China Blue

I saw this documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival 2005. This is an excellent documentary portraying the lives of textile workers in China. It puts a human face on the workers who make the blue jeans we wear (hence the name "China Blue"), and makes us stop and think about the products we consume.

As a teacher, I think this documentary would work well in enlightening students on the topics of international worker exploitation and the global reach of capitalism. It brings home the ideas that our Western consumer practices actually touch the lives of individual workers in sweat shops around the world. Since the factory workers are primarily teenage girls, a student audience should easily identify with their needs and desires, hopes and dreams, and frustrations and hardships.

When the balance of global power shifts, changing the world as we know it, it can be hard to fully reconstruct the historical realities. Today, the emergence of powerful industrial economies in countries that can become superpowers is barely understood. In 2005, The Economist newspaper ran an article entitled, 'How China runs the World Economy', and has recently acknowledged that China's GDP will overtake the USA within 40 years. The exact mechanism is shown in stark terms in China Blue, a mechanism with which the West cannot compete. But this is not a political film, it is a documentary chronicling one woman's struggle in a society very alien to our own.

The scene that sticks in my mind, and brings tears to my eyes just remembering it, is 16-yr old Jasmine and a goldfish. She has worked a 20hr shift, her pay is late, she won't be able to use the three days off a year she gets to visit her family because she can't afford the train fare. If she falls asleep on the job she can get fined two days' wages. The girls joke about staying awake and sometimes use clothes pegs to hold their eyes open. They feel lucky to have the job. Left alone at New Year, Jasmine gazes at this goldfish, the only thing in her world onto which she can project her pent up feelings of love and frustration, and says, "You are so lucky, you can sleep any time." Even sleep, the most basic of pleasures we take for granted, is mostly denied her.

Now before you get up in arms and want to boycott Chinese goods, check out the reality. It has been widely documented that in countries where they put the squeeze on factories to follow human rights, buyers simply go elsewhere, the original factories close, and kids like Jasmine, some as young as thirteen, turn to begging and prostitution. Same happens if Western companies like Nike put effective pressure on the third world factories to satisfy customers that their goods have been made to 'ethical standards.' So what happens - and what we see in the film - is a hypocritical game-play in which buyers and sellers are complicit. Workers are rehearsed on what to say when inspectors come, security guards make duplicate clock cards to show the workers did normal shifts with proper breaks, and everyone goes away 'happy'. Watching the charade, we feel a mounting sense of frustration. Jasmine also knows there is nothing that can be done. Her best 'hope' is that the person wearing the denim jeans she has worked all night to make really appreciates what has gone into them, and her feeling is not of bitterness, but of love, just hoping someone, somewhere, cares - that's all. She earns the equivalent of six cents an hour. That's before deductions for food and board.

Jasmine is, by Chinese worker standards, quite lucky. An Amnesty International representative, in the Q & A after the screening I went to, explained that at any one time there are several million Chinese undergoing 're-education through labour' which is a punishment handed out fairly lightly and means the government has a workforce at zero labour cost if push comes to shove.

One of Jasmine's fellow workers has managed to climb the ladder to a position where she gets a few hours off in the evening. She uses it to wait for her boyfriend in a neighbouring factory. He is under the same regime of non-voluntary overtime and often doesn't show, but she is content. "It's hard to find someone to love who treats you right," she says.

From a global point of view, China is simply going through what the West did years ago. Our Industrial Revolution only involved one third of the world's population: the rest are now catching up, and things will never be the same. Trying to halt China's growth (through protectionist measures) would be a disaster not only for the Chinese workers but it would close off a powerful source of future global prosperity.

Only with the end credits do we see how much harassment the filmmakers had from the authorities. Amnesty explained that a major crime in China is 'splittism,' which means anything that might be divisive of Chinese philosophy (and also explains why the peace-loving Falun Gong are targetted). Next time you put your made-in-China denims on, pause to remember the backbreaking toil that went into them.

I watched the screening of China Blue and this film changed my life.

I am by no means a person who does not keep up with the world and its issues, and I am still in shock by my ignorance of the working conditions in third world countries.

According to Micha, this movie did not even reflect the worst and I am disgusted by the inhumanity that backs these factories. Young, innocent women being taking advantage of because they don't know better.

There is absolutely no excuse for this, and somebody needs to put a stop to it. Because the corporations profit from this cheap labor, it is our responsibility, as consumers, to speak up. Afterall, corporations are driven by money, and the money relies on the consumer's purchases.

I have done some research on what organizations exist that are trying to regulate these working conditions. Unfortunately, it is not easy to have a voice, but I am very interested in getting involved with this issue.

Again, it is solely China Blue that is driving me to make a change. If more people would watch this movie, perhaps they would want to take initiative as well.

This is extraordinary movie we all must see about what we close our eyes and ears to - the exploitation of people for our consumer products. Very well made and a real breakthrough in documentary. Micha the director and his assistant Song Chen went to great difficulties to make this movie. Not easy to do this in China. Very raw story and its not a story - its Truth. We can do something by contacting manufacturers of denim jeans who participate in the exploitation by ignoring it. The movie is not about China or about the young women its about the dangers and disasters that impact consumerism done without thinking with ignorance

goddessfan

I saw this movie at a private screening organized by the producer. It doesn't stint on the complexity of the causes for the really long hours worked by Chinese factory workers. In one amazing scene, we see the factory owner negotiating with an English buyer. The buyer threatens to take his order elsewhere if the owner doesn't come down on price. I came away from this film thinking that complaining about "sweatshop" conditions in Chinese factories is simplistic. That's not what I thought before seeing this film. I also liked the long sweep of the story of one of the factory workers--from village to Shenzhen--and the detailed view of factory life in the dormitories of the workers. The movie makers got great access; they must have spent a lot of time on it.