Topic 5 Globalization and China: Shenzhen. I. The Case of Shenzhen SEZ Questions: 1.What is the...

Topic 5Topic 5Globalization and China: Globalization and China:

Shenzhen Shenzhen

I. The Case of Shenzhen SEZI. The Case of Shenzhen SEZ

Questions:1. What is the glocalizing process in China?

2. How is the glocalizing process revealed

in the building of SEZ?

Theme:• how SEZs are built as glocalized landsc

apes in illustrating the process of China entering the global economy

Building Glocalized LandscapesBuilding Glocalized Landscapes

• SEZs are the outcomes of China’s engaging into the global economy. SEZs are already a formidable presence in the global economy

Building Glocalized LandscapesBuilding Glocalized Landscapes

• The process of glocalization- how the SEZs develop themselves into glocalized landscapes that serve to bring China into the world economy

• Focus on the development of Shenzhen SEZ

Shenzhen as an immigrant cityShenzhen as an immigrant city

• Shenzhen is an immigrant city, built quickly with a borrowed population.

• In 1979, the Central government and the Guangdong Government decided to upgrade a small town, Bao’an county, to the status of a city named Shenzhen.

Shenzhen before 1979


• In May 1980 the Special Economic Zone was set up.

• Shenzhen SEZ was erected as a test case as an economic development zone open to the global capital.


• Shenzhen thus was the specific place where global capital and the socialist state encountered each other and worked hand in hand, though not always in harmony, in shaping a new economy.

• Shenzhen is on the east of the Pearl River Delta. In the north it is connected to Dongguan, Weiyuan, in the south to Hong Kong, and in the east it faces Daya Bay.


• The Shenzhen SEZ is only part of Shenzhen city. It occupies one sixth of the whole city.


• The SEZ is special not only in its economic but also in its political and social aspects.

• There is a long iron curtain from east to west separating the SEZ from the non-special zone of the whole country; those who wanted to enter the SEZ require special permission from the Public Security Branch in their local regions.


• Before the setting up of the SEZ, Shenzhen was only a small town with 310,000 residents and less than 30,000 workers.


• The total population of the whole Shenzhen now was over 8.27 million and the total population of SEZ is over 2 million.

• In its population composition, less than 20% are categorized as permanent residents who have come from major cities and become state officials, entrepreneurs, technicians and skilled workers.


• Over 82% are temporary residents, which means they do not have the official household registration entitling them to recognized citizenship in Shenzhen.


• When they lose their jobs in Shenzhen, they are not officially permitted to stay in Shenzhen.

• It is clear that the expansion of Shenzhen and its Special Economic Zone is based on the mobility of migrants as temporary residents.


• In Shenzhen all workers and staff members are categorized into three kinds:

1. Guding zhigong( 固定職工 ), regular workers and staff members,

2. Hetong zhigong( 合同職工 ), contract workers and staff members,

3. Linshi zhigong( 臨時職工 ), temporary workers and staff members.

Key concept to remember!


• Guding zhigong refers to those employed by state-owned enterprises or government organs and they enjoy all the state welfare such as housing and food provision.

• Hetong zhigong refers to those employed on a contract basis by all kinds of enterprises; the contracts may last for three or five years. Most contract workers in Shenzhen are university graduates who are employed as technicians, skilled workers or management staff



• Linshi zhigong, temporary workers are the most disadvantaged in Shenzhen; not until 1988 were they officially given temporary contracts on a yearly basis.

• In the second half of the 1980s, the number of temporary workers increased rapidly and surpassed the total number of regular workers and contract workers.



• Most manual labour in the SEZ is undertaken by these temporary residents from rural areas. In Shenzhen, as soon as one becomes a legal temporary worker, one is then entitled to be a temporary resident.

• A rural laborer can get a temporary hukou( 戶口 ) in Shenzhen only if he/she is hired as a temporary worker.

The Transformation of Local The Transformation of Local CommunityCommunity

• Encouraged by the Open-door policies and the economic reforms, the local state of the villages greatly transform themselves by turning into companies.

• The local state of Blue River not only merely formed a company, but completely turned itself into a company in 1984.


• The former name Blue River People’s Commune was changed to Blue River Manufacturers’ Chief Company, under which it owned or joint-ventured over thirteen companies.

• The old government offices building remained, but it was expanded to include a new wing of four storeys connected to the old one.


• The “bureaucratic” structure of the Chief Company was changed and expanded as well.

• Now there was a General Office, an External Trade Department, a Finance Department, an Administrative Department, a Population and Birth Control Department, a Labour Regulation Department, and a Mass Organization Division which included a Youth Committee, a Women’s Federation and Trade Union.


• The Company itself was a mixture of pre-existing socialist “politics” and a reform market “economy”, a hybrid reflection of the ongoing development of the socialist market economy.



• the Blue River government gained complete independence in regulating foreign investment and local trade without any intervention from the upper levels.

• Blue River was not an exceptional case.


• It was the state, or political forces rather than capital, which served as the locomotive of economic development.

• Land was distributed to the families for less than two years in Blue River and requisitioned again in 1984 for the use of industrial development.


• Every household, according to the number of household members, was to be allocated a share each year in the yearly profit made by the Chief Company, formerly their village government.

• Every year, households obtained share dividends ranging from RMB 15,000 to 20,000.


• A local cadre proudly told,

It was almost ten times what the family could earn before. Nowadays people don’t need to do anything but just wait for their share dividend at the end of the year. What’s more, the family can free hands from farming and they can choose to do business.


• The local residents suddenly became rich, with their official identity changed from rural people to urban citizens and, with their economic status or class position totally altered.

– In terms of occupation, almost 80% of the local working population was self-employed persons.


− 10% were managerial or supervisory staff in the companies newly set up in the village.

− 10% worked outside the village, some holding a position in the District government or employed in big companies in Central Shenzhen or Guangzhou.


• The living standard of the village was comparatively higher than any other cities in China. Every family was well furnished with electric appliances, a color TV set, hi-fi disc and air-conditioners.

• not without worry - an economic recession in Shenzhen from 1997 till, as more and more foreign capital moved out of the SEZ to the much cheaper area in the internal cities.


• Foods, goods and daily necessities here were relatively very expensive. The prices were one-third higher in Guangzhou and probably double those in other northern cities.


• Yet as long as a family could afford it, they still preferred to buy imported foreign-labeled.

• Shenzhen ren- the people of Shenzhen, a broad cultural identity signifying a modern cosmopolitanism attached to the space and the people who lived there.


• The majority of economic producers, or the working class in the village, on the other hand, were not local residents.

• Of the total population, over 75% were temporary residents, migrant workers who had moved in from outside the village


• The socio-economic structure of Blue River village was thus conditioned mainly by a two-tiered system:

– One tier was local urban residents who not only possessed the means of production but also the space, the right of abode. Key concept to remember!


– The other tier consisted of rural migrants who had to sell their labor to the factories in which they worked, while having no right to stay permanently where they worked.

• These migrant temporary labour were three times the number of the local residents, and were the lowest status workers in the community.


HK Company in ShenzhenHK Company in Shenzhen

• The HK company, named Meteor, is located in “Blue River” in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, within the confines of the Special Economic Zone.

• The history of the HK Company in Shenzhen has demonstrated the development of the industrial village, Blue River village in SEZ, and the changing social relations of the local community for more than one decade.

Hong Kong Company in ShenzhenHong Kong Company in Shenzhen

• The Meteor was set up in 1985, a year after the village, formerly a rural commune, had undergone a dramatic change.

• It was an electronics enterprise which produced mobile phones and electronic route-finders for Phillips.


• Headed by five HK managers in each department, there were almost no communications between HK and local staff and workers.

• Huge income gaps and class status created mistrust among each other.


• Except for most of the engineers, technicians, managers, supervisors and some office clerks who came from urban areas, more than 80% of the work force formerly held a rural hukou.

• The work force in the Meteor, and in manufacturing industry as a whole was mainly made up of the rural population.

The Dormitory Labor Regime:The Dormitory Labor Regime:

• A new theorization on spatial politics of production and globalization

• Taylorism and Fordism to flexible accumulation is problematic

• The transnational political economy of production that links not only a new scale of the economic, but a new economy of scale

The Dormitory Labor Regime:The Dormitory Labor Regime:• Mass production and the space of work-

residence are extensively reconfigured for capital accumulation on a global scale.

• Transnational processes require intensive reconfiguration of time + rapid re-organization of space.

• Neglected- a more micro study to see how the spatial factor influences the production politics.

• Transnational re-organization gives birth to a new form of labor regime: the dormitory labor regime in China

The Dormitory Labor Regime in The Dormitory Labor Regime in China:China:

• Use of dormitories to accommodate migrant labour is a systemic feature of global production.

• Irrespective of industry, location, or nature of capital, Chinese migrant workers, are accommodated in dormitories within or close to factory compounds in China.

• We theorize this phenomenon as a “dormitory labour regime” to capture the recurrence of dormitory factories as the hybrid outgrowth of global capitalism and the legacies of state socialism.

The Dormitory Labor Regime in The Dormitory Labor Regime in China:China:

• Historically dormitories appeared in China, other Asian countries, US and European countries in early 19th and 20th Century

• Forms of living with the employer had occurred, as household and labour processes were more unified than under factory systems.

• Divisions between factory forms in Eastern and Western patterns of industrialization also reveal variability.

• In Japanese, Korean and pre-communist Chinese factories (especially textile industries) dormitory accommodation was typically provided by employers or contractors.

• Similar focus on young, single, migrant female workers

What is specific and noteworthy in What is specific and noteworthy in China?China?

• The re-emergence of these types of dormitories on a systemic basis.

• The recurrence of this old form is the hybrid outcome of global capitalism and state socialism.

• It reinvigorated through foreign-invested and private companies, local states and the central government in a globalising economic context.

• Virtually all companies utilize dormitories, whether rented from local authorities or increasingly provided privately within the enterprise.

Features of DormitoryFeatures of Dormitory

• Such dormitories are communal multi-storey buildings, housing several hundred workers.

• Rooms are shared, with typically between 8-20 workers per room. Washing and toilet facilities are communal between rooms, floors or whole units.

• living space is intensely collective, with no area, except within the closed curtains of the worker’s bunk, for limited private space.

• These material conditions do not explain the role of the dormitory as a form of accommodation or ‘living at work’.

Features of DormitoryFeatures of Dormitory

• Central to the dormitory form is a political economy of grouping of migrants, typically single, young and female workers.

• Such workers are separated from families, the customary locale, and daily practices and concentrated in a factory and workspace as homogenized labourers.

• Alienation of labour is therefore significantly more than the lack of ownership of product, tools and control of skills sufficient to support independent production.

• Workers in dorms are alienated from their hometowns, their parents, working within factories dominated by unfamiliar others, languages, food, production methods and products.

Labor Process ofLabor Process of DLR DLR1.Tied employment

2.Extending the working day - just in time labour

3.Labour allocation easier in more volatile product markets

4.Young workers, employers control skill definition

5.Greater control over workers’ job search

6.Inhibits labour organisation

7.Fresh supplies of young workers

Features of DLRFeatures of DLR

• Extends labour market– Market is not just local area– ‘Circulatory migrants’ – Labour costs can be depressed

• Recruitment networks– Advantages of networks for

management– Market versus network recruitment– In-province constraints on management

choice– Worker network constraints on

management

Types of Workers’ Dormitory in Types of Workers’ Dormitory in ChinaChina

1.Enterprises purchase land and build their own dormitory premises (often with factory buildings).

– These enterprises are usually large or transnational companies which possess a workforce of several thousands.

– A room of 30 sq. m. will be housed by eight to twelve persons.

– Accommodation is often free of charge, while some companies will deduct reminbi (¥30 to 50) from workers’ monthly salaries


2.Enterprises house their workers by purchasing their dormitories premises from the local government or private owners.

– Purchases of workers’ dormitories from a third party are not frequent unless the dormitories premises are very close to their factory buildings.


3.Enterprises rent dormitories from the local government or local residents

– This type roughly accounts to 80% of all dormitory provision

– These enterprises range from small to medium size, and usually have a workforce over a few hundreds

– A dorm room will be shared by eight to sixteen persons. It ranges from ¥20 to 80 each month inclusive or exclusive to the electricity or other expenses.


4.Workers themselves rent dormitories from the local residents in the city or in the industrial town

– A room will cost as high as ¥300 and be shared by four to six persons.

– single-sexed, and only a few would have dorms for married couple.

– Couple rooms for husband and wife working in the same company

– These rooms will be charged with a range from ¥100 to ¥200.


5.Enterprises rent apartments, hotel rooms and even villas as accommodation for their senior managerial staff.

– Renting apartments or flats from residential areas is the usually practice.

– An apartment will cost 1-2000 Reminbi depending on the quality of the housing.

Dormitory as Lived Site for StruggleDormitory as Lived Site for Struggle

• Institutional and power analysis: Dormitory labour regime as coercive control

• Return to Actor: dormitory as lived site for struggle

• Common fate in a “common house” nurtured the basis for collective action

• Kin and ethnic enclaves formed in the dormitory enhanced worker’s bonding and solidarity


• Dormitories as gendered space bound working women into a collectivity

• In times of crisis or strikes, the workers turned “soft” spaces - the kin networks, ethnic enclaves, sisterhood, and collectivities - into hard struggles

• Petition letters circulated from dorm to dorm with signatures collected in a single night.

• Strategies against the management in times of wage arrears, bodily punishments, insults or lay-offs were intensively discussed.


• On strike, workers were efficiently organized and spontaneously participated without any organizational help such as trade unions or labour organizations.

• Compression of time for production in this dormitory labour regime, in return, works against itself by shortening time for generating workers’ consensus and forming strategies for collective actions.

ConclusionConclusion

• Shenzhen is a dual city.

• A hukou is attached to employment, and once a migrant worker was dismissed, or left the job, he or she was not granted the right to stay in Shenzhen.

• As a dual city, Shenzhen is contributed to the dormitory labor regime

• Shenzhen is a place by them, contributed but not for them.


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