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In the early Nineties, I bought a down parka from Eddie Bauer that seemed like an extraordinarily good deal. I can't remember the price. Here's what stood out about that jacket: It was made in China. At the time, I was uneasy about that because I was uncomfortable with China's politics in the wake of the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989. After a day or so, I returned the jacket. I couldn't live with the idea of encouraging a government like that. Before returning it, though, I looked it over and marveled at how well it was made. There was not a wayward stitch or a loose thread on it.
Since then, I've visited China, lived there, naturally put a lot of money into its economy (and some directly in the hands of its government) and realized that the reality is much more complicated than a monolithic totalitarian state suppressing democracy while getting the "free world" to build its national economy. And since then it has also become nearly impossible to avoid buying products made in China. Micha Peled's documentary China Blue, coming to U.S. public TV later this year, provides a rare glimpse inside a factory involved in that trade. It can't tell the whole story and doesn't try to, but it's rich with insights into the garment industry and the lives of Chinese migrant workers who find (relative) prosperity there.
The makers of China Blue focused on one factory in a small city in southern China and got an amazing degree of access. They captured workers complaining about working conditions, fake timecards and late paychecks, as well as the owner of the factory criticizing the workers and meeting with managers to enforce deadlines. Footage of tough negotiations with an unnamed British jeans company is a critical piece to complete the picture. If everything is as it appears in China Blue -- Peled, to his credit, acknowledged doing everything he could to get on the owner's good side, including telling him they were doing a documentary on "China's economic miracle" -- this is great investigative journalism in the harshest of environments. The story turns out to be grim, yet hard to pin down. At this factory, the conditions and hours violate Chinese law and the workers don't get their paychecks until they strike on deadline, yet other sources say this one is better than most. What are the others like? But China Blue becomes a human story, too, as the filmmakers focus on a teenage girl employee from rural Sichuan who writes kung fu novels in her negligible spare time and on another girl who brings her boyfriend from another factory home to meet her parents. It's in these stories of the workers (who are mostly girls) that the movie becomes most interesting. They may be country girls who at first are uncomfortable leaving their villages for a world of strangers, but they are consumerists like you and me, too. They think of themselves as working toward a better life, and they actually are making progress, bringing in twice the income their parents make on the farm. In the end these girls are much like us, working long hours, squeezing in chores, and practicing their dance steps at night, dreaming of hitting the downtown discos after payday. Later, some want to become business owners themselves. China Blue is important because it's not a black-and-white indictment of China, Wal-Mart or capitalism but a font of intriguing insights into a problem that our globalizing world is only beginning to understand.