The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends That Will Disrupt the World by Shaun Rein Page B
Authors: Shaun Rein
Tags: General, Business & Economics
Ads: Link
plan is to work here for several more years as long as I am young and physically fit, and then I will go home to be with my family. Maybe I will use my savings to open a small clothing shop.”
As Julie told me her story, I could hear alternating pride and frustration in her voice. Pride from becoming the main breadwinner in her family and from the respect this position commanded from her in-laws. The frustration was prominent when she spoke about living away from her daughter, and even more so when she explained to me that her husband would shortly be moving back to Jiangxi to be with her.
Practically speaking, Julie said her husband could probably earn almost as much in Jiangxi cobbling together odd jobs as in a factory in Zhejiang, and having at least one parent raise their child is better than none, so they decided he should move back home. Generations of Chinese children have been raised by grandparents over the last two decades, so parents in their twenties can find better jobs in cities, to work in factories like Laura Furniture’s in Guangdong. Sadly, these parents can often only afford to return home during the Chinese New Year holiday.
Job prospects are improving in rural hometowns, so one parent often moves back home to be with the child, like Julie’s husband. Construction in particular is slowing in first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing, and starting to accelerate in rural areas, so men are finding more construction jobs back in their hometowns. With wages often higher in service sectors that attract women, men are increasingly the ones returning home while the women stay in cities to earn more money.
Four of the maids who have taken care of my home’s affairs tell similar stories. All of them make far more money than their husbands do. One of them, Little Qian, told me that her husband was a scrap metal dealer in Shanghai. He combed garbage areas and picked up discarded metal from wealthier housing compounds for recycling. In a good month he made a third of what she did—and we provided her housing on top of her pay. Her husband finally decided to move home to Sichuan Province to raise their eight-year-old son, because salaries for the work he could get in his hometown were almost as high as in Shanghai.
Little Qian is barely five feet tall and slight in build. She tires easily. I often wonder what kind of life she would have had if she had been born a few decades earlier, when the economy was largely agrarian. Her value to the household probably would have been low, because she is too small and weak to contribute much in the fields. Although she is a good-hearted person, she has a hooked nose and gray-black buck teeth. She probably would not have been valued by her in-laws for her beauty, and would not have earned her family a big dowry.
In today’s China, however, Little Qian has become the main earner for her family, an impossible role for her only decades before. When she returns home for vacations, she always packs up bundles of goodies for everyone in her extended family. When she comes back from her trips home, she excitedly tells us about how happy each relative was to receive this box of cigarettes or toy car or that bottle of cosmetics.
Countless rural women like Julie and Little Qian have become the main wage earners in their families in just the last few years. The job sphere for even rural women is expanding at a very fast pace. Men are increasingly returning home to do what has typically been a female task: raising children. While uneducated men are often limited to low-paying jobs factory or construction jobs, women have expanded their reach and are able to work in restaurants, massage parlors, and other service-oriented jobs like secretarial work in white-collar companies, where pay is higher due to the tight service-labor market.
Women from all regions and all socio-demographic groups are seeing palpable changes in the quality of their lives, and are no longer desperate enough
As Julie told me her story, I could hear alternating pride and frustration in her voice. Pride from becoming the main breadwinner in her family and from the respect this position commanded from her in-laws. The frustration was prominent when she spoke about living away from her daughter, and even more so when she explained to me that her husband would shortly be moving back to Jiangxi to be with her.
Practically speaking, Julie said her husband could probably earn almost as much in Jiangxi cobbling together odd jobs as in a factory in Zhejiang, and having at least one parent raise their child is better than none, so they decided he should move back home. Generations of Chinese children have been raised by grandparents over the last two decades, so parents in their twenties can find better jobs in cities, to work in factories like Laura Furniture’s in Guangdong. Sadly, these parents can often only afford to return home during the Chinese New Year holiday.
Job prospects are improving in rural hometowns, so one parent often moves back home to be with the child, like Julie’s husband. Construction in particular is slowing in first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing, and starting to accelerate in rural areas, so men are finding more construction jobs back in their hometowns. With wages often higher in service sectors that attract women, men are increasingly the ones returning home while the women stay in cities to earn more money.
Four of the maids who have taken care of my home’s affairs tell similar stories. All of them make far more money than their husbands do. One of them, Little Qian, told me that her husband was a scrap metal dealer in Shanghai. He combed garbage areas and picked up discarded metal from wealthier housing compounds for recycling. In a good month he made a third of what she did—and we provided her housing on top of her pay. Her husband finally decided to move home to Sichuan Province to raise their eight-year-old son, because salaries for the work he could get in his hometown were almost as high as in Shanghai.
Little Qian is barely five feet tall and slight in build. She tires easily. I often wonder what kind of life she would have had if she had been born a few decades earlier, when the economy was largely agrarian. Her value to the household probably would have been low, because she is too small and weak to contribute much in the fields. Although she is a good-hearted person, she has a hooked nose and gray-black buck teeth. She probably would not have been valued by her in-laws for her beauty, and would not have earned her family a big dowry.
In today’s China, however, Little Qian has become the main earner for her family, an impossible role for her only decades before. When she returns home for vacations, she always packs up bundles of goodies for everyone in her extended family. When she comes back from her trips home, she excitedly tells us about how happy each relative was to receive this box of cigarettes or toy car or that bottle of cosmetics.
Countless rural women like Julie and Little Qian have become the main wage earners in their families in just the last few years. The job sphere for even rural women is expanding at a very fast pace. Men are increasingly returning home to do what has typically been a female task: raising children. While uneducated men are often limited to low-paying jobs factory or construction jobs, women have expanded their reach and are able to work in restaurants, massage parlors, and other service-oriented jobs like secretarial work in white-collar companies, where pay is higher due to the tight service-labor market.
Women from all regions and all socio-demographic groups are seeing palpable changes in the quality of their lives, and are no longer desperate enough
Similar Books
