Keep your chin up – it’s not that bad….
The suicide rate in China accounts for a quarter of the world’s entire population of people who take their own life. Some 300,000 a year. It is the main cause of death amongst young men between 15 and 34.
The reason is postulated as the transition from an economy where the government supported you from birth until death, to one where you must compete for jobs.
So the impression given by the current media interest in the 10 young men who have leapt to their death from the roof of the high-tech firm of Foxconn, makers of the favoured Western icons such as iPods and mobile phones is somewhat overwrought.
Given that there are 350,000 employees, the national statistics would predict around 45 suicides a year, so it is hard to fathom why the media have homed in on this story, unless it is a guilt trip for those Western purchasers of iPods…..
What is slightly surprising is the company’s reaction to those deaths, attributed by the Western media to the harsh factory conditions.
Did they employ a fleet of psychoanalysts to counsel their employees? No!
Perhaps they put up wages to compensate for the high stress? No!
Give everybody a couple of weeks off work to unwind? No!
Surely Valium sandwiches all round? Surely? No!
First they got everybody to sign a paper saying they would go to their Doctor if they felt depressed.
Then they fitted a net right round the factory at first floor level.
Now you can only jump from the seventh floor and land somewhere around the sixth floor.
Sheeesh.
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1
May 27, 2010 at 20:05 -
“…it is hard to fathom why the media have homed in on this story, unless it is a guilt trip for those Western purchasers of iPods.”
Got it in one.
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2
May 27, 2010 at 20:32 -
So caring about factory workers is wrong? Or only if its not to assuage Western guilt?
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3
May 27, 2010 at 21:05
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4
May 27, 2010 at 20:42 -
All a bit of a non story but they’ve been feeding it into the ipad and market valuation stories that also seem a bit boring but then I have been watching cricket all day so glass houses perhaps!
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5
May 27, 2010 at 21:26 -
What doesn’t help, is that Assembly Workers are forbidden to speak with each other on the production line.
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6
May 27, 2010 at 21:34 -
Aw, how can you be so down on the Chinese authorities when they have been so careful over the past few decades to take away and dispose of any second child unfortunate enough to be born to a factory-working family?
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7
May 27, 2010 at 23:22 -
be careful or the suppy of cheap Chinese goods you are addicted to might dry up.
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8
May 28, 2010 at 16:41 -
there is a conspiracy theory that the Morcambe cockle pickers didn’t drown at all…
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