Global Capital, the State, and Chinese Workers

Abstract

In 2010, a startling 18 young migrant workers attempted suicide at Foxconn Technology Group production facilities in China. This article looks into the development of the Foxconn Corporation to understand the advent of capital expansion and its impact on frontline workers' lives in China. It also provides an account of how the state facilitates Foxconn's production expansion as a form of monopoly capital. Foxconn stands out as a new phenomenon of capital expansion because of the incomparable speed and scale of its capital accumulation in all regions of China. This article explores how the workers at Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, have been subjected to work pressure and desperation that might lead to suicides on the one hand but also open up daily and collective resistance on the other hand.

Global inequality chains: integrating mechanisms of value distribution into analyses of global production

“…An obvious source of labour-power to them are the millions who are not paid at levels sufficient for their social reproduction, thereby allowing for the survival of small companies below the average rate of profit. These include (self-exploiting) petty commodity producers in Africa and Asia (Bernstein 2010;Wong 2014) where men often exploit and fail to pay for the work of women and children in the household or extended family (O'Laughlin 2007); the informal, casual and flexibile workforces the world over (Chang 2009;Moody 1997); the women who form the mainstay of China's export-oriented manufacturing workforce, who are largely rural migrants denied access to social policy in the regions in which they work, and where it is estimated that 80 per cent of even the formal industrial workforce is paid below the legal minimum (Ngai and Chan 2012;Xue and Chan 2013); the systematic feminization of low-paid work (meaning further downward pressure on wages) in firms in Latin America that are articulated with GVCs, reproducing and reproduced by gender relations in local communities (Selwyn 2010;Werner 2012); armies of immiserated workers at 'the bottom' of the economy in South Asia (Mezzadri 2016;Pattenden 2016); and the millions of people enduring slavery and forced labour across the planet in their adverse incorporation with the world economy (McGrath 2013).…”

Ancient and current resilience in the Chengdu Plain: Agropolitan development re-‘revisited’

“…In 2010, Pi County also became the site for China’s westernmost factory of the Taiwan-based Foxconn corporation, the producer of Apple iPads and iPhones (Ngai and Chan, 2012). The factory and its associated Living Zone represented the largest foreign direct investment in Chengdu to that date, and required the demolition of 14 villages – a project actively promoted by higher-level government to spur further FDI.…”

Chinese Labor Protest and Trade Unions

“…Foxconn shocked the world when the "12 leaps"-the attempted and completed suicides of young workers who leaped from high-rise factory dormitories in Shenzhen-took place during the first five months of 2010. 20 Union chairwoman Chen not only failed to investigate the workplace factors responsible for worker depression but also made insensitive public comments that "suicide is foolish, irresponsible and meaningless and should be avoided." 21 What has the union done to prevent more employees from taking their lives or to alleviate their grievances?…”