"China Blue"

How “China Blue” Represents Current Chinese Society

             During the last couple of decades, China has developed at an almost unprecedented speed. After the [1] Reforming and Opening-up Policy led by Deng Xiaoping, almost every economic sector of China made significant developments. The economic growth rate has mostly exceeded 10% per year after the late 1970’s. Furthermore, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the total amount of US trade with China is $231.5 billion, making China one of the biggest exporting countries in the world.[2] In addition, China holds by far the most foreign-exchange reserves, which are worth more than $ 2.3 trillion in total. Therefore, with such rapid growth of its economy, China ranked as the second largest economy in the world, pushing Japan aside for the first time since the ranking started. How could China achieve such rapid development? One may attribute the cause to the massive investment that the Chinese government put in. Others may say that lowering the tariff and activating free trade was the main cause. Nonetheless, many people seem to overlook the fact that the cheap labor that China could offer was the key factor in its industrial development. In order to maintain the lowest possible price, many factory owners abused cheap laboring population such as children or women. The documentary “China Blue” carefully illustrates the reality of poor working conditions and maltreatments inflicted upon the child labor force in China.

              “China Blue” carefully observes the life of Jasmine, a Chinese 17 year old girl. She  moved from Sichuan province to Shaxi, Guangdong, a big industrial city in China to work in a blue jean factory called “Lifeng Clothes Factory.” At first, Jasmine is excited to earn money and give her family some financial aid. However, the reality that waits in front of her is much harsher than what she imagined. In order to remain as a worker of the factory, Jasmine has to deal with massive amount of work, frequently staying all night up in order to finish them all. Furthermore, despite such harsh works, Jasmine’s monthly pay is neither high enough nor consistently given. Presenting a poignant story of a young girl in China, “China Blue” evokes  a rational responses from the viewers by introducing a real situation that is currently happening.

             The film accurately delineates the poor working conditions in China with objectivity. One of the most unique characteristics of this documentary is that the film maker or the narrator is not inside the film itself. Rather, the film simply shows the audiences daily life of a girl named Jasmine working in a blue jean factory. Thus, the maker’s opinion is not directly shown in the documentary, making the presentation much more restrained and fair minded. With no extra narration, the film shows Jasmine’s room that she has to share with 12 other girls, which is barely large enough to sleep in and has no water or bathroom facility. In addition, she has to work from 8 a.m to 2 a.m. every single day without any proper break time. More than these, when the deadline for shipping the jeans comes close, she even has to work all night, pinching her eyelids with laundry clippers to keep herself awake. After all the toil, the amount of money she gets paid is not even enough to support her own life. Although she gets 48 cents per hour, which is much lower than what is expected, in the fear of getting fired, there is no way for Jasmine to protest. Surprisingly, Jasmine’s case is rather a lucky one, since many other workers get even lower payment since the minimum wage itself is extremely low in China compared to that of other countries. The minimum wage in China is [3] 31 cents per hour while it is [4] $4 per hour in South Korea and [5] $7.25 in the United States. With such low minimum wages, there’s not much for the workers to say about their wages to their bosses, resulting in such despairing working conditions.

             Throughout “China Blue”, there is a stark contrast that catches the viewer’s sight between the workers and the owner of the factory. While the workers of the Lifeng Clothes Factory have to suffer in harsh conditions and environments, working days and nights inside the factory, Mr. Lam, who used to be a police officer and is currently the owner of the factory, enjoys a luxurious lifestyle. He enjoys various hobbies, including calligraphy, to appeal himself more to the western buyers. The documentary clearly tells the viewers that there is only one thing that Mr. Lam cares about: the profit. To get more orders from western countries and earn more money, Mr. Lam has to agree to lower prices, and therefore this exacerbates the worker’s conditions. In addition to the factual representations of the lives of the two completely different classes, this contrast also evokes sympathy from the viewers. The wealthy and comfortable lives of high-class Chinese people emphasize the sufferings of low-class workers, and evoke stronger emotional responses. The representation of how the company solely pursues profits and nothing else is also shown in another film, “The Corporation.” According to ‘The Corporation’, the only goal for a corporation is to meet the maximum profit, regardless of the process used to achieve this goal. Using both logic and emotion, “China Blue” tells us that one of the reasons for such poor working conditions in China is solely due to the greediness of the owners.

            Besides its concern for the working conditions in general, “China Blue” also focuses on a more specific issue, “The reality of child labor in China.” In the documentary, it is easy to notice that most of the girls working in the factory are teenagers, who are supposed to go to schools rather than to work in a clothing factory. Although there is a law in China that bans the factory owners from employing children under 16 years old, this law apparently is not working very well. According to the Hong Kong Economics Newspaper, Child labor in China is currently on the increase. What is more shocking is that not only Chinese corporations such as Lifeng Clothing Factory, but also globalized western companies exploit cheap child labor. [6] In particular, Apple, a world famous computer corporation has recently admitted its use of child labor with unjustly low salaries in some of its Chinese factories. [7] Such problems have risen to the surface when, in 2009, 13 children were killed or severely injured as a result of a factory explosion in Guangxi, all of them in between the ages of 7 to 15. The documentary’s objective representation of the child labor problem in China induces the viewers to think once again about the problems in a logical manner.

             Overall, the documentary objectively explores how severe the problems of child labor are in China, and how these workers have to toil themselves in a terrible working conditions to earn the money that is not sufficient enough to support one’s life. The main feature and the strongest point of “China Blue” was that it did not solely resort to emotional responses. By excluding the narrator from the story, the film achieved much stronger logic and evoked much more reasonable responses. However, it did not neglect the need of emotion; the film evoked sympathy from the viewers not by using emotional and strong language, but by presenting a clear contrast between the lives of the poor and the rich.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform

[2] http://www.economist.com/node/17257777

[3] http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/humanrights.html

[4] http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/06/113_47717.html

[5] http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm

[6]http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/02/27/apple-child-labor-china-history-sketchy-manufacturing/ 

[7]http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=104&oid=001&aid0002977860

AP Lang essay - Muckrakers

Is it honor to be called a "Muckraker?"

           Although President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term ‘muckrakers’ to insult some journalists, many journalists nowadays including Jessica Mitford take the term as a praise. In fact, Muckrakers play an important role in keeping our society clean and just by exposing faults and misconducts of famous individuals or companies. The works of the journalists in digging out the unjust side of the public is, in some ways, what protects the citizen’s freedom and rights in a nation, as shown in the cases of the Watergate scandal, Domino Pizza, and North Korea.

           The Watergate scandal accurately delineates the power of the journalists to correct socially unjust events. President Nixon, who was later on found to be guilty, at first tried to conceal his misconduct by firmly denying his part in the scandal. Because many people who were involved in the scandal were closely related to CIA and FBI, the investigation on Watergate scandal was not very active. However, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalists in Washington post, started their independent research on the scandal, the public started to pay great attention to the incident. With the attention of millions of American citizens, it was nearly impossible for Nixon to evade his guilt. Consequently, when Nixon’s guilt was about to be confirmed, Nixon eventually admitted his misdemeanor and resigned from the presidency.

           Journalists play an important role not only in uncovering an individual’s faults, but also in exposing certain companies’ misconducts. In particular, Domino Pizza decided to annul its “30 minutes delivery” system after the journalists’ criticism on such policy. A couple of days ago, one 18 years old student died while delivering pizza. Later on, when it was found out that the student had to speed up and ignore the traffic light in order to deliver the pizza on time, many journalists criticized pizza companies for exchanging adolescents’ lives for their profits. Such criticisms brought massive responses from the previously indifferent public, and eventually led the companies to abolish the policy that used to risk the deliverers’ lives.

           The crucial role that journalists play on the justice is more clearly shown when we take a look at the case of North Korea: a country where there is no true journalist. Unlike most of the other countries in the world, North Korea is under the dictatorship of Kim Jong-il. Therefore, freedom of journalism is not guaranteed – in fact, the journalists are only allowed to write the articles that praise the meritorious deeds of their dictator, Kim Jong-il. As a result, the citizens have no way to know the serious crime that their leader is perpetrating – many of them firmly believe that North Korea is the best country to live in and that Kim Jong-il is the best leader in the world. Unlike Egypt, where the journalists were at least allowed to write independent articles, the complete blockage of journalism in North Korea left the citizens unaware of their own situation, and led to the sufferings of the North Korean citizens, taking away their freedom and rights.

           It is true that some journalists tend to go too far in the pursuit of their stories. Some reports are frequently found to be exaggerated and even misinformed. Nevertheless, as the aforementioned cases show, the role that journalists play in keeping the society’s justice and people’s rights is so crucial that it should never be overlooked. In this aspect, it is not surprising to know that Jessica was happy to accept the term given to her, “Queen of the muckrakers.” Without the journalists, our situation may not differ so much from that of North Korea.

“I like turtles”- The Viral Infamy

“I like turtles”- The Viral Infamy

           Just a couple of centuries ago, people were living in their own separate pieces of world. Each of them was an expert in knowing what’s happening in his small town – who’s getting married, who’s moving in, or even, who’s in a good mood and who’s not. In contrary, they were completely blank on something beyond the bound. The Europeans found a new continent, but no one in Asia was aware of it. However, as the media developed, such barriers all over the world started to collapse. People started to receive the news from all around the world within couple of seconds. And this is not the end. Not only important news that would make up the first page of the newspaper, but also trivial happenings without any significance started to spread out virally in the internet. Granted, such phenomenon surely has some benefits. However, the problem is, when such videos are spread rapidly via internet, certain people that are inside the video may be extremely criticized, and as a result, socially alienated.

           In fact, the “turtle boy” could be considered as a beneficiary of the viral videos. His simple three words, “I like turtle”, which would normally provide some chuckles and then be forgotten gave the boy immense spotlight and money. Same case applies to the “Double rainbow guy.” The man’s exclamation on sighting a double rainbow may bring out some laughter from those near him, but that would be it. Nonetheless, with the help of Internet, the Rainbow Man became one of the most nationally-renowned people, and as a result, earned both fame and money. Some even use such aspect of the internet as a chance to achieve their goals: a man uploaded a video of himself following Yuna Kim in the hope of getting recognized and becoming an actor.

           Despite the aforementioned benefits of viral videos, the side-effects that the Internet has should not be overlooked. The suicide rate of Korean celebrities is higher than most countries. Korea also has the highest rate of Internet users. A coincidence? Probably not. There are numerous articles and clips that include uncertified facts or rumors regarding celebrities posted daily in the Internet and there are hundreds and thousands of replies that condemn the celebrity based on such rumors. Moreover, when the video of “Dog poop girl” was posted on the You Tube, the girl was so severely criticized from the people all over the nation that she had to quit her job and stay at home all day – basically a complete alienation from the society.

           The development of the media was apparent during the last hundred years, and the final form of such development is the internet. Although the rapid spread of information – both important and unimportant- through the internet certainly benefits the majority, people should not forget that the Internet is also capable of giving incurable wound to some people.