I have come from seeing a film at the Regent Park Film Festival. I am not a professional film reviewer, nor was I able to attend the post-film discussion however I wish to share my thoughts and observations about this movie.
China Blue” is a movie about a young 14-year-old girl, Jasmine, who has migrated from the Chinese countryside to work in a city jeans factory. This film shows how the opening of the Chinese market, with its extremely cheap labour force, boasts a growing and prosperous economy that deals directly with Western suppliers. In a system based on the production, the labour force, China and many other Eastern countries, can compete aggressively due to their strength in human numbers. The workers in this movie are paid pennies per day while the factory owner makes approximately $40,000 per month and then the multinationals would make many times this amount in U.S. dollars. Jasmine, and her friends are merely trying to make money to send to their families, who are peasants in the country. These young girls sleep in the work dormitories; often work around the clock with an average of 3 to 4 hours of sleep per day in order to meet shipping deadlines. If these deadlines are not met, the factories are at risk of closing down as there are dozens of factories competing for export. The workers are fined for sleeping on the job, for not clocking in at the same time and for anything that affects the production.
Meanwhile back in the office of the factory owner, who in this movie is a former police chief, is meeting with management. He talks about ‘educating’ the workers so that they are productive – the factory walls are painted with slogans such as “If you are hardly working today, tomorrow you will be working hard to find a job”. Every worker is dispensable. At home, the wife of the owner prays each morning for a successful workday. The movie also shows resistance by the workers when they begin to strike because they had not been paid in months, and when they are assured they will get pay, they return to their posts. The movie openly demonstrated the inequalities between classes and the severe injustices. However the movie did not make any mention of the workers who injure themselves on the job. It is suffice to state that most presumably there would commonly be many work-related injuries – the workers were working unimaginable hours without breaks or nutrition – additionally it is also probably safe to state that as many of the workers are young females or males for that matter, that sexual exploitation is taking place in many forms.
This movie exemplifies the disgusting global capitalist system, which at any cost, must make a profit. It enslaves children by stealing their lives, their futures. We here in Canada benefit from this exaggerated slavery in China. Our governments meet with wide smiles to promote trade with China. Here as workers in Canada, we must recognize our connection to other workers around the world and vice versa. The movement in Canada has brought workers some benefits, such as lunch breaks, a limited hour workweek, sick time etcetera, but it does not suffice to shrug and say “boy are we lucky in this country”. While that may have some truth in it, there is more at stake here. As capital grows - as it is with the opening up of economies that hold the vast wealth of cheap labour or in other words, desperation of humans - workers in First World countries are being replaced by companies moving their bases to countries with a cheaper labour force. If one worker cannot supply their labour power for any reason, they can be replaced, no matter where we are in the world. Therefore the only way for workers, employed or unemployed, living in Western Europe or Africa, to fight back with both short-term and long-term demands, is to use our strength in numbers. We must understand our connection to the next worker and how the machine of capitalism is intricate and confusing. It is forever dividing workers; therefore it is imperative to recognize our power. Without workers, the machine must stop. Or similarly the machine stops when an economy falls to pieces such as in Argentina, and workers fight to control their own fates by controlling production and distribution.
China Blue is a clear example of one worker and her world, a world limited by bourgeois interests and growing class divisions.
