FEATURE: China View - A roundup of stories making the Chinese press

百宝箱

by Stephen Frost [email protected]

The China Youth Daily (21 August) reported that a survey conducted by Nankai University showed that most people in China believe commercial bribery is part of usual business practice in the country. Most respondents said that a business deal can only be maintained well if people provide a treat or give some gifts to their business partners. About 77% of interviewees said that they offer discounts and gifts to business partners as part of their sales approach. Most of them do not have much confidence in the anti commercial bribery movement in China. Only 9.09% of the interviewees think that commercial bribery can be eliminated completely. 30.77% of them think that commercial bribery can be checked effectively. 49.65% of them said it is difficult to say and hard to have any great effect. 10.48% of them think that there will not be any obvious effect. The cartoon (from the China Youth Daily, 12 August), shows an older man holding a contract in his left hand and a stack of notes labeled “commercial bribery”. The younger man (left) is holding a sign in red stating “Anti-corruption” and cutting off the older man’s right hand with a large knife.
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Regular readers will recall the Apple iPod story from mid-June, when the Mail on Sunday ran a story about alleged sweatshop conditions in Foxconn, a major electronics supplier in southern China (see CSR Asia Weekly, Vol. 2, Week 25). That story had its conclusion this week with the release of Apple’s audit report on the Foxconn facility. The short version of the report is that everything is all right except for a few unremarkable violations. But that’s not the story I want to include here (you can find the Apple audit summary on the company website). The story that interested me is the one that nobody else seems to have noticed but also mentions Foxconn. Maybe it’s because it was in the Chinese press and the English-language media seems to have an aversion to running stories that originate in the mainland.

One of China’s most highly regarded newspapers, the Southern Metro News (9 August), ran a story entitled “Two workers to a bed? Foxconn violates workers’ privacy”. Given that the Apple iPod story generated so much controversy in the English-language media, I thought that such a headline would have caused the Mail on Sunday at least to run a follow up. The story went as follows.
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A subsidiary of Foxconn, Fudin Precision Component Company (富顶精密组件(深圳)分公司), is alleged to have requested a number of female workers to share one bed between two. Fudin has 2,000 workers and recently changed from a two-shift system to a three-shift system. In doing so it had to recruit new workers. However, with more workers, the company discovered it didn’t have enough bed space. Thus, the company requested a number of female workers to share their beds with another worker.

, W4 C" U- `6 [4 k, X' T/ O7 |Employees on day shift were instructed to share their beds with night shift colleagues. With no consultation of any sort, Fudin management posted a notice on Saturday 5 August that stated: “As instructed by the manager (shangji), please reserve the No.1 and No.5 beds for new employees, as we have many new employees and the new dormitory is still being decorated. The bed for day shift and night shift workers should be shared.” The dormitory manager is reported to have said that bed sharing will run from 6 August to 10 September.
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- G7 [/ B! l2 e( Z, N+ T7 aA manager with the name of Liang at Fudin explained the company had recruited many workers because overtime working hours had violated China’s labour law and the company decided to change from two shifts to three shifts to correct the problem. However, the dormitory redecoration had led to the bed-sharing problem. Liang admitted the factory hadn’t managed the situation well and failed to communicate properly with workers on the issue. It had, Liang said, ended up in an embarrassing condition.

百宝箱

Currently, each six-employee dormitory sleeps eight persons. Fudin has 36 dormitory rooms over seven floors.
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[SF: That this story has not been reported suggests a deficiency in global media news gathering techniques. A Google news search, for instance, reveals around 300 articles about the Apple audit report on Foxconn. However, even though the Fudin story was published by the Southern Metro News a full week prior to this second round of Foxconn stories, not one Western media outlet deemed the Fudin story newsworthy. It is worth noting that factories with whom CSR Asia works and has contact in China believe the Foxconn and Fudin stories — as published in the Chinese press — have provided important lessons regarding the necessity to ensure compliance with Chinese laws. I don’t believe companies operating in China or their stakeholders are being well served by current levels of news reporting on Chinese workplace conditions.]

The People’s Daily (19 August) reported another four unionised Wal-Mart stores in China (up from 15 to 19 stores during the last week). The paper also reports on five agreements between the company and the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). They are: i) all Wal-Mart stores in China will form an organising committee for the union and will comprise representatives from higher level ACFTU organisation, Wal-Mart store managers and worker representatives (the agreement states that management representatives should not number more than 20%, and anyone more senior than middle-level management cannot join the organising committee); ii) chairmen, vice-chairmen and trade union committee members must be elected and approved by a senior level union organisation; iii) managers or their relatives cannot hold the positions of chairman, vice-chairman or trade union committee members; iv) Wal-Mart stores should promote trade union and labour law to their store employees; and v) the trade union should support Wal-Mart in the management of the store.

( p8 Y" I( C5 r1 C5 s2 r7 RStill on workplace conditions, an interesting story from Ladyonline (14 August) raises the issue of workers’ rights regarding photographic images. A number of night-shift workers at a dyeing factory in Huadou (Guangzhou) complained that management asked security guards to take photos of them when they fell asleep at work. These photos were enlarged and posted in the factory’s canteen with a 20 yuan (US$2.5) fine notice. Workers said that in August, the factory suddenly announced a rule that said if any night-shift worker is found asleep during work, they would be punished by having their photos taken, fined and even fired. So far, 10 male and female employees have had their photos posted and been fined. Although these employees have asked the factory many times not to post their photos in public, management has carried on with the practice, which has in turn generated more employee anger. Workers say that since they do not get a day off and are required to work 12 hours every day, they feel tired and often fall asleep during work.
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0 C; v1 ?) n! f' h# U% Z0 v# jTurning to the environment, paper mills in Shenyang have been told they face suspension and even closure if they do not meet strict wastewater control standards, a leading official in the city’s municipal government announced. The local authority is to launch a major campaign against polluting paper mills, the biggest water polluters in the area, in the remaining months of this year. Statistics from Shenyang environmental protection bureau show that there are 53 paper mills involved in the campaign, and at present only one of them is able to meet the required standards. “No company has the right to make money at the expense of the environment. It is illegal and we will not allow it any more,” said Wang Xiangkun, vicemayor of Shenyang, in Liaoning Province (China Daily, 22 August).

2 }$ A& g' D8 m: n: fAnd now for news that should warm all our hearts: China Daily (22 August) reported that a Shenzhen company has recently been fined 5,000 yuan (US$625) for sending a vast amount of junk mail since January this year in what is seen as a warning to spammers. The penalty, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, was meted out based on a national antispam regulation, “Measures for the Administration of Internet Email Service,” which was announced in March.