Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (review)

Against a detailed backdrop of the changing political economy of South China, this interesting and timely sociological and ethnographic study introduces us to the contrasting labor regimes and gender patterns of two electronics factories, one in the (then) British colony of Hong Kong and the other across the border in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, in the People's Republic of China. Both factories are run by Liton Electronics Ltd.; both manufacture household audio equipment, such as circuit boards, CD players, and remote controls; and both hire women, almost exclusively, as line workers. Yet the similarities stop here. The labor management strategies and gender patterns of the two factories are remarkably unalike. Lee describes and analyzes these differences with ethnographic insight and theoretical sophistication.

Among the key differences between the two factories are their scale, the types of women they employ, and the worker-management relations. The Shenzhen joint venture factory was established in 1988 in the wake of China's more open "open door" economic policy. Like many other factories in Guangdong, Liton takes advantage of the huge pool of young women workers, most of whom are unmarried temporary-labor immigrants from provinces outside Guangdong. These young women are looked upon somewhat condescendingly as "maiden workers" (mui in Cantonese), and those from the northern provinces as buk mui or "maidens from the north." In the factory and in the dormitories, women workers experience paternalistic supervision and strict discipline. They are required to wear uniforms that distinguish them by rank, can be fined for infringements on the rules such as having long fingernails, are required to have permits to use the bathroom, and are docked pay if they miss work for medical reasons. Lee perceptively argues that these women are not simply working for economic gain and out of a sense of familial obligation. Instead, many come to Shenzhen to gain freedom and independence from parental control and familial obligation. Yet, Lee argues, localism—or networks and ties based on kinship and common place of origin and regional politics—has a great effect on the lives of these young women in Shenzhen. Patterns of hiring, promotion, production-line responsibilities, social groups, and dormitory life all reflect the importance of local ties. Thus Lee identifies the labor regime in Shenzhen as "localistic despotism," which stands in sharp contrast to the more subtle forms of "familial hegemony" expressed in the Hong Kong factory.

The Hong Kong factory has been in operation much longer than the Shenzhen plant. It appears more modern and comfortable, and the volume of its production is much lower. Since the opening of the Shenzhen plant, new products were first produced in Hong Kong on a small scale, and then later, when production was perfected and routinized, transferred to Shenzhen on a larger scale. The Hong Kong workers are mainly married women in their forties. Many of these women have worked at Liton for years, some for all their adult lives, or since the 1970s when Liton was a subsidiary of an American firm. Women earn about HK $200 per day (U.S. $12) in contrast to RMB 200 (U.S. $25) per month in Shenzhen. Although the pay is much higher than in Shenzhen, it is still meager by Hong Kong standards, yet women choose to remain there because it allows them the flexibility to balance family and household responsibilities with work. In contrast to the rigid rules and timetables at the Shenzhen plant, the women in the Hong Kong factory can, within reason, arrive late or take time off to take children to doctor's appointments or to meet with their children's teachers. The relationship between line leaders and workers appears more supportive, women cheerfully cover for one another, and they surreptitiously break rules while managers willingly look the other way. Half the...