[quote]A Chinese company making products related to the Beijing Olympics has admitted it used child workers, despite initially denying the allegation…
Lekit manager Michael Lee told the BBC that a sub-contractor called Leter Stationery had hired a number of children in the school holidays last winter. They were each paid 20 yuan (about $2.50) a day…
Mr Lee, from Taiwan, said when he was initially interviewed about the allegation by the BBC at his factory he was unaware Leter Stationery had hired children…
“We didn’t know that they would hire children,” Mr Lee said, although the sub-contractor’s factory is directly opposite Lekit Stationary…[/quote]
So what’s the bigger story here, Taiwanese companies cashing in on the Beijing Olympics despite TW’s supposed opposition to the games OR Taiwanese companies complicit in child labour practices in China OR Taiwanese companies contributing billions in tax revenue for Beijing’s anti-Taiwan military spending?..
Whatever it’s a case of child abuse or otherwise, sometimes I do believe that there is a hugh difference in interpretating what is child abuse in Asia in the eyes of Western reporting.
A good illustration which I will like stress here is when I was young (barely 7), I use to wake up during school holidays at 6.00am in the morning to assist my mum, selling cookies and dim sum by the roadside to all my neighbourhood farmers who lovingly enjoy their hot meals before they started their journey to their farms. I don’t know whether it’s a case of child abuse or not, but obviously till now, I still enjoy and treasure all those precious moments.
Whether it’s by choice or by our way of life, Asians tend to teach their childrens that life is never too young to work and learn. There isn’t any summer camps to even think of, no computers, no Toy’R’us. What more sitting around doing nothing which even your neighbourhood ‘amu’ will paint you as lazy bone.
That’s also lead to a final question. Is it coming into reality that one fine day, Asia will be the richest countries surpassing even Western nations due to their nature of being hardworking and sacrifice? I dunno know but maybe some of you know.
Well, I’m not Asian and I was working before that age and I was getting up earlier to work (every day… not just on holidays), also. And I weren’t the only one doing so.
That’s not an Asian vs Western distinction. Its a developed vs undeveloped distinction. And in present day Taipei, its quite difficult getting any Taiwanese youth to work, or even who know how to work.
My wife runs a couple of stores and hires high school and college age kids… its amazing how few of them have ever lifted a precious finger to do any work at all… they seem totally unfamiliar with any implements of work, including mops and brooms… they wash dishes like they have never been near a sink (until we teach them, of course)… Its pathetic… many Taiwanese parents would rather their children study than waste time working.
A few years ago I decided to paint the common stairway in our building. Out of embarrassment, one of our neighbors sent out her college boy to help. He was a baseball player at NTU… big, healthy-lookin’ kid. But, he couldn’t handle or use a paint brush for shit. My boy, who was only 7 years old at the time was a far superior painter than this Taiwanese college kid. Honestly, my boy and I hurried to finish so as to minimize the mess this kid was making.
And what do you mean there are no summer camps, computers or Toys R Us? Taiwanese kids have loads of those things.
“It’s fun, I enjoyed it, it’s part of our culture” I bet you got paid well for that too. would you not rather have been chasing butterflies in the fields? kicking a ball? Sleeping? That would also have been the source of enjoyable memories. If you had no choice in the matter, and were forced to work there, then that WAS exploitation.
There are many other cases where the poor kids are actually locked in the factory they work in, and negver allowed out. Slavery still exists in many Asian and African countries, or ‘bonded servitude’, where to pay off a debt the family gives a child to work chipping stones or sewing footballs or weaving carpets or carrying bricks or digging in sand for old bullets or nickel nuggets or whatever…
Another problem is the expolitation on the wages front. If a kid does the same work as an adult, shouldn’t they get the same money? Qnd then if you have to pay kids and adults the same money, the incentive to employ kids disappears and job prosects for adults increase.
Asians do not have a monopoly on the concepts of hard work and sacrifice. This just shows how little you understand the culture of the West, in return. Ever heard of “the Protestant work ethic”? and in future, i bet the amount of work done in Asia shrinks too, as more and more people realise that you do not have to work your arse off to survive any more, and a lesiure class develops. it is already happening…
beebee, there is a huge difference between helping your mom and working for somebody else. Even in the civilized countries, family work is allowed, while working outside is not.
That I may be lucky but there was far from what we did. Cane sugars was planted abundantly at one time around the vicinity of 10km from our small town. Then there wasn’t any mechanized harvester to harvest the canes. They engaged part-timers, paying meagre money for every 100 sticks of canes cut. As small boys then (maybe 10-14 years old) having our holidays, we cycled all the way working on the field just to get some pocket money for our own needs. Our journey back then was more wonderful. We rounded ourselves going swimming, catching small fishes by the riverside and hey, what, stealing some lychees from the nearby farm.
Perhaps some of these children reported are just like us growing up in the similar environment. Unless it’s slavery which is a far more serious offense, I don’t think all child labour is considered child abuse until we truly understand the circumstances behind it.
Because they are not familar with the PR game or see no value in it yet. Or perhaps there is not evangelical culture in East that require everyone to convert before they are seen as equals.
I remember being a child no older than these people and would pack people’s groceries for a tip in a poor section of the city in the US. No guarantee wages or anything. Basically a street urchin dependent on the kindness of others.
Sucks to be poor. But if you’re given an opportunity to help out the family when you’re unskilled, what options do you have.
I guess I could have tried prostitution, but what about my future dreams of wearing white to my wedding.
Basically is there any proof of the workers being mistreated or working there against their wishes. Because if all you have is a bunch of kids that don’t have a better opportunity and taking away one of their family’s source of meager income, seems pretty harsh if you ask me.
It is like that argument since I don’t eat dogs, nobody else on this planet should be eating dogs. I will not tolerate people liking dogs in any other manner than the way I enjoy dogs. Damn those that actually make a living on the practice.
I agree with ac_dropout this is just a PR game. Very similar to the whole “prison labor is responsible for China’s economic growth” type of thing.
That said, I actually think it’s a positive this was brought to China’s attention, and I think Beijing’s taking the proper constructive attitude in making it clear that this practice has to stop.
There should be zero-tolerance on exploitive employment (the other ‘slave’ news in Shanxi is even more explosive on this account). Frankly, it’s too bad the owners are Taiwanese, because it means there’s basically no chance they’ll be executed or face other heavy punishment. But next time thats’ even an option, Beijing needs to put bullets into the brains of a few of these factory owners.
Hard to see how a couple of twelve-year-olds doing a bit of light packing is “child labour”. Maybe they were doing something else, or maybe they were doing just what the article says. There are armies of child beggars in the streets of Shanghai, and the kids can be rented for additional pathetic effect for primo venues such as the Saturday night exodus from 18 on the Bund and so on. Any beggar worth her salt who can’t make 1000 renminbi a night from the Bar Rouge slot on a Saturday night by hiring a particularly appealing baby really isn’t trying. Perhaps our worthy BBC etc. hacks will write a report about that some day. Or not. I guess not, because they can’t get a trade deficit or “renminbi is over-valued” angle on that one. Maybe the Economist will do a purchasing power parity index based on international begging incomes?
Isn’t it better to have kids working in a factory than exploited by gangsters who put them to work on the streets?
Government officials who say they are going to combat child exploitation can simply go to Nanjing East Road in Shanghai or hang about outside any nightclub on the Bund of an evening. If they can drag themselves away from whichever of Shanghai’s millions of openly operating brothels they have taken advantage of for the evening.
I still remember the old days when kids used to wake up early to fold and distribute newspaper. Although, not anymore.
However, I understand that it is still alright for young family members to work on the family farms in the US. Hence, a large number of children being maimed by farm machinery. However, the family farms cannot survive without their labor.
Or isn’t it better than them staying in some dirt poor village back in Guizhou or Guangxi where their parents or grandparents can barely afford to put food in their mouths, much less send them to school? Sorry, but unless these kids weren’t being paid something like a market wage, then I find all the criticism in this thread to be a bunch of moral posturing from people who have never lived in or around grinding poverty. Sure, running through fields full of butterflies is nice if your family isn’t just a few fen away from starvation or death from things like influenza or food poisoning. Is it a shame that poverty like that still exists in China? You bet it is, but to me it’s an even greater shame that some believe that kids won’t have to experience that kind of poverty if we just decree that they can’t work a few days in a factory. IMO, this would have been one of the few times when Beijing would have been right to have said “Fuck off. We’re not proud of it, but this is just how it is in a developing country like ours.”
There should be zero-tolerance on exploitive employment (the other ‘slave’ news in Shanxi is even more explosive on this account). [/quote]
Agreed, but was this really a case of exploitive employment?
Uh, come again? A factory employs a few kids to do light work during a school holiday and that warrants a bullet in the brain? It sure seems to me that some of those brick kiln bosses deserve lead in the head, but AFAIK, those are all mainlanders, not Taiwanese.
Somehow we always seem to target China for any slightest news, whether it is good or bad. The occassional trips to China doesn’t entail me on surface (huh, hasn’t got a standby over there yet?), into a heart-warming experience in terms of child labor/abuse as I faced in Mumbai, India. There, right in the Gateway of India - a tourist spot, is an unbelievable hugh crowd of dishevelled child beggars and even women, who swarmed around you like flees. And the most unforgettable moment came when one of the women there pleaded, "Mr, can you please lend me 10 rupees ". Yes, in English, a perfect spoken English. But that isn’t the exact point. Comparing India with China, the bet is that China definitely does a better job - within reasonably good result, in reducing proverty (logically reducing directly the number of child labor) but without deniable there is still pockets of child slavery/abuses around the country.
For all the excuses, Western medias ain’t keen to report sensational news out of India or South Asia not for the lack of more serious child labor issue…but obviously for reason, China is just too ‘beautiful’ a competitor to them to ignore.
… you can set your watch by Taiwanese reaction to criticism…
And abhorring child slavery is evangelical now is it? Who knew?