I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard of Shenzen over and over and over. Seems like anyone who manufactures in China, has a facility in Shenzen. I just pray I never get relocated there.
[quote]Chinese Success Story Chokes on Its Own Growth
. . . Few cities anywhere have created wealth faster than Shenzhen, but the costs of its phenomenal success stare out from every corner: environmental destruction, soaring crime rates and the disillusionment and degradation of its vast force of migrant workers. . .
Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village in the Pearl River delta, next to Hong Kong, when it was decreed a special economic zone in 1980 by the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Since then, the city has grown at an annual rate of 28 percent, though it slowed to 15 percent in 2005.
Shenzhen owed its success to a simple formula of cheap land, eager, compliant labor and lax environmental rules that attracted legions of foreign investors who built export-based manufacturing industries. With 7 million migrant workers in an overall population of about 12 million — compared with Shanghai’s 2 to 3 million migrants out of a population of 18 million — Shenzhen became the literal and symbolic heart of the Chinese economic miracle.
Now, to other cities in China, Shenzhen has begun to look less like a model than an ominous warning of the limitations of a growth-above-all approach.
While grueling labor conditions exist in many parts of China, Shenzhen’s gigantic plants, employing as many as 200,000 workers each, have established a particular reputation for harshness among workers and labor advocates. Monthly turnover rates of 10 percent or more are not uncommon . . .
“This path is now a dead end,” said Zhao Xiao, an economist and former adviser to the Chinese State Council, or cabinet. After cataloging the city’s problems, he said, “Governments can’t count on the beauty of investment covering up 100 other kinds of ugliness.”
. . . Some, like Ms. Zhang, who come here for the $100-a-month sweatshop salaries, end up trapped, literally too poor to leave. But many others quickly become disillusioned and return home. . .
While the city is dependent on migrant labor to keep its factories running, onerous residency rules discourage migrants from settling here permanently and make it difficult for them to obtain public services from education to health care. . .
The resulting rootlessness has fed a wave of crime of a sort hardly ever seen elsewhere in China. Gunfights, kidnappings and gang warfare are rife, and crime rates are skyrocketing. . .
there were 18,000 robberies in 2004 in Baoan, one of six districts in Shenzhen. By comparison, in Shanghai, a city of around 18 million, there were only 2,182 reported robberies for all of 2004. . .
prostitution, usually thinly disguised in karaoke joints and massage parlors, but increasingly in the open, ranks as one of the city’s biggest industries. In Shenzhen’s blue-collar neighborhoods, thick with fetid workers’ dormitories, the frustration with hard labor, merciless factory bosses, low pay and miserable living conditions is palpable.
“I’ve changed jobs many times,” said one man, a onetime factory floor manager, who was lying on a bunk bed in a stiflingly hot room jammed with other workers. “The pressure is very high in these jobs. They don’t give you weekends, or breaks — especially the Taiwanese companies.”
. . . Migrant workers describe the city’s labor market as a predatory environment filled with unscrupulous job brokers, fraudulent training courses and a multitude of other scams. . .
“Shenzhen may seem prosperous,” a worker said, sitting in his bunk in a steamy dormitory, “but it’s a desperate place.”[/quote]
nytimes.com/2006/12/19/world … ei=5087%0A
She was just a little shy at first. After i dyed the black patches of fur white and gave it a perm, she was in the mood for it.