It’s tough to grow up
January 16th, 2009 by Kent KedlAs I was trolling through the New York Times Online news site’s litany of stories the other day, I skipped over the one about Oprah’s new bulge (is it a baby? post-holiday revelry? a missing pot roast?) and the U.S. President’s slide off into the sunset. However, my eye quickly landed on Nicholas Kristof ‘s op-ed piece provocatively titled, “Where Sweatshops Are a Dream.”
For any decent Westerner with a modicum of moral decency, the term “sweatshop” should send shivers down their spine (unless it is cute name of the trendy new workout place near their swanky uptown pad, then it should fill them with an intense desire to run out and purchase Spandex clothing in colors not found in nature). Visions of children working their fingers to the bone in unimaginable conditions and low pay waft through our minds.
But as Mr. Kristof so carefully says, the conditions of a sweatshop should always be assessed compared to the alternative. The alternative, in his op-ed, is a garbage dump in the heart of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where hundreds of people live among conditions even more unimaginable than a sweatshop. He says that, often, working in a demanding manufacturing environment is a dream for these people; a ticket to the good life of a roof over their head and a solid floor underfoot. What the “decent Westerner” might call deplorable conditions in the factory is a huge step up for the garbage-dump dweller.
This is argument that can still be made in Cambodia. Also in India. Even in the Philippines (where I did relief work in a similar garbage dump in the early 80s). But in China? Certainly, there are places in China of significant poverty – the new take from the government is to admit this and (slowly) start to expose such conditions in order to be able to show the improvements being made. And there are improvements here: big ones. And there are still many that need to be made (and maybe not so slowly).
But what struck me in reading Kristof’s artile is my sense that, somehow, China has passed places like Cambodia on the growth curve. China is certainly not a “developed country”, but neither is it thoroughly destitute. China is, as anyone who comes here immediately sees, a vast country of contradictions – where world-class business people in Shanghai (which I describe as “New York with a really big Chinatown”) are fellow citizens with the Gansu farmer making $1 per day.
In an earlier blog post, I talked about China “growing up” and experiencing all the pains of that experience. Certainly, China going from 12% GDP growth to 8% (or lower??) is part of that “growing up.” So is being held to higher quality standards in manufacturing, legal standards in IP protection, standards of humanity in life overall.
China is coming out of their adolescent phase, that growth spurt where you are thrilled that you are getting bigger but you wake up in the morning with your legs aching (and trust me, at 6’4” I know what this is like!) and your heart breaking at every supposed snipe and putdown. Thankfully, you stop feeling like that; you get older, more mature (and maybe even start growing out instead of up). You are also judged on different standards as a young adult. You are expected to behave differently in social situations (though are forgiven, I suppose, for the occasional college kegger) and are on a path to somewhere. People no longer ask you what you want to be when you grow up; you are grown up, and they can see what you have become.
No, China (thankfully!) is not Cambodia; but neither is it the U.K. It is somewhere in between. I, for one, am honored to be alive and witness to China’s maturation process (at least their modern maturity … they’ve had 5,000 of history and might demand a bit of respect for that alone). But anyone who works with the Chinese here needs to accept the almost-but-not-quite position where China is and needs to learn to live with the enviable contradictions found therein. Being a young adult is tougher; living with one can be even tougher.
