Workers in China could be among the best treated and most protected employees in the world. But they are not. The laws exist. They're just not enforced. As China's economic power grows, so does the suffering of those whose sweat and blood fuels the country's economic miracle.
Although it is entirely illegal in China, child labor is common. So are the 12-hour workdays and the total absence of worker protections. As the Chinese government and businesses continue to cash in on cheap labor and the world soaks up the cheap goods, who is there to notice if someone loses an arm or an eye on the factory floor?
Pun Ngai is a Chinese labor organizer who makes it her business to notice and to change conditions for China's workers.
Pun Ngai is a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is the founder and Chair of The Chinese Working Women Network (CWWN), a grass-roots organization of migrant women factory workers in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China. Her new book, "Made in China: Subject, Power and Resistance of Women Workers in a Global Workplace" will be published in 2005 by Duke University Press.
