Transcript Document 7634731

Topic 5
Globalization and China:
Shenzhen
I. The Case of Shenzhen SEZ
Questions:
1. What is the glocalizing process in
China?
2. How is the glocalizing process
revealed in the building of SEZ?
Theme:
• how SEZs are built as glocalized
landscapes in illustrating the process
of China entering the global economy
Building Glocalized Landscapes
•
SEZs are the outcomes of China’s
engaging into the global economy.
SEZs are already a formidable
presence in the global economy
Building Glocalized Landscapes
•
The process of glocalization- how the
SEZs develop themselves into
glocalized landscapes that serve to
bring China into the world economy
•
Focus on the development of Shenzhen
SEZ
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
Shenzhen is an immigrant city, built
quickly with a borrowed population.
•
In 1979, the Central government and
the Guangdong Government decided to
upgrade a small town, Bao’an county,
to the status of a city named Shenzhen.
Shenzhen
before 1979
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
In May 1980 the Special Economic Zone
was set up.
•
Shenzhen SEZ was erected as a test
case as an economic development zone
open to the global capital.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
•
Shenzhen thus was the specific place
where global capital and the socialist
state encountered each other and
worked hand in hand, though not
always in harmony, in shaping a new
economy.
Shenzhen is on the east of the Pearl
River Delta. In the north it is connected
to Dongguan, Weiyuan, in the south to
Hong Kong, and in the east it faces
Daya Bay.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
The Shenzhen SEZ is only part of
Shenzhen city. It occupies one sixth of
the whole city.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
The SEZ is special not only in its
economic but also in its political and
social aspects.
•
There is a long iron curtain from east to
west separating the SEZ from the nonspecial zone of the whole country;
those who wanted to enter the SEZ
require special permission from the
Public Security Branch in their local
regions.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
Before the setting up of the SEZ,
Shenzhen was only a small town with
310,000 residents and less than 30,000
workers.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
•
The total population of the whole
Shenzhen now was over 8.27 million
and the total population of SEZ is over
2 million.
In its population composition, less than
20% are categorized as permanent
residents who have come from major
cities and become state officials,
entrepreneurs, technicians and skilled
workers.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
Over 82% are temporary residents,
which means they do not have the
official household registration entitling
them to recognized citizenship in
Shenzhen.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
When they lose their jobs in Shenzhen,
they are not officially permitted to stay
in Shenzhen.
•
It is clear that the expansion of
Shenzhen and its Special Economic
Zone is based on the mobility of
migrants as temporary residents.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
In Shenzhen all workers and staff
members are categorized into three
kinds:
Key concept to remember!
1. Guding zhigong(固定職工), regular
workers and staff members,
2. Hetong zhigong(合同職工), contract
workers and staff members,
3. Linshi zhigong(臨時職工), temporary
workers and staff members.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
•
Guding zhigong refers to those employed
by state-owned enterprises or
government organs and they enjoy all the
state welfare such as housing and food
provision.
Hetong zhigong refers to those employed
on a contract basis by all kinds of
enterprises; the contracts may last for
three or five years. Most contract workers
in Shenzhen are university graduates who
are employed as technicians, skilled
workers or management staff
Key concept to remember!
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
Linshi zhigong, temporary workers are
the most disadvantaged in Shenzhen;
not until 1988 were they officially
given temporary contracts on a yearly
basis.
Key concept to remember!
•
In the second half of the 1980s, the
number of temporary workers
increased rapidly and surpassed the
total number of regular workers and
contract workers.
Shenzhen as an immigrant city
•
Most manual labour in the SEZ is
undertaken by these temporary
residents from rural areas. In Shenzhen,
as soon as one becomes a legal
temporary worker, one is then entitled
to be a temporary resident.
•
A rural laborer can get a temporary
hukou(戶口) in Shenzhen only if he/she
is hired as a temporary worker.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
Encouraged by the Open-door policies
and the economic reforms, the local
state of the villages greatly transform
themselves by turning into companies.
•
The local state of Blue River not only
merely formed a company, but
completely turned itself into a company
in 1984.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The former name Blue River People’s
Commune was changed to Blue River
Manufacturers’ Chief Company, under
which it owned or joint-ventured over
thirteen companies.
•
The old government offices building
remained, but it was expanded to
include a new wing of four storeys
connected to the old one.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The “bureaucratic” structure of the Chief
Company was changed and expanded as
well.
•
Now there was a General Office, an
External Trade Department, a Finance
Department, an Administrative
Department, a Population and Birth
Control Department, a Labour Regulation
Department, and a Mass Organization
Division which included a Youth
Committee, a Women’s Federation and
Trade Union.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The Company
itself was a
mixture of preexisting socialist
“politics” and a
reform market
“economy”, a
hybrid reflection
of the ongoing
development of
the socialist
market economy.
Key concept to remember!
The Transformation of Local Community
•
the Blue River government gained
complete independence in regulating
foreign investment and local trade
without any intervention from the upper
levels.
•
Blue River was not an exceptional case.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
It was the state, or political forces
rather than capital, which served as the
locomotive of economic development.
•
Land was distributed to the families for
less than two years in Blue River and
requisitioned again in 1984 for the use
of industrial development.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
Every household, according to the
number of household members, was to
be allocated a share each year in the
yearly profit made by the Chief
Company, formerly their village
government.
•
Every year, households obtained share
dividends ranging from RMB 15,000 to
20,000.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
A local cadre proudly told,
It was almost ten times what the
family could earn before. Nowadays
people don’t need to do anything
but just wait for their share
dividend at the end of the year.
What’s more, the family can free
hands from farming and they can
choose to do business.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The local residents suddenly became
rich, with their official identity changed
from rural people to urban citizens and,
with their economic status or class
position totally altered.
– In terms of occupation, almost 80%
of the local working population was
self-employed persons.
The Transformation of Local Community
− 10% were managerial or supervisory
staff in the companies newly set up in
the village.
− 10% worked outside the village, some
holding a position in the District
government or employed in big
companies in Central Shenzhen or
Guangzhou.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The living standard of the village was
comparatively higher than any other cities
in China. Every family was well furnished
with electric appliances, a color TV set, hifi disc and air-conditioners.
•
not without worry - an economic
recession in Shenzhen from 1997 till, as
more and more foreign capital moved out
of the SEZ to the much cheaper area in the
internal cities.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
Foods, goods and daily necessities here
were relatively very expensive. The
prices were one-third higher in
Guangzhou and probably double those
in other northern cities.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
Yet as long as a family could afford it,
they still preferred to buy imported
foreign-labeled.
•
Shenzhen ren- the people of Shenzhen,
a broad cultural identity signifying a
modern cosmopolitanism attached to
the space and the people who lived
there.
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The majority of economic producers, or
the working class in the village, on the
other hand, were not local residents.
•
Of the total population, over 75% were
temporary residents, migrant workers
who had moved in from outside the
village
The Transformation of Local Community
•
The socio-economic structure of Blue
River village was thus conditioned
mainly by a two-tiered system:
– One tier was local urban residents
who not only possessed the means of
production but also the space, the
right of abode.
Key concept to remember!
The Transformation of Local Community
– The other tier consisted of rural
migrants who had to sell their labor
to the factories in which they worked,
while having no right to stay
permanently where they worked.
•
These migrant temporary labour were
three times the number of the local
residents, and were the lowest status
workers in the community.
Key concept to remember!
HK Company in Shenzhen
•
The HK company, named Meteor, is
located in “Blue River” in Nanshan
District, Shenzhen, within the confines of
the Special Economic Zone.
•
The history of the HK Company in
Shenzhen has demonstrated the
development of the industrial village, Blue
River village in SEZ, and the changing
social relations of the local community for
more than one decade.
Hong Kong Company in Shenzhen
•
The Meteor was set up in 1985, a year
after the village, formerly a rural
commune, had undergone a dramatic
change.
•
It was an electronics enterprise which
produced mobile phones and electronic
route-finders for Phillips.
Hong Kong Company in Shenzhen
•
Headed by five HK managers in each
department, there were almost no
communications between HK and local
staff and workers.
•
Huge income gaps and class status
created mistrust among each other.
Hong Kong Company in Shenzhen
•
Except for most of the engineers,
technicians, managers, supervisors and
some office clerks who came from
urban areas, more than 80% of the
work force formerly held a rural hukou.
•
The work force in the Meteor, and in
manufacturing industry as a whole
was mainly made up of the rural
population.
The Dormitory Labor Regime:
• A new theorization on spatial politics
of production and globalization
• Taylorism and Fordism to flexible
accumulation is problematic
• The transnational political economy of
production that links not only a new
scale of the economic, but a new
economy of scale
The Dormitory Labor Regime:
• Mass production and the space of workresidence are extensively reconfigured for
capital accumulation on a global scale.
• Transnational processes require intensive
reconfiguration of time + rapid reorganization of space.
• Neglected- a more micro study to see how the
spatial factor influences the production
politics.
• Transnational re-organization gives birth to a
new form of labor regime: the dormitory labor
regime in China
The Dormitory Labor Regime in China:
• Use of dormitories to accommodate migrant
labour is a systemic feature of global
production.
• Irrespective of industry, location, or nature of
capital, Chinese migrant workers, are
accommodated in dormitories within or close
to factory compounds in China.
• We theorize this phenomenon as a “dormitory
labour regime” to capture the recurrence of
dormitory factories as the hybrid outgrowth
of global capitalism and the legacies of state
socialism.
The Dormitory Labor Regime in China:
• Historically dormitories appeared in China, other
Asian countries, US and European countries in early
19th and 20th Century
• Forms of living with the employer had occurred, as
household and labour processes were more unified
than under factory systems.
• Divisions between factory forms in Eastern and
Western patterns of industrialization also reveal
variability.
• In Japanese, Korean and pre-communist Chinese
factories (especially textile industries) dormitory
accommodation was typically provided by
employers or contractors.
• Similar focus on young, single, migrant female
workers
What is specific and noteworthy in China?
• The re-emergence of these types of dormitories
on a systemic basis.
• The recurrence of this old form is the hybrid
outcome of global capitalism and state socialism.
• It reinvigorated through foreign-invested and
private companies, local states and the central
government in a globalising economic context.
• Virtually all companies utilize dormitories,
whether rented from local authorities or
increasingly provided privately within the
enterprise.
Features of Dormitory
• Such dormitories are communal multi-storey
buildings, housing several hundred workers.
• Rooms are shared, with typically between 8-20
workers per room. Washing and toilet facilities
are communal between rooms, floors or whole
units.
• living space is intensely collective, with no area,
except within the closed curtains of the worker’s
bunk, for limited private space.
• These material conditions do not explain the role
of the dormitory as a form of accommodation or
‘living at work’.
Features of Dormitory
• Central to the dormitory form is a political economy
of grouping of migrants, typically single, young and
female workers.
• Such workers are separated from families, the
customary locale, and daily practices and
concentrated in a factory and workspace as
homogenized labourers.
• Alienation of labour is therefore significantly more
than the lack of ownership of product, tools and
control of skills sufficient to support independent
production.
• Workers in dorms are alienated from their
hometowns, their parents, working within factories
dominated by unfamiliar others, languages, food,
production methods and products.
Labor Process of DLR
1.Tied employment
2.Extending the working day - just in time labour
3.Labour allocation easier in more volatile
product markets
4.Young workers, employers control skill
definition
5.Greater control over workers’ job search
6.Inhibits labour organisation
7.Fresh supplies of young workers
Features of DLR
• Extends labour market
– Market is not just local area
– ‘Circulatory migrants’
– Labour costs can be depressed
• Recruitment networks
– Advantages of networks for management
– Market versus network recruitment
– In-province constraints on management
choice
– Worker network constraints on management
Types of Workers’ Dormitory in China
1.Enterprises purchase land and build their own
dormitory premises (often with factory
buildings).
– These enterprises are usually large or
transnational companies which possess a
workforce of several thousands.
– A room of 30 sq. m. will be housed by eight
to twelve persons.
– Accommodation is often free of charge,
while some companies will deduct reminbi
(¥30 to 50) from workers’ monthly salaries
Types of Workers’ Dormitory in China
2.Enterprises house their workers by
purchasing their dormitories premises from
the local government or private owners.
– Purchases of workers’ dormitories from a
third party are not frequent unless the
dormitories premises are very close to
their factory buildings.
Types of Workers’ Dormitory in China
3.Enterprises rent dormitories from the local
government or local residents
– This type roughly accounts to 80% of all
dormitory provision
– These enterprises range from small to
medium size, and usually have a
workforce over a few hundreds
– A dorm room will be shared by eight to
sixteen persons. It ranges from ¥20 to 80
each month inclusive or exclusive to the
electricity or other expenses.
Types of Workers’ Dormitory in China
4.Workers themselves rent dormitories from the
local residents in the city or in the industrial
town
– A room will cost as high as ¥300 and be
shared by four to six persons.
– single-sexed, and only a few would have
dorms for married couple.
– Couple rooms for husband and wife working
in the same company
– These rooms will be charged with a range
from ¥100 to ¥200.
Types of Workers’ Dormitory in China
5.Enterprises rent apartments, hotel rooms
and even villas as accommodation for their
senior managerial staff.
– Renting apartments or flats from
residential areas is the usually practice.
– An apartment will cost 1-2000 Reminbi
depending on the quality of the housing.
Dormitory as Lived Site for Struggle
• Institutional and power analysis: Dormitory
labour regime as coercive control
• Return to Actor: dormitory as lived site for
struggle
• Common fate in a “common house”
nurtured the basis for collective action
• Kin and ethnic enclaves formed in the
dormitory enhanced worker’s bonding and
solidarity
Dormitory as Lived Site for Struggle
• Dormitories as gendered space bound
working women into a collectivity
• In times of crisis or strikes, the workers
turned “soft” spaces - the kin networks,
ethnic enclaves, sisterhood, and collectivities
- into hard struggles
• Petition letters circulated from dorm to dorm
with signatures collected in a single night.
• Strategies against the management in times
of wage arrears, bodily punishments, insults
or lay-offs were intensively discussed.
Dormitory as Lived Site for Struggle
• On strike, workers were efficiently
organized and spontaneously participated
without any organizational help such as
trade unions or labour organizations.
• Compression of time for production in this
dormitory labour regime, in return, works
against itself by shortening time for
generating workers’ consensus and forming
strategies for collective actions.
Conclusion
•
Shenzhen is a dual city.
•
A hukou is attached to employment, and
once a migrant worker was dismissed, or
left the job, he or she was not granted the
right to stay in Shenzhen.
As a dual city, Shenzhen is contributed to
the dormitory labor regime
Shenzhen is a place by them, contributed
but not for them.
•
•
Key concept to remember!