Quotes of the Day

Karl Marx once wrote that "the worker becomes an ever-cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates." His observation was published 160 years ago, but it's an accurate commentary on the plight of millions of Chinese like Chen Suo, a 16-year-old assembly-line worker at shoe manufacturer Stella International located in the southern city of Dongguan in Guangdong province. Chen returned to her home in Shaanxi province in disgrace earlier this month after spending eight months in jail for participating in a labor protest that turned violent. "I wasn't thinking of breaking things or blowing things up," says Chen of the April rampage, during which about a thousand workers sabotaged machinery, trashed company offices and overturned a car. "But the boss hadn't paid us our money. It was impulsive, but there was nothing else we could do."

Here is the great irony of modern China: in the 15 years since the deaths in Tiananmen Square, the mainland has undergone unprecedented economic growth that has lifted millions out of poverty. Yet, amid China's still-incomplete transition from command to market economy, many among the class of workers the country's nominally Marxist-Leninist leaders are supposed to protect—the Lumpenproletariat—are experiencing the very capitalist dystopia Marx envisioned. "There's more economic development than ever before, but workers' rights are overlooked," says Li Qiang, director of the New York City-based rights-monitoring group China Labor Watch. "You can take the name Communist Party and cut it up. This is maximum capitalism."

The faster China pumps out products, the more powerless and frustrated factory workers have become with chronically low wages, poor living conditions and disregard for their rights. Discontent has boiled over in a rising number of strikes and protests. Taiwan-owned Stella International's six Dongguan factories, which employ some 50,000 people making shoes for more than a dozen overseas companies, including Nike, Reebok, Clarks, Sears and Timberland, were hit by at least three disturbances alone last spring. Grievances included the quality of cafeteria food, overtime policies and holiday pay.

Worker unrest is particularly rife in Guangdong, one of China's main industrial centers, where exports surged 24% to $190 billion—one-third of the national total—last year alone. Yet base assembly-line wages in the Pearl River Delta, the province's manufacturing belt, have been virtually frozen at about $80 per month for the past decade, according to a recent survey by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. Factor in inflation over roughly the same period, and average pay in real terms has declined by as much as 30%. The reason: China's rise as a manufacturing power has contributed to a surplus of global production capacity for all kinds of goods, from sneakers to DVD players to plastic lawn chairs. With the price of raw materials rising and factory profit margins shrinking, blue-collar workers are at the losing end of a long chain of supply and demand.

Until recently, they were virtually powerless to improve their lot. The country's only legal union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, is an 80-year-old Communist Party institution that for decades has aligned itself more closely with management than workers—in some cases its local branches are even headed by factory owners. Independent unions are banned, and workers suspected of organizing strikes are routinely jailed.

But just as for oil and soybeans, the labor market is also subject to the rules of supply and demand—and the Pearl River Delta is facing a manpower shortage of 2 million workers, according to the Labor Ministry survey. Manufacturing capacity has expanded so rapidly in the past several years that the stream of migrants from the poor countryside is no longer large enough to replenish the labor pool. Rising agricultural incomes in recent years have started to keep many would-be migrant workers back on the farm.

The labor shortage has given button-sewers and shoe-stitchers a bit of bargaining power for the first time. Factory owners cannot replace disgruntled employees as easily as they once could; wildcat strikes can cripple output for days or weeks. Almost imperceptibly, workers are starting to win concessions. As many as 3,000 employees at Shenzhen-based electronics manufacturer Haiyan staged a walkout in October to protest salaries that were below minimum wage; they were enticed back to the factory floor by a raise and the promise of back pay. A month later, 1,000 employees of the Shanlin electronics factory in the nearby city of Panyu returned to work after a two-day strike that secured them an increase in overtime pay and two days off each month. "I don't think they are really organized, not yet," says Anita Chan, a research fellow at Australia National University's Contemporary China Centre in Canberra. "But workers' consciousness is definitely increasing and they are aware of their rights like never before."

Emboldened though they may be, jail remains a very real possibility for agitators. Yet even those who have been convicted of inciting unrest are receiving help from an unlikely quarter: factory managers and their overseas clients. After the riot at Stella's Dongguan factory, 10 workers including Chen, the migrant worker from Shaanxi, were sentenced by a Dongguan court to serve up to three-and-a-half years in prison for destroying factory property. But Stella's managers (who say they were trying to address workers' complaints when the strike erupted), aided by foreign shoe companies and overseas NGOs, petitioned judges and Chinese officials on the workers' behalf, and in some cases even hired lawyers to appeal for lesser sentences. The court upheld the convictions, but rescinded the original prison terms, saying simply they had been "heavy sentences." All 10 workers walked free on New Year's Eve. "There's so much unrest now all over the place," says an employee from a multinational shoe company who monitors working conditions in Chinese factories. "And you just can't jail everybody."

With Lunar New Year approaching, tens of millions of the country's migrant workers will soon attempt to collect unpaid wages before heading home for the holiday. More clashes with employers are possible. Meanwhile, Chen is back home, trying to shrug off stares from neighbors who look down on her because of her stint behind bars. "To them it's like I went to prison for killing somebody," she says, "but it was just a strike." All part of the daily grind.

• Neil Gough | Hong Kong
• China's low-paid laborers have become a commodity. But the law of supply and demand may give them some bargaining power