“We come here to work and not to play” is the quote from a Chinese production line worker in Reuter’s article on Foxconn factory workers.
That quote could have come from a hundred years ago in Western societies as young workers fled agricultural communities to make better money and find greater opportunities in the factories and cities of North America, Europe and Australia.
In their report on Chinese labour conditions commissioned by Apple and its supplier Foxconn, the US Fair Labor Association confirmed the quotes from the Reuters article.
48% thought that their working hours were reasonable, and another 33.8% stated that they would like to work more hours and make more money.
These workers have an average 56 hour working week and over a third are putting in 70 hours each week.
Like our great grandparents they are focused on bettering themselves and deeply conservative; they know their immediate livelihoods and future prospects depend upon the work they can get.
They also understand the government owes them nothing and their expectations on what the authorities will do for them are low.
It often said the Communist Party of China is the most effective capitalistic organisation on the planet today. In reality it’s the workers on the assembly lines who personify what we know as the free market.
As the leaders of Western nations continue to indulge in corporate and middle class welfare while believing in magic pudding economics where massive mis allocations of resources have no cost and tax cuts pay for themselves, it might be worthwhile thinking of the businesses those 23 year old factory workers in Shenzhen or Chengdu might be running in thirty years.
Just as our great-grandparents built modern economies and industrial empires out of their hard work, which most of us still reap the benefit from, those young Chinese workers are doing the same thing.