Saturday, May 22, 2010

Labor Costs are Rapidly Increasing in China

There is no inherent reason for people in China to like being super-exploited any more than in the United States. It's just a matter of if there are other options for income, and the degree to which a certain expectation of treatment has arisen in the working class. As many others have suggested however, capitalism does seem to need a large pool of super-exploitable labor in order to thrive, and there are no China's left in the world. India's and Indonesia's infrastructures are too ragged.

From China International Business:

The departures lounge at Dhaka's Zia International Airport is packed with people waiting for the late night flight to Hong Kong. Bangladesh receives few tourists, but travelers of a different sort abound. One, a Japanese bag designer, clutches product samples made of her designs in local workshops. She concedes that the ‘green'-looking bags for an environmentally-sensitive clientele at home are not really ‘green.' But you can do such things easier in Bangladesh than elsewhere, she explains.

Two serious-looking men from Guangdong are here for a similar reason. They've shifted part of the production from a factory in Dongguan to Bangladesh. "You can do stuff you're not allowed to do in Dongguan," they explain, declining to swap name cards. Bangladesh's environmental laws are not as stringent as those back home, explains one. And apart from buying clothes locally the duo have built up a solid business selling dyes to garment processors in the area.1

No comments: