to abuse workers and go unpunished. The plight of workers is thus ignored as they are considered replaceable, with a constant stream of potential employees migrating from rural areas to urban areas in order to better support their families. As power consolidates at the upper echelons of the hierarchy, the humanity of those at the bottom is diminished, their struggles becoming an afterthought for factory owners. Their only concern is producing mass quantities of products for a competitive price to keep their business afloat. However, for corporate giants like Amazon or Shein, factory managers are just as replaceable as their staff: they can always find a different manufacturer willing to go even cheaper, sacrificing the rights of their employees on the way.
Thalya Jouin is a French-American visual artist based in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently completing her final year of her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She works in many mediums, but has a soft spot for weaving. Her work utilizes both traditional craft techniques and contemporary digital fabrication processes, examining the evolving relationship between making and mass production. She creates objects that question the boundaries between decorative and functional, merging markers of utility with ornamental details. At the heart of her practice lies the idea of relics - artifacts that transcend the confines of time and usability. Her work has been featured in Kingfisher Magazine and SAIC Magazine, and she has exhibited in the group show Death Lullaby at Comfort Station in Chicago, Illinois.
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