[throwawaaay129]

I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.. Having lived in China, in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. Somewhere between US and Europe. It's not really easy to fire people and people regularly sue their employers and win. The legal system is generally very heavily biased towards the little guy

I just feel really bad for these people. They probably left some country side life making peanuts to go make some real money for a while at a factory and like send their kids to college or whatever - and now westerners are like "no, you shouldn't do that. go back to your bucolic life of poverty. And btw we hate your government". Cool

From the initial reports it sounds like Foxxcon really royally screwed up and was not prepared logistically for a lockdown.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63739562

Another big part of this whole fiasco seems to have been conspiracy-theory style rumors and just a general freakout of the workers (which is kinda understandable given how policies are opaque and feel arbitrary)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63481793

"This young factory worker heard that the army was going to come in and take control so as to enforce a type of giant "living with Covid" experiment which involved allowing everyone in that part of Zhengzhou city to get sick."

In my experience.. even talking to educated middle class people.. these kinds of things are super common - even with all the social media controls. People believe all sorts of insane things b/c their sister's husband's cousin is in the army and told them blah blah. If in the US a double digit percentage of people believe that 9/11 was inside job - in the developing world the numbers are way scarier. It sounds like there was mass panic (again, kinda understandable given the mushroom management that's so common in Asia)

[rwalle]

Born and raised in China, I stopped reading this after the first paragraph.

Laws are meaningless if they are never enforced or are simply ignored. Which happens all the time in China.

It is not easy to fire people. Sure, in normal situations. But when appropriate, government is going to ignore all these and do whatever necessary, and maybe even threaten to put you or your family in jail. Want to go to court? Good luck, the judges are going to stand with the government.

Another example: the constitution says that Chinese people have the freedom to speak, publish and demonstrate etc. Tell me how that has worked out.

[yarky]

> Born and raised in China.

The OP made a good point that applies to all poor countries I've lived in: those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty, which they do to help their families/children/themselves.

Maybe you were raised in a family that did not need to go through such hard labor, but that doesn't mean your right in your view of your own world ;)

P.S. I was also born and raised in a poor country.

[accurrent]

So I grew up in China and I can agree that the law is applied selectively. If you are a foreign corporation and have not paid the right bribes or in good books of the ccp official in your area in charge woe behold if you violate any labor rights. On the other hand if you're friends with the right people you can basically operate a slave camp.

That being said I do agree that our attitude of "lets shut down here cuz it doesnt work for us" does more harm than good. It's not like this will solve corruption. If anything, this will give Chinese people more reason to hate on USA and India, thus further cementing their governments power.

[netheril96]

The point that “those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty" stands. But the point that China has strict labor laws is laughable. The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.

[yarky]

> The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.

This is true of most strict rules elsewhere: they're there but seldom enforced. Take speed limits, they're strict, but good luck enforcing them. All we do is we monitor from time to time and give tickets. Yet we could enforce this to the manufacturers, right? Why can a car go beyond the speed limit if it's strictly prohibited?

We cannot compare working conditions as is, but they're easy to compare when you take time into account: how where our labor laws a couple of generations ago? Not that different than poor countries today.

[throwawaaay129]

If the government is out to get you, then yeah you're screwed.

If it's you against a company - then you typically have more protections than I think the typical western reader would expect.

I personally know people that had issues firing others at their company as well as people that got compensation when fired. Sure there are loopholes and people still get screwed a lot, but on the whole companies are generally apprehensive to fire employees and it's not totally the wild west

In the current situation, it very much sounds like it's people vs. Foxconn and that in the end people got their compensation.

You can argue that the situation was instigated by government policies, but that's sorta besides the point

[powerapple]

I'd say you are not seeing the world as it is. In the past, a job is for life, no one gets fired, and their children will take their position in the same factory, you get housing and everything. Now, if you are in state-owned enterprise and companies, you have a job for life unless you don't want it any more. In private sector, especially small companies, you may get screwed over. No, government will not try to fire you, you are nobody to them. You can go to labour court for these things, and normally you will get compensated for illegal termination. I am also only speaking in general, not cases.

[fyresala]

Your views of labor law are completely wrong.

> in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict.

And yes, it's very strict. Lawful working hours are 40 hours per week. Lawfully firing a employee requires higher compensation than US.

Do you really believe above is enforced in China? Next time when you visiting China, ask them if familiar with this quote: laws in China are strictly legislated, commonly broke, selectively enforced. In fact, 996 is a norm and a company that does not require 996 will advertise that when recruiting. Layoff compensation for many people is ZERO because they don't even have social insurance or contracts signed. 100 Chinese Yuan per day, you get it when working and get nothing when leaving. (That's not the case for Foxconn though. I believe everyone working in Foxconn at least has a contract.)

> I just feel really bad for these people. They probably left some country side life making peanuts to go make some real money for a while at a factory and like send their kids to college or whatever - and now westerners are like "no, you shouldn't do that. go back to your bucolic life of poverty. And btw we hate your government". Cool

Thanks, I appreciate that. I (the OP) am that kid though. And I believe getting involved in labor-intensive industries can be a better thing than what it is nowadays in China.

I agree with the rest of your post. Like I mentioned, reasons of the protest are varied.

[throwawaaay129]

I mean I lived a sheltered life in the city and my friends were city folks, but I often hear people had issues firing bad employees. And on the flip side people new their rights and knew they couldn't just be left off on a random day.

Companies seemed always cautious with firing. Yeah there was tons of sneaky stuff and people not getting their contracts and lots of grey area stuff - maybe the enforcement wasn't great. But my point is that they actually have some mechanisms in place that do function when it's you vs a company (not you vs the government). So it's not fair to characterize the whole place as lawless

In this case from the news it seemed to have worked out exactly as it should legally. Foxconn messed up (or tried to get sneaky with paying people), they got slapped on the wrist by the government, everyone got paid

I hope their legal systems keep improving (it was way worse a decade or two ago) and less companies get away with screwing their employees. I'm skeptical other developing nations like India are on some other higher level with their legal systems.

I think your original post is extremely sensationalist - comparing factory work to pseudoslave labor in cotton fields - especially given you're from a background that benefitted from this (I assume your parents worked when the system was much worse)

[nradov]

The court system in India is notorious for delays and backlogs, to the extent that some companies don't invest there due to the difficulty of enforcing contracts.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indian-judiciary-pend...

I am not defending the Chinese system, but you're correct that some other developing nations are as bad or worse in that area.

[inglor_cz]

"strictly legislated, commonly broke, selectively enforced"

This is what Westerners, who are used to rule of law, do not understand about authoritarian countries. Selective enforcement of laws is the preferred way to punish transgressors.

In Chechnya, the Kadyrovite kingdom, there is a crossroads with a traffic light that is always red. It never turns green. People routinely drive through that traffic light on red, because it can't be done otherwise.

Why is the traffic light even there? The side road connects to a Kadyrovite palace. If there is any accident with any vehicle coming from that palace, the normal driver on the main road is automatically at fault - because he disrespected a red light.

[powerapple]

That's loads of bullshit. People don't really understand the 40 hours per week thing. You CAN work overtime, as long as you get overtime pay, and you should have 2 days off, if you work on those off days, you should get double pay. It is very common practice in factories, where you expect to work overtime to earn more money.

In office job it is very different, you hardly get compensation for overtime, but if you go to court you definitely can get the money. The real reason is that those jobs are best paid, a few times more than other people, so people typically only sue their companies after they are fired. Yes, sometimes people worry about not finding another job, so they will accept what's been forced on them.

[philliphaydon]

> Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict.

The fact 996 is illegal and still practiced and complained about and censored… makes any existence of protection laws being strict null and void.

[powerapple]

the labour law was mainly for factory workers, there overtime needs to be compensated. For office workers, it is not clearly defined, because typically you are evaluated by works done, not by time as factory workers.

[DocTomoe]

Who can honestly say they did not ever flaunt worktime laws (where they exist)? IT people do 60-80 hours, in the liberal-democratic country where there is a strict limit of 48 hours/week (and the average being around 39h). People wear that as a misplaced badge of honour - and often complain behind closed doors.

Sounds similar.

[philliphaydon]

I've been living in Asia for 11 or 12 years now. There is definitely a strange culture of over-working.

Young people who live at home with their parents sometimes work late because they don't want to go home to their parents.

Alot of other people work late because they want to get noticed for promotions etc.

Some of it's self-inflicted. The first company I worked for in Singapore, the 'suits' as they are called (glorified sales people) would take requests from clients and commit at 6pm to deliverying the fixes by morning, then requesting the developers stay and do the work while they go home.

So there are definitely, 100% scenarios where it's not the company itself directly demanding employees to doing insane hours. But it does happen, China requires non-overtime hours to be capped at 36 hours. People are often not compensated for any extra hours they do.

[throwawaaay129]

Yeah, I think it's a scenario where you can probably sue and you can probably win - but then (just like in the US) you're known as the person that sues their employer and it's a black mark.

I haven't heard of people getting lawsuits about 996 thrown out in China - but to be fair I also haven't heard of people suing over that either.

[fyresala]

> but to be fair I also haven't heard of people suing over that either.

Guess why

[pera]

Your experience seems very different from what several international human rights organisations have been reporting for the past two decades.

I'd like to invite everyone here to follow for instance CLW: https://chinalaborwatch.org/

[itsoktocry]

>I'd like to invite everyone here to follow for instance CLW

Unfortunately, I think we're well past the days where you can simply say, "The WHO says..." or "the CDC says..." or "<some random NGO> says..." and expect anyone to believe it's some source of truth.

As we speak, we're literally in the middle of multiple supposedly trustworthy institutions being exposed for bending the truth or creating a narrative for political reasons.

There's a cold war with China in progress. In my country we're dealing with issues related to political influence by the Chinese. Even so, I'm trying to be careful that what I read isn't merely anti-Chinese propaganda, because I don't pretend we're not guilty of that ourselves.

[hackernewds]

This reads oddly like propaganda and flies against any and all of the evidence that we regularly observe, including the protests against working conditions that we are observing now

[itsoktocry]

>This reads oddly like propaganda and flies against any and all of the evidence that we regularly observe

What evidence are you observing that has convinced you it's one way or the other?

I can go on Twitter and see some variant of the first comment and the second in almost every thread. What are you reading that you consider the "ground truth" that you can so easily point out the propaganda?

As a Canadian, I'm sure my sources are similar to yours, and I'm not really sure what the truth is. I assume it's somewhere in the middle. One thing I do know is that both "sides" are churning out propaganda at an unprecedented pace.

[mcny]

» I assume it's somewhere in the middle.

Sorry but this is not logical. You can't weigh two positions and say the truth is in the "middle". Sometimes one is more true than the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

If one side is centrist and the other is extremist, you can't go between those two.

[mikymoothrowa]

China does have some of the best worker protection laws.

The protests we’re observing now, including the one in the iphone city, are against the government.

Let’s not conflate the two.

[rwalle]

Wow, "are against the government", that's really some typical CCP talk seen in their smear campaign.

From what I can see people just want a bit of freedom and get their promised compensation. I doubt any of the workers has interest in overthrowing the government.

[mikymoothrowa]

I'm not sure where you're from but for a good majority of the world, protesting against the government and wanting to overthrow the government are two very different things. I am talking about the former.

The sorry state the west has devolved into in the last 2 years.

[woooooo]

There was a different protest at a factory in shenzhen, prior to the lockdown protests.

[ngcc_hk]

It is not the law or the occasional protection. It is when it is not working, the threat as experienced by local that is the issue. Not to mention the overall issue of human suppression. It is not helping by producing and buying china.

Anyway, I think they moved is not because of this though. More because the unstable situation. And the invasion of Taiwan is inevitable. I will do it if I am in power. Not because I want to but I have to. That is the problem.

And if that happened, what you do. Like German or EU on Russia oil.

How many lesson you have to learn before you call yourselves …

[powerapple]

My take is that most people use this as an excuse, no one cares about labors, if you really care about them, I would shift more jobs, they make enough money and leave factory, have a small business. I have relatives working in factories, it is the best thing happen to them.

People are afraid to say 'fk China' blindly so they have to say it under disguise of some moral ground.

[jotm]

It can be a case of a factory running things like that. Pretty common in the US (with immigrants) and EU (again, immigrants).

Except Chinese factories are huge and aplenty, so they would "win" by numbers.

[90d]

I think it was the suicide nets?

[hulitu]

> I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.

Just normal propaganda.