Child labor is suddenly an issue in China, where it traditionally was not. Children - especially if you only have a few - are too valuable not to send to school. That is suddenly changing, partly because of a research report into companies that produce products for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The rumor was first denied, then admitted and so now there is a real issue.
Access Asia's Paul French focuses on the issue of the labor shortage in Guangdong:
What a visit to Guangdong would tell you is not a story of worker shortages, but rather one of misallocation. Factories with poor conditions often have no shortages, while cleaner, better and newer factories struggle to staff-up... CSR reps, journalists and sourcers visiting factories around Guangdong report that the age of workers appears to be getting worryingly low, as the search for low end assembly workers intensifies. Add to this some more bad news in the run up to the Olympics (see our advertisers nervous about Darfur piece last week) with stories on the BBC, in the Guardian and from lobby group Play Fair 08 claiming to have found children as young a 12 producing Olympics merchandise in Guangdong (click here). All very worrying.
Even worser charges come from Shanxi province where a group of angry parents have set children free that were used for slave labor. Forty of them were rescued from brick kilns. The action came with a petition on the internet and was earlier this week taken up by the state media. From the AP-report:
It said up to 1,000 boys were being held, but that Shanxi and Henan police had shoved responsibility for investigating onto the other side.
"Our children's safety is everything, but who will help us? With governments on both sides passing the responsibility, where can we go for help?" the petition said.
More at the Wall Street Journal.
Paul French is also a speaker at our upcoming speakers bureau. If you want to book him for a lecture, do let us know.
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