I’ve been tied up with overlapping deadlines for the last several days, and so I’ve only just gotten around to reading Caitlin Fitzsimmons’ widely touted South China Morning Post feature on Chinese emigrants to Senegal, published Thursday [subscriber only]. It’s a great piece, in that it not only covers the tensions between the Senegalese locals…
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Death and Negligence on Christmas Eve.
At roughly 3:20 PM, Christmas Eve, I left my apartment at GaoAn Road to go to the post office. But, as I completed the first of seven flights of stairs to the lobby and entrance of my building, I realized that I had forgotten the envelope that I needed to mail. So I backtracked, grabbed…
Santa’s Chinese Workshop
Posted on Author AdamPosted in Appreciations and Recommendations, Arts, Business and Trade, Labor6 Replies
Below, a photo of a Christmas ornament workshop in Zhejiang Province. Statistics are difficult to come by, but this workshop is located in a section of Zhejiang known for producing a very large percentage of China’s Christmas exports (the country is reportedly the source for 80% of the world’s Christmas ornaments and accessories). And, according…
The Price of Mowing the Lawn
Over the last month I’ve spoken to several Chinese factory owners who claim that their biggest challenge is the rising price of skilled and semi-skilled labor. In Tianjin, for example, two separate owners told me that the price of skilled machinists had risen 30% over the last year to roughly RMB 3000 (US$378) per month.…
China National Petroleum to Dead Workers: Blame Yourselves.
As noted by Shanghaiist, a recent fatal explosion at a gas station in Pudong is garnering international attention. No surprise, the international coverage doesn’t mention a cause because – let’s face it – no Shanghai bureaucrat wants to be the one pinning responsibility on China National Petroleum Corporation, the state-owned oil monopoly that happens to…
The Pearl Harvest
Cheap freshwater pearls are an entitlement in Shanghai and Beijing. Locals tell me where to buy them; expats tell me what to pay for them; and tourists like to show me carry-on bags filled with them, destined for listing on ebay (US-based flight attendants are very well-represented in this last group). Which brings to mind…
Lanzhou’s Hydrogen Balloon Bombs
It took a few days for the news to make its way east, but now the world knows that approximately 100 people were injured when 1600 hydrogen-filled balloons exploded over a sports meet at the Lanzhou Electric Power School on September 17. And that’s not even the most interesting part of the story: The use…
“Design flaws” Responsible for Shandong Aluminum Explosion
The August 19th explosion of the Shandong Weiqiao Group’s aluminum plant in Zouping County, Shandong Province has received far less media attention than the Xintai mining disaster. But, at least from the standpoint of China’s industrial modernization, it is far more consequential. As I noted in a post to this blog on Monday, the Weiqiao…
Shandong to Dead Workers: Blame Yourselves.
It seems like we’re going through another round of Chinese industrial accidents, each worse than the last. In fact, they are becoming so common that an accident which might be judged major under normal circumstances, now receives almost no coverage due to the much larger accidents. Case in point: on Sunday, an aluminum plant exploded…
Thick As A Brick
Recent revelations of slave labor in remote Chinese brick making facilities are surprising only for the fact that the overall story has taken so long to emerge. According to the state-owned media, more than 500 people have been freed from what are now being described as “illegal brick kilns” over the last several days. 500…