A week and a half ago, the China blog of the libertarian communism website libcom.org — Nao – published translations of the poetry of Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi, who committed suicide on September 30. As Nao notes, “By translating these poems, we aim to memorialize Xu, share some of his excellent literary work, and spread awareness that the harsh conditions, struggles and aspirations of Chinese migrant workers (including but not limited to Foxconn) have not diminished.”

Xu was 24. We’re republishing two poems here — one by Xu and one by Zhou Qizao, a colleague — but you should head over to Nao blog to read the rest. (Bloomberg reports Xu was a regular contributor to Foxconn People, the company’s internal newspaper in Shenzhen, before his death. His poems have since been circulating across Chinese and English websites.)

《我咽下一枚铁做的月亮》
“I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron”

我咽下一枚铁做的月亮
I swallowed a moon made of iron

他们把它叫做螺丝
They refer to it as a nail

我咽下这工业的废水，失业的订单
I swallowed this industrial sewage, these unemployment documents

那些低于机台的青春早早夭亡
Youth stooped at machines die before their time

我咽下奔波，咽下流离失所
I swallowed the hustle and the destitution

咽下人行天桥，咽下长满水锈的生活
Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust

我再咽不下了
I can’t swallow any more

所有我曾经咽下的现在都从喉咙汹涌而出
All that I’ve swallowed is now gushing out of my throat

在祖国的领土上铺成一首
Unfurling on the land of my ancestors

耻辱的诗
Into a disgraceful poem.

19 December 2013

~

《惊闻90后青工诗人许立志坠楼有感》
“Upon Hearing the News of Xu Lizhi’s Suicide”
by Zhou Qizao (周启早), a fellow worker at Foxconn

每一个生命的消失
The loss of every life

都是另一个我的离去
Is the passing of another me

又一枚螺丝松动
Another screw comes loose

又一位打工兄弟坠楼
Another migrant worker brother jumps

你替我死去
You die in place of me

我替你继续写诗
And I keep writing in place of you

顺便拧紧螺丝
While I do so, screwing the screws tighter

今天是祖国六十五岁的生日
Today is our nation’s sixty-fifth birthday

举国欢庆
We wish the country joyous celebrations

二十四岁的你立在灰色的镜框里微微含笑
A twenty-four-year-old you stands in the grey picture frame, smiling ever so slightly

秋风秋雨
Autumn winds and autumn rain

白发苍苍的父亲捧着你黑色的骨灰盒趔趄还乡
A white-haired father, holding the black urn with your ashes, stumbles home.

1 October 2014

Read more over at Nao blog.

~

Note: Those interested in more China-themed poetry might consider the Anthill.

Xinhua reports that 11 Foxconn employees in a plant in Yantai, Shandong province were injured after a drunken brawl on Friday Thursday as part of Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations. More than 300 people reportedly gathered to watch the fight.

Police stopped the fracas in a “timely” manner.

An initial investigation showed two young female Foxconn workers began arguing while surfing the Internet outside the plant and the dispute escalated, leading to the brawl.

Xinhua also made a point to deny earlier reports that combatants had been killed:

The injured received medical treatment where necessary, but no people were killed or severely injured, said Foxconn on Sina Weibo on Monday.

The video above was posted to Youku 11 hours ago and claims that the instigators were from Guizhou. Why there are so many shirtless young men in jeans is, like so much of urban factory campus life, a mystery to us.

UPDATE, 3:43 pm: The incident happened at 10:30 pm on Thursday, according to Foxconn’s Weibo. There are pictures as well, via Shenzhen Media and Tencent.

The video sure seems like it was taken during the day, but perhaps someone was filming on a highly sensitive light setting. Perhaps tempers had not died down the morning after. Perhaps Foxconn’s Yantai factory rests under a Teflon dome, and there’s artificial lighting. Not sure. Pictures:

(Qilai Shen/Bloomberg)

Foxconn workers who make the iPhone and other hi-tech products have been in a great number of headlines over the past few years without eliciting change. But when fights between workers and management broke out and paralyzed assembly lines in Zhengzhou last year, Chinese authorities started looking for solutions to the constant disputes. According to the Financial Times:

 “[The government is] likely worried about industrial unrest. It’s clear they want to get workers [away from protesting in] the courtyard and to the negotiating table,” says Auret van Heerden, chief executive of the Fair Labor Association, the US-based group working with Apple and assessing working conditions at Foxconn. “It appears the Chinese government is more and more concerned that [official] unions have been asleep at the switch.”

One idea now being floated is to allow Foxconn workers democratically elect their own union leaders. The FT article continues:

Foxconn is paving the way for the first-ever competitive union elections among its 1.2m workers, alongside the Chinese government’s push for collective bargaining and wider worker representation.

Obviously this is unusual in China, which already has an official nationwide labor union. But the All-China Federation of Trade Union is a top-down organization run by the government without the independence needed to be effective. According to NPR:

Labor unions technically do exist in Chinese factories, but they’re typically controlled by management and the government. So a union run by democratic vote of the workers would be a huge shift.

Why would the Chinese government be behind such a surprising move? FT:

The trigger was a strike at Honda’s plants in southern China in the summer of 2010 that highlighted the problem of having a union allied with management. During the strike, young workers jeered at and scuffled with ACFTU leaders, saying they had never seen them before. Since then, local governments in southern China have been pushing companies to hold genuine union elections. The Shenzhen municipal government was first in early 2012, followed last month [January] by Guangzhou.

Foxconn wouldn’t be the first company in Shenzhen to elect their own leaders.

At Ohms Electronics (Shenzhen), a small affiliate of Panasonic, workers directly elected their union leadership for the first time last May. “Their vote deserved being called democratic, but that’s really the only example we know of,” says Cheng Yiyi from Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group.

These are extraordinary developments in a country without a democratic tradition, so progress will likely be uneven and gradual, if not altogether slow.

People involved in the preparations say that simply educating staff about how the vote will work, what their rights are and what the responsibilities of the resulting union committees are will be a huge challenge. Reaching all its employees may take longer than the 13 months the average production worker stays at the company.

Nevertheless, the hope is that the restless workers at Foxconn are beginning to make their voices heard and are leveraging their position as makers of the world’s most popular product into real social change.

China wary amid push for workers’ union poll (Financial Times)

Has unrest again hit Foxconn? New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch reports that yesterday at about 1 pm in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, “three to four thousand production workers” went on strike after Foxconn demanded they work holidays and “raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills.”

The majority of workers who participated in this strike were workers from the OQC (onsite quality control) line. According to workers, multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day.  It was reported that factory management and Apple, despite design defects, raised strict quality demands on workers, including indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers. With such demands, employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard. This led to a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. On top of this, they were not permitted to have a vacation during the holiday. This combination of factors led to the strike.

The story has been picked up by several English-language outlets, because Foxconn is one of the only Chinese factories (the only?) Western readers recognize. But Chinese news sites have reported this as well, notably Sohu Business and Sina (from which the above picture comes), which leads one to believe that if not quite a strike, there was a work stoppage — a rare display of worker solidarity. There’s risk in assuming too much, though, so we’ll stop.

Foxconn, for its part, denies there was any strike:

But Foxconn Technology Group, which has its headquarters in Taiwan, denied the report and said the plant suffered only two brief and small disputes several days earlier.

“Any reports that there has been an employee strike are inaccurate,” the company said in an emailed statement, adding that “there has been no workplace stoppage in that facility or any other Foxconn facility and production has continued on schedule.”

Updates as they become available. For now, here’s the entire China Labor Watch press release:

(New York) China Labor Watch (CLW) announced that at 1:00PM on October 5 (Beijing time), a strike occurred at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory that, according to workers, involved three to four thousand production workers. In addition to demanding that workers work during the holiday, Foxconn raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills. This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. Additionally, quality control inspectors fell into to conflicts with workers and were beat up multiple times by workers. Factory management turned a deaf ear to complaints about these conflicts and took no corrective measures. The result of both of these circumstances was a widespread work stoppage on the factory floor among workers and inspectors.

The majority of workers who participated in this strike were workers from the OQC (onsite quality control) line. According to workers, multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day.  It was reported that factory management and Apple, despite design defects, raised strict quality demands on workers, including indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers. With such demands, employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard. This led to a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. On top of this, they were not permitted to have a vacation during the holiday. This combination of factors led to the strike.

That quality control inspectors would also strike is of no surprise. According to workers, there was a fight between workers and quality control inspectors in area K that led to the damage in inspection room CA, the injury of some people, and the hospitalization of others. After this, another similar incident occurred in area K, once again leading to quality control inspectors getting beat up. Yesterday, inspectors in area L received physical threats. When inspectors reported these issues to factory management, the management simply ignored and turned their back on the issue. For these reasons, all day and night shift inspectors carried out a work stoppage today that paralyzed the production lines.

CLW Executive Director Li Qiang said, “This strike is a result of the fact that these workers just have too much pressure.”

(H/T Gizmodo via Alicia)

In case you’ve forgotten, The Simpsons is set to begin its 24th season this Sunday, which is an amazing accomplishment no matter much you’ve complained about its last 15 seasons as being “not what it used to be.”

As a preview, the producers have released this short — viewed 2.7 million times already in four days — to satirize the good ol’ American election process. While the blunt of the ridicule is aimed at the Voter ID laws that threaten to disenfranchise Americans in key swing states, which one prominent observer has deemed more “menacing” than Watergate, China makes a cameo at the end in the form of Foxconn.

No matter our politics, I think you and I can agree that the suicide nets are a nice touch. Youku video for those in China after the jump.

When is a riot just a fight with a lot of people? When is a fight with a lot of people a riot? In Chinese factories, where thousands of workers live in close proximity, it can be difficult to tell sometimes — and there is ample risk, from a journalistic standpoint, in using the “R” word when the facts just don’t support the narrative.

Nonetheless, the news out of a Foxconn plant in Taiyuan, Shanxi province is that something happened in the early hours last night, as first reported by Richard Lai of Engadget. The latest update has Foxconn telling Reuters that, “The fight is over now … we’re still investigating the cause of the fight and the number of workers involved… a couple thousand workers is possible.” The plant is temporarily closed, with a statement expected to be forthcoming. Xinhua reports that about 10 people were hurt. UPDATE, 9/26, 7:31 pm: Marketplace: “40 people injured in the clash, and one person was stabbed.” No deaths.

A video has surfaced, along with some photos that really don’t show much. We’ll update if there are any significant developments, but early indications are this incident was nothing more than a big fight, the kind liable to happen at any factory in China. But of course, it didn’t happen at “any” factory. It happened at Foxconn. And that makes it relevant to the media at large.

Astrid Riecken / The Washington Post via Getty Images

Picture via Mark Gimein’s post at Bloomberg Businessweek in which he essentially retracts his original review: “Usually, ‘art’ is art and ‘journalism’ is journalism. When the two meet, it’s rarely on the same stage. An exception is the work of monologuist Mike Daisey.”

Mike Daisey is not a China expert. This should be abundantly clear, because he tells you himself in his monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs:

I am telling you that I do not speak Mandarin, I do not speak Cantonese, I have only a passing familiarity with Chinese culture and to call what I have a passing familiarity is an insult to Chinese culture—I don’t know fuck-all about Chinese culture.

This is performance art, and as such, it’s a pretty entertaining way of saying he is not a China expert. Got it. Unfortunately, he says in his very next breath:

But I do know that in my first two hours of my first day at that gate, I met workers who were fourteen years old, I met workers who were thirteen years old, I met workers who were twelve.

Do you know, really?

We can excuse the man for not knowing China. But now that it’s clear he fabricated parts of his show, I wonder whether the public will be so forgiving of his mischaracterizations of the place. His monologue, as I reread it, is neither journalism nor art. It’s polemics. Daisey uses theater not to promote a cause or illuminate a greater truth, but to drive a narrative and sell tickets. And by the sheer weight of his charisma and his stage, he has obfuscated — deliberately or not — the real issues on the ground, all the while offering no solutions to the complexities of global economics, poverty, and China’s urban migration.

And frankly, a lot of his scenes are just plain bad:

And I say, “Great. Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to call all of the factories you have connections with, I want you to call them, and I want you to tell them that I am an American businessman, and that I want to buy whatever they are selling.

And she listens to this, and she says, “But you…are not a businessman?”

And I say, “That’s true, I am not a businessman.”

And she says, “And you…aren’t going to buy their products?”

And I say, “That’s true. I am not going to buy their products.”

She says, “You…will lie to them.”

And I say, “Yes, Cathy. I’m going to lie to lots of people.”

And for a moment, I think it isn’t going to work.

And then you can actually see the idea leap the synaptic gap from a Problem to a Problem-To-Be-Solved.

She says:

<<very slowly, carefully, clearly, and quietly>>

“You…are going to need a lot…of business cards.”

No, she did not say that very slowly, carefully, clearly, and quietly. She plainly did not do that, and yes, I’m telling you this as someone who does possess a passing familiarity with Chinese culture. That’s not how Chinese people speak.

Aesthetics aside, lying about what one sees and putting real faces to fake stories has consequences, and for Daisey to remain unremorseful in light of recent findings of manipulation and embellishment is to be intentionally daft in the hope that “art” will serve as bulwark against backlash. It won’t, because willfully or not, he packaged his story as journalism (willfully, I think), and as a result duped a whole lot of people.

When reasonable and intelligent critics tried to point out his mistakes, he told them off, like this:

As a fellow raconteur it’s painful to have to confront Mr. Fry with this fact, but he’s being a total idiot.

And this:

DAVID POGUE IS ONLY COMPETENT TO REVIEW GADGETS

And only now, in light of Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz’s fact-checking and This American Life’s very public retraction of its story about him, does he explicitly admit, “My show is a theatrical piece…”

Why didn’t we hear him say it before?  As Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici points out:

Anyone who’s surprised by Daisey’s utter lack of remorse or true introspection is unfamiliar with the works of other fabulists James Frey and Johann Hari. “I never meant my work to be taken as literal truth” is always the first line of defense for writers who see themselves as creative geniuses but end up finding success as purveyors of boring non-fiction.

The fact is, Foxconn pays relatively higher wages than other factories in Shenzhen, and it’s one of the more desirable jobs for many people. I’m not saying that makes it a particularly fun place to work. It offers nothing you or I would do, because we’re spoiled and we’re lucky as hell. But the reality is, for a lot of Foxconn’s employees, it is the right place for them at this current time, offering chances for promotions and the possibility of a previously unknown prosperity. As I wrote on Heart of Beijing in response to This American Life’s original story on Daisey in a post titled, “Because we dislike Foxconn, should we relieve 900,000 people of their jobs?”:

Unfortunately, the world is the way it is. It’s not the way bleeding hearts want it, and for that, we should all be sorry, we really should, but — at the risk of repeating myself — the world is the way it is, so that a 12-year-old child of an Anhui farmer who works 18 hours a day on the paddies might choose to seek employment in the big city to make four times as much as her parents at a company that draws the ire of the developed world. And what has the developed world ever given her? Never mind that American politicians don’t give a shit about her, they only complain about their own country’s jobs and the dollar-yuan exchange rate. That girl has a great story, and I applaud Mike Daisey for getting it and the hundred-plus other stories from Foxconn. I just fear that the China Narrative being the way it is — much like the world is the way it is — people will see the girl as merely a symbol of a “Communist regime.”

I quoted Evan Osnos:

iPhone suicides, believe it or not, are not news to the Chinese. Nobody has done more aggressive reporting on the factory conditions at Foxconn than the Chinese press. Before foreigners noticed, newspapers in eastern and southern China were investigating the deaths of workers and Chinese bloggers were documenting more details about their daily lives than foreign visitors could hope to obtain. It’s one of those examples of how erratic the Chinese world of information is these days: the Chinese press is throttled on many issues, but when it concerns workplace conditions — or, better yet, a factory with a boss in Taiwan — the issue resonates with enough notes from old socialist hymns that it gets reported in astonishing detail.

A lot of people are doing real work on this subject, trying their best to represent a complicated reality. Meanwhile, Daisey is saying 12-year-olds build iPhones… and saying that accomplishes what, exactly? Get Americans to boycott the product, and then 12-year-olds in China will lead a happier existence?

Mike Daisey does not understand the situation because he doesn’t care to. At the risk of being wrong, I’ll go ahead and say that I believe Daisey feigns righteous anger to move the needle and that he’s known all along how much easier it is to entertain than to practice accountability. But whoever thought he’d be proud of that? “What I do is not journalism,” he writes on his site. “The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.”

I’ll leave you with the Guardian‘s Bob Garfield:

Which is the most anguishing aspect of the whole episode. He has made me an accessory, not just by passing along his scandalous tale, but by exploiting my preparedness to believe him. Which is precisely how Big Lies work, as well. Like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration’s fictions about Iraq frightened America because they seemed to confirm the nation’s worst fears and suspicions. Mike Daisey may be no Dick Cheney, but how do I know?

On this particular issue, those who are interested in an intimate look inside China’s factories should read Leslie Chang’s Factory Girls.