Why Chinese enter the US through the Mexican border – Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

A large number of the illegal immigrants entering the US from Mexico are Chinese, and not only poor Chinese, says China scholar Ian Johnson in DW. They mostly rely on dubious information on TikTok and have no clue what kind of adventure they get into, he adds.

DW:

The phenomenon of Chinese people entering the United States via the southern border has come to be described by the term “Zouxian,” which can roughly be translated as “take the risk” — and the term’s broad dissemination on social media platforms has led many young Chinese to do just that.

“They rely on social media more in China for getting their information,” said Ian Johnson, a China expert at the US Council on Foreign Relations. “In the Western countries, you would say: ‘What does the mainstream media say about it?’ But, in China, there is no way to fact- check.” Johnson said it concerned him that so many of those young people have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

Johnson said the situation would not just hit the very poor.

“The economic slowdown is affecting broader ranges of the population, including the lower middle class,” Johnson said. He added that increased political persecution under President Xi Jinping has also fueled a desire to leave China behind.

More in DW.

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How China moves into Africa – Howard French

 

Howard French

Former New York Times correspondent Howard French, author of  China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa, discusses at the International Peace Institute how now two million Chinese immigrants and 2,500 Chinese companies build up an over US$200 billion trade between China and Africa.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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Xi Jinping's devilish dilemma's - Victor Shih

Victor Shih

Fighting the Covid-19 virus and saving the economy might not go very well together, says political analyst Victor Shih in Al Jazeera. While there is very little international supply chains can do at this stage, as Chinese governments make decisions, says Victor Shih, the message for the long run is: diversify.

Al Jazeera:

While that situation persists, global supply chains of everything from eyeglasses to cars, chemicals, batteries and electronic components remain crippled. 

"The instructions that we know Xi Jinping issued, are in a way in deep contradiction with each other," Victor Shih, associate professor of political economy at the University of California San Diego, told Al Jazeera by phone. 

"If the authorities are really doing everything possible they can to prevent new cases, then they would have very stringent measures to prevent migrant workers coming back in," Shih said. "But that, of course, will hamper economic activity."... 

Analysts say an even bigger issue is that thousands of small- and medium-sized factories, assembly plants and facilitators of global supply chains in those key manufacturing areas remain out of action. 

"A lot of these smaller companies are already operating on very thin margins and many of them have taken on a lot of debt," Shih said. "So even a few weeks of not having any business, not having any cash flows will potentially bankrupt these companies. This is why they don't pay their workers because they literally don't have the money." 

Many such plants either remain shuttered or are only slowly cranking up their activities...   

While global companies with international supply chains can do little to escape the short-term disruptions to their China operations, the long-term message to them is clear, says the University of California's Shih: Diversify. 

"This is yet another reason for a lot of foreign companies, especially those based in North America and Europe, to really try to diversify their supply chains," Shih said. 

"With global warming and with the advent of cheap airline and transportation infrastructure, you will have the potential for pandemics breaking out, not just in China, but other developing and maybe even advanced countries," he said. "So the more diversified a company's production chain is, the better they are able to weather these different shocks."

More in Al Jazeera.

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No children's day for left-behind ones - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

June 1 is Children's Day in China, but for those left behind at the countryside, there is no Childrens' Day, writes author Zhang Lijia in the South China Morning Post. Earlier she wrote Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China and is currently working on her next book on left-behind children.

Zhang Lijia:

“Dear boss at the construction site,” wrote Liu Jiachao, a 12-year-old “left-behind child” from central China’s Hubei province, in his wish list one year ago. “Children’s Day is approaching. My father rarely does things with me. Could you please allow him a day off on June 1? I want to have a meal with him.”

Every year, millions of urban children in China enjoy a day off on Children’s Day, spending it in parks or playgrounds, often accompanied by their parents. For children of migrant workers such as Jiachao, however, the occasion reminds them of their disadvantaged position. 

This year, with Children’s Day around the corner, my thoughts once again turned to this group of children. In the past three years, I have spent many weeks at a picturesque village named Jidao in Guizhou province to research a book on left-behind children. Here, driven by poverty and lack of job opportunity, more than half of the able-bodied villagers have left for the city, joining the biggest tidal wave of migration in human history.

More in the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form. 

Zhang Lijia is in the middle of moving from Beijing to London. Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

The forgotten left-behind children - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Very slowly the dreadful verdict of China's approximately 30 million left-behind children on the country-side is slowly getting more coverage. Journalist Zhang Lijia, preparing a book on the issue, summarizes the problems for the New York Times. Why have they been forgotten?

Zhang Lijia:

And while urban children have thrived academically in recent decades, that has not been the case for their rural cousins, especially those who have been left behind. A study by Stanford University researchers, in collaboration with Chinese academics, found that children in the countryside were much less likely to complete high school. Those with both parents having left for the city perform markedly worse in school than those having one parent around, and boys are affected more than girls.

Other factors contribute to low academic achievement in rural China — notably, poor teaching standards and facilities at rural schools, and prohibitively high tuition costs (only nine years of school is free). But the crucial factor is the absence of parents.

Even children from the countryside who move to the cities with their parents are unlikely to get a good education. In recent years, restrictions on migrants to the cities have been easing. But in most cities, migrant parents still have great difficulty sending their children to good local schools because they need documents such as a resident permit, job and rental contracts, proof that taxes have been paid and so on. 

Several sensational stories in recent years have brought attention to the problem of left-behind children. Among them, in June 2015, four left-behind siblings committed suicide together by swallowing pesticide in Guizhou Province. 

In response, in 2016 the government called for better social services to protect such children. But on my recent visits to the countryside, in interviews with children and parents, it’s clear that a great deal more needs to be done. Rural education and village-level social services still lag. And migrants must be allowed to send their children to good local schools in urban areas where they work — and not substandard, makeshift schools for migrant kids. 

Without effectively addressing the problems facing left-behind children and providing for the needs of rural youths, the vaunted “Chinese Dream” will remain unfulfilled for much of the country.

More at the New York Times.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Our left-behind children - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Millions of migrant workers left behind their children in their home villages, developing mostly unheard problems. Author Zhang Lijia, who earlier published Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, is now working on a book on this hidden drama, including epidemic suicide, and she started publishing their stories in the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia:

Yuzhong is part of China’s lost generation known as the left-behind children. Last year, according to government statistics, there were 9.02 million minors who matched the profile of Yuzhong: rural children both of whose parents were working away from home or where one parent was working and the other did not have guardianship of them. A much wider definition, which counts all children with at least one parent as working away from home, would put the figure at 61 million. 

Wang Fuman, last week

Their plight was once again thrust into the national spotlight last week when a photo of Wang Fuman, 8, with frost covering his hair and eyebrows, went viral. Fuman had walked 4.5km (2.8 miles) in freezing temperatures – minus nine degrees Celsius (15 degrees Fahrenheit) – to school, and his story raised more than US$300,000 for the poor in China. 

But more often, stories about the left-behind children, who number close to Britain’s total population, don’t have such a happy ending. They have become a massive social problem that has produced a raft of tragedies that have shocked the entire nation. 

In June last year, four left-behind children from the same family, ranging from ages five to 13, committed suicide together by swallowing pesticide in Bijie, in impoverished Guizhou province.   

In November 2012, five boys died from carbon monoxide poisoning after starting a charcoal fire trying to stay warm inside a dumpster. 

The problem of left-behind children is most severe in Anhui, Henan and Sichuan provinces, the key sources of migrant workers, where 44 per cent of rural children live without their mother or father. This is far higher than the national average of 35.6 per cent, the survey found. 

The loss of solid family structure at a young age can lead to severe mental health issues, according to a report by the civil society group Shang Xue Lu Shang and Beijing Normal University. 

“Companionship is an important element that contributes to a healthy psychological condition in a child, to which a family’s income or social class is not necessarily relevant,” the report said.

More in the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Zhang Lijia? Do check out this list.

A visibly angry Zhang Lijia commented on the forceful eviction of migrant workers in Beijing at CNN in December 2017.
 

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Beijing shatters China dream for migrants - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel, a book on prostitution in China, comments on the forceful eviction of migrants in Beijing. It shatters their China dream, she tells Sky News. How can you do that when you call yourself a socialist country?

Zhang Lijia is a speaker on the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? 
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Migrants are the unsung heroes of China - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

A visibly angry Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, shows that the eviction of migrants in Beijing - described by the insulting term "low-end population - is raising the tensions in China's capital. "We live in a socialist country," she fumes at CNN. "They are the unsung heroes of our country."

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An uplifting book on a sad subject: review of Lotus by Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Commentator Dan Southerland of Radio Free Asia is clearly touched by the moving book Lotus: A Novel by journalist Zhang Lijia on the life of prostitutes in China. "An uplifting book on a sad subject," he says about the book.

Radio Free Asia:

A second book, titled simply Lotus, is a novel that provides deep insights into the lives of the migrant Chinese workers whose cheap labor has created China’s economic miracle. 

Among those workers, thousands of women who feel crushed by assembly-line factory work in the big cities have turned to prostitution.  A character named Lotus is one of them. 

Author Lijia Zhang creates a sympathetic portrait of this young prostitute, at the same time shedding light on the plight of China’s migrant workers. 

As journalist and writer Ian Johnson says in a review, Zhang's book opens a window into “a land of underground sex trade, corrupt police, desperate migrants, and flawed characters trying to make the right decisions.”... 

Her sympathetic portrayal of the life of a prostitute named Lotus working at a massage parlor in the economically booming city of Shenzhen also turns out to be a love story and a testament to one woman’s strength. 

Lotus’s story begins as a typical one for many migrant workers, the unsung heroes of China’s economic rise. 

Her massage parlor in Shenzhen lies hundreds of miles to the southeast of her rural village in Sichuan Province, and she can rarely afford to make a trip home. 

Her main aim in life is to send money home to assist her family and ultimately to help her brother Shadan realize his dream of entering a university.  He would be the first in his poor village to achieve this goal. 

Her family has been told that Lotus is working in a Sichuan restaurant in Shenzhen and not as prostitute. 

Like so many migrant workers, she had arrived in Shenzhen to work in a factory outside the city. Her cousin, nicknamed “Little Red,” had talked her into taking the job. But after her cousin died in a fire at the factory, she decided to find work in the city. 

When her lack of a high school diploma disqualified her from the best jobs, she turned to prostitution, first as a street walker and later in a massage parlor, often fronts for prostitution. 

While officially illegal, prostitution has become an industry in China that would appear to be hard to eliminate, though police do launch periodic campaigns against it.  One of the most dramatic scenes in the novel describes a raid on her massage parlor in which some of Lotus’s friends are beaten. 

The camaraderie among the girls while under detention, their jokes about their plight, and the offer of one to share what little money she has to pay off the police becomes one of the most touching moments in the book. 

It’s hard to imagine that a book on this sad subject could be uplifting, but this one is.

More at Radio Free Asia.

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Exploring the sex trade for my novel Lotus - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

The story of her grandmother, first a prostitute, then a concubine, triggered author Zhang Lijia´s into writing her latest book Lotus: A Novel. With meticulous research she explored the life of today´s sex workers, and tells in Refinery29, how a middle-class lady explored a secret world.

Zhang Lijia:

I chatted with the salon girls and learned that they were migrants from the impoverished countryside. All three were poorly educated and unskilled: The youngest was in her early teens — the same age as my grandma when she began work at a brothel in 1928. How did these women end up here? I wondered. And how did they reconcile their trade with their conservative upbringing in the village? 

It was at that moment the seed for my novel, Lotus, was planted. Through the lives of these women, I could explore China’s growing gap between men and women, urban and rural — as well as the tug of war between modernity and tradition. 

Because my last book was a memoir, people often wonder if I’ve penned another autobiography: I am always quick to point out that Lotus is purely a work of fiction, not based on personal experience. Keenly aware that my middle-class urban existence is so removed from that of a migrant-worker, I knew I needed serious research. And so I interviewed sex workers in Shenzhen, Dongguang, a neighboring city, Beijing, and other cities. I tried to make friends with these sources, but it proved to be a very challenging task: Their lives are so transient, as they change from one massage parlor to another, from one city to another. They change their mobile numbers — or they simply vanish. 

My breakthrough came after I managed to gain work as a volunteer for a non-governmental organization NGO that is dedicated to helping female sex workers in a northern city in China. The main task of these volunteers is to distribute condoms to sex workers operating at massage parlors and hair salons — all fronts for brothels — in an outskirt of Tianjin. 

They are mostly low-class establishments, and I usually went out with a staff member from the organization, Little Y — a former sex worker herself, who is very skilled in her NGO role. She would sit down and chat over a cup of weak jasmine tea; she would always find something flattering to say. 

“Wow, what a pair of heavy melons!” Little Y would say, pointing at one woman’s robust chest. “Are they real?” She would volunteer that she had had implants herself; on several occasions, she lifted up her top and compared herself to other women who also had breasts enlargement. Little Y’s augmentation was done in a back-alley clinic, and resulted in one of her nipples pointing westward.

More in Refinery29.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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Unsung heroes - review of Lotus, by Zhang Lijia

First reviews of journalist Zhang Lijia´s touching Lotus: A Novel, are coming in, like here from the Star Tribune, focusing on the Chinese migrants, the unsung heroes who made the country´s economic development possible. "Lotus and Bing, as well as the secondary characters, feel like real, rounded human beings. Zhang portrays them compassionately."

The Star Tribune:

Still, it is a novel, not a sociological treatise. Lotus and Bing, as well as the secondary characters, feel like real, rounded human beings. Zhang portrays them compassionately: At one point Bing remarks that the uneducated migrants from the provinces are “China’s unsung heroes,” whose cheap labor has made the country’s economic miracle possible, and the novel does indeed find heroism in their struggles and conflicts while telling a darn good story at the same time. 

Although the narrative of a young girl from the provinces struggling to make it in the big city is a familiar one, the novel’s texture, setting and thought patterns seem specifically Chinese. While “Lotus” sometimes reads as if it were translated from Chinese (it is not), that is part of its charm, anchoring us in a world outside American experience.

More at the Star Tribune.

Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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Unseen China in Zhang Lijia´s Lotus - Review

Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia´s upcoming novel Lotus: A Novel will only appear early 2017, but the first raving reviews are already coming in. Renowned Indian author Amitav Ghosh praises the story the main figure migrant Lotus and the way she ends up in prostitution.

 Amitav Gosh:

Every year, across Asia, millions of city-bound journeys are launched in exactly this way – and as happens only too often, Lotus’s move does not turn out as she had hoped. She finds out the hard way that “the city is a place where dragons and fish jumble together. Not a safe place for a young girl.” She ends up having to earn her living by selling her body. 

The descriptions of Lotus’s life as a ji (‘chicken’ or prostitute) are remarkably persuasive – so much so that I wrote to Lijia to ask how she came by the details. I did an enormous amount of research, she wrote back. I tried to make friends with working girls. But they moved away, changed their numbers or simply vanished. Luckily I met Lanlan, a former prostitute who now runs a NGO dedicated to help female sex workers. She generously shared her experience with me and allowed me to work for her NGO, distributing condoms to the girls and hanging out with them. All the working girls are made-up characters, but many details are real. 

One of the novel’s major characters is a photographer (Bing) who has made a specialty of photographing prostitutes. At one point he says to Lotus: ‘Migrant workers are China’s unsung heroes. Without their cheap labour…. there would not be China’s economic miracle.‘ 

This is indeed one of the principal  themes of the novel, and it reflects Lijia’s own life experience: ‘Coming from a poor family myself I am interested in those ‘xiao ren wu’, ‘little people’, and their struggles. You may say I am a self-appointed spokesperson for China’s under-privileged. I want to explore the emotional costs of China’s rural-urban migration. By the way, a lot of sex workers in Shenzhen areas were former factory workers.’... 

Lotus is a wonderfully readable and perceptive novel about an aspect of contemporary China that remains largely invisible to the outsider. Although it pulls no punches it is saturated with the spirit of stoic optimism that sustains millions of rural migrants around the world.

More at Amitav Gosh´s website.

Amitav Gosh and Zhang Lijia in Beijing in 2010

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The ordeal of left-behind children - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

China´s country-side has a generation of left-behind children, children who grew up while their parents worked in the big cities, some with their grandparents, some even alone. Author Zhang Lijia visited four-year old Diandian, who lives with his grandparents and writes up his story at her weblog.

Zhang Lijia:

Migrants use more or less the same rational when they decide to leave their children behind: they need to go to the city to earn money in order to provide their children with a better education and a better future. 

“This separation is obviously hard for everyone one,” I continued. “Is it the hardest on his mother, or his father, or Diandian?” 

The grandpa, who has been listening politely, said firmly: “It is the hardest on us who have to look after the land as well as the children. And one of them needs a lot of care.” 

“Will Diandian go to Beijing to be with his parents when he starts school?” I filed another question. “No,” the grandma shook her head, with her her usual polite smile. “It’s too difficult for a migrant kid to go to a local school in Beijing.” 

For the moment at least, that’s the case. China’s “Hukou” – family registry system, introduced by Chairman Mao back in 1950s as a way to control the follow of population, divides the Chinese into rural and urban population, with the latter enjoying much better access to education, healthcare and other social services. At first, the migrant children were not even allowed to enter the local schools. Slowly the restrictions relaxed but many obstacles remain. There are also migrant schools, run by migrants for their children. Such establishments exist precariously in a grey area and the education quality is often substandard. 

In his book Concerns for the Left-behind Children, which I read recently, author Ye Jingzhong discussed many negative effects: such children don’t always get proper care, guidance or help from their guardians, usually the poorly educated grandparents; they often feel lonely and more likely suffer from mental illness compared to those living with their parents; and they are extremely vulnerable to crimes, especially sexual assaults. Some desperate situations even led to suicide. Last June, four left-behind children siblings, all under 14, from a poor village in Guizhou, took their own lives. 

By comparison, little Diandian doesn’t fare too badly, I told myself. I rose to say goodbye. I shook hand with the boy. “See you in Beijing?” 

“In the summer,” said the grandma. “I plan to take him up to Beijing to see his parents. His kindergarten will be closed for the summer holiday then.” 

“Grandma, how many more months before July?” the boy asked, yanking the woman’s arm. “Only two months. I’ve told you many times already.” 

I got on the grandpa’s motored tricycle, which would take me through the muddy paths in the village to the waiting taxi on the side of the main road. I turned around and waved at the grandma and Diandian, standing in front of the iron gate of their yard, hand-in-hand. I watched until the boy became just a dot.

More at Zhang Lijia´s weblog.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check this list.  

A massage job and a laptop in Henan - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Sociologist Tricia Wang reports on a massage worker in Henan, an interview she had while investigating migrant workers and the way they use mobiles, computers and other communication tools. They are fully part of daily life, Tricia Wang describes on her weblog.

Tricia Wang:

Her husband works as a miner in Guizhou, she works as a masseuse in Changsha, Hunan. They see each other 1 time a year and have a 1 and half year old daughter who they have seen once since she was born. Her husband's mom takes care of her. When they went home during Chinese New Years, her mother-in-law  told her daughter to call her, "mommy." Though, when her baby cried or smiled, she looked to her mother-in-law, and not her or her husband.  I asked if this made her feel sad, she said, 

"what does it matter? sure I feel sad, but back in our town this is normal. Everyone has their parents raise their baby. We all work in cities far away." 

She uses a feature Nokia phone & only texts on it. She bought a laptop so that she could chat with her husband when he goes to the Internet cafe. She uses wifi from another office downstairs. The massage boss has wifi but put a password on it when he saw workers streaming movies when they were resting. During breaks, everyone does their laptop out and they joke that they could open up an internet cafe. She locks her computer up downstairs when working and sleeps with it next to her in the dorms because things get stolen all the time.

More on Tricia Wang's weblog.

Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.    

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What migrants work really is like - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Together with a migrant family, sociologist Tricia Wang went out to sell dumplings. In That's Shanghai she reports about the tough life of migrant workers, trying to make ends meet.

Tricia Wang:

It’s 4am. Children’s footsteps patter outside, water pours from a faucet, pots are pulled out. I overhear Li Jie. “We barely have enough to buy meat for tonight’s dinner. I hope we have return customers today.” 

I’ve been living with Li Jie and her family for a few days. She is one of the 200-300 million rural people who have made their way to cities in the hope… I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Usually newspapers finish it with “in the hope of a better life” or “in the hope of securing a job.” Maybe I can finish it by the time I tell you about a day in Li Jie’s life. 

By 4.30am, we are eating breakfast crackers and drinking soda. It’s so hot during the day that it’s refreshing to wake up to breathable air. Li Jie’s husband, Mr. Long, and her younger brother, Ray, are putting the batteries into the bike carts to go to the market. The men leave before 5am. 

I stay with Li Jie and her son. We take the dumplings out of the freezer and for the second day in a row they’re sticky. Everything that needs to be kept cold is put inside the freezer, but it’s unpredictable. Sometimes it works too well and the beers explode. 

Most of the time it doesn’t work that well. The dumplings get sticky and uncookable while the beers are perfectly chilled. The family decided to start selling dumplings when Ray’s friend told him about a construction site where vendors have been selling food without encountering any chengguan. Officially known as City Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau, chengguan have been known to give migrant workers a hard time.

Read about the rest of Tricia's week report in That's Shanghai.

Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.


More about Tricia Wang's investigations at Storify.

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Reaching customers in a meaningful way - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Sociologist Tricia Wang dives into the world of China's migrants to investigate the place of internet and mobile communication in their communities. In Market Sentinel she explains how how study relates to the needs of companies to understand their customers.

Tricia Wang:

 I do think that companies are hungry to reach their customers in more meaningful ways. People want authenticity and they want value. Companies want to deliver this. Though I’m not sure if this is translating into a greater demand for ethnographically driven research insights… just yet. 

One of the hurdles to overcome is that people still mistake ethnography for marketing or the other way around. But much in the same way that we now recognize the value of design in the production process, I’m hoping to see companies embrace ethnographic methods in the strategic development. Five years ago no one valued user experience and now it’s central to many tech companies. 

DS: Your work requires you to observe people and investigate what motivates their actions and behaviour. Is the “power of the peer” as strong outside of west as it is in? 

TW: I haven’t noticed a difference in the strength of peer groups as if one place has stronger peer group influence than another. This is because the universal power of the peer group speaks to the deeply social quality of human beings. We all care deeply about how people around us perceive and receive us. We are all dealing with insecurity, growth, and identity in different ways. 

However, the notion of the “peer” is relative and is cultural. The declaration of one’s peers in online peer groups unfolds in different ways depending on the social context. An interesting case study is the Chinese equivalent of Linkedin that failed in China. Why? Was it because Chinese people didn’t care about peer groups ? No, the answer is that Chinese people didn’t want to be explicit about their social connections with their peers.

More in Market Sentinel


Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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China's angry bulls - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

The village of Wukan was one of the latest high-profile uprisings of an increasingly better educated and world-savvy class of migrants. In The Diplomat celebrity author Zhang Lijia analyses why China's 'peasants' will get their rights too.

Zhang Lijia:

“A Chinese farmer is like a gentle bull that can endure a lot,” activist Chen Guangcheng told me back in 2002, in the wake of a riot in his home province of Shandong. “But when it’s provoked, it will get angry and charge.” 

Recent events, including in the village of Wukan, in southern China, have proven his point. Angry over corrupt local officials and land appropriations, hundreds of villagers staged a series of protests that reached a head in December as the local authorities attempted to crack down on dissent. The intense standoff was only ended after top provincial leaders agreed to some of the villagers’ demands... 

A decade later, thanks in part to better education, greater mobility and easier access to modern communications, it’s clear that Chinese peasant farmers and migrant workers are increasingly conscious of their rights. Indeed, in the middle of the unfolding Wukan drama, the de facto head of the uprising told the New York Times: “I do believe that this country is ruled by the law.” Rights, it seems, were very much on the minds of the villagers – especially those that had travelled to other parts of China... 

Ultimately, China’s leaders will have to grant the same rights to those who make iPhones as they do to those who use them. And they must be mindful not to provoke the bulls. After all, there are millions of them out there.

More background in The Diplomat.


Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting of conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.


Zhang Lijia on China's moral crisis in Storify

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Bars and bonding, field work in China - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Now and then researcher Tricia Wang gives us a peek into her field work into China's migrant worlds and their usage of internet and mobiles. For example here, from a bar - the living room for many - which turned into a tattoo shop.

Tricia Wang:  

I was hanging out the bar pictured above. After a rock band performed, the stage became a tattoo station. 

I love doing fieldwork in third places. Not only do I get to see all the different ways a space is used throughout a day, it's really easy to find people to talk to. 

Plus at a bar, a few drinks into the night, everyone is willing to talk. Good thing that I have high alcohol tolerance, not that that really matters considering that Chinese beers are the equivalent to water. I don't feel the alcohol but all the people I hang out with do. Makes my work a lot easier! It's more easy to watch who talks to who, who hits on who, and who goes to sleep with who.

More stories on bonding between cooks on a cellphone.

Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? 


Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request from. More on Tricia's Wang research in China's underbelly in Storify.   

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My life as a street vendor - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Doing fieldwork among migrants offers sociologist Tricia Wang unprecedented insights in the life of the uprooted part of China's society. On her weblog she recalls her days when she joined a migrant family to work as a street vendor, staying with the family of a friend.

Tricia Wang's fieldnotes:

Tricia Wang in the summer of 2011

I can hear the husband and wife fighting about this every night. It puts a lot of stress on the family. The mother is getting nervous that they are not even close to turning a profit. Everyday around dinner time, she

says, "we have to start making at least some money so that we can buy food.We need to buy meat." She needs cash to buy food for dinner. The most they have brought in so far was 200RMB on a good day. But most days only make 100RMB. The friend who told them about this place was supposedly making 500-600RMB a day. The younger brother keeps reminding the family of the friend's situation. Then the husband says that his friend makes a lot of money because sells good food. He pointed out that they didn't have return customers. All the other street vendors' carts had regular workers but no one ever came back to their cart. 

Everyday activity has begun to wear on all of our bodies. Trips to the supermarkets, washing clothes, and going to the bathroom seemed to be a big ordeal. 

Unloading and loading takes a total of 3 hours a day (4 rounds in total per day). Each bike ride to the market involves a total of 1 hour of loading and unloading items back into the room. Someone had to unload the cart, put everything inside the room, and then hide the valuable stuff (e.g. batteries) with a blanket. The reason why they have to go to the market in the morning and after lunch is because the freezer doesn't work properly. As a result, they could only buy food that can be cooked immediately. Not unloading is not an option because they need the free space in the cart to bring groceries back and they can't leave their belongings outside and not have it stolen. 

Anything involving water takes ten times longer because there is only 1 faucet for every 4 homes. And there is only 1 pipe for every 5 faucets. So if any of the 20 families use a faucet, none of the other 19 families have access to a working faucet. Someone is always washing vegetables, dishes, hair, or clothes unless it is 3am in the morning. A few times we were not able to get arrive at the construction site in time to sell food because we were waiting to use the faucet. Water costs 10RMB/person/month. As a result, most of the food is not washed well or at all; it is soaked, and the same water is then used to soak other vegetables.

More on Tricia Wang's weblog

Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. She will be in Europe for an academic conference in Switzerland and is available for speeches in the third week of February. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch, or fill in our speakers' request form.

 More on Tricia Wang's experiences in China's economic underbelly in Storify.

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