 China's richest woman, the biggest paper producer in the country, was recently found to be running a sweatshop in Guangdong Province. This shocking revelation came from a report by a Hong Kong University student group. Even more interesting was the response from the Guangdong trade union, which denied the sweatshop designation, claiming that the paper factory merely has management problems.
This claim aroused much more discussion than the news itself.
The China Youth Daily ran an article calling the union's claim "flimsy and reckless." In the students' report, a lack of insurance and infringement of workers' rights were listed as the main conditions that constitute a sweatshop. While the union based its denial of that conclusion on a report of its own, the author questioned whether the investigation was designed carefully. The survey was done in a high-profile manner, so workers were probably frightened to speak their minds. The author does not believe the union report reflects the situation accurately.
The Chinese Business Review ran a comment saying parameters must be set up to define a sweatshop. The students grew up in a more legally regulated and transparently managed environment, and they categorized the paper factory as a sweatshop. However, for lack of any clear rules and regulations in this regard, Chinese enterprises and even some state agencies tended to deny the designation to eschew their respective responsibilities. The union should lobby on behalf of the workers, but they downplayed the accusation, against their own interests. The mainland needs to define its own terms before it can pass rulings on such situations.
The Jinan Times posted an article probing into the differences between the sweatshop defined by the students and the mere management problems the trade union claims. In the author's opinion, the union had no intention to hide the problems at the paper factory by reassessing the situation. The differing economic conditions between Hong Kong and the mainland resulted in differing evaluations in the recognition and definition of the matter.
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