0:00:00.794,0:00:03.210
Hi. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the people

0:00:03.210,0:00:05.739
who make the things we use every day:

0:00:05.739,0:00:09.499
our shoes, our handbags, our computers and cell phones.

0:00:09.499,0:00:13.945
Now, this is a conversation that often calls up a lot of guilt.

0:00:13.945,0:00:17.536
Imagine the teenage farm girl who makes less than

0:00:17.536,0:00:20.392
a dollar an hour stitching your running shoes,

0:00:20.392,0:00:23.090
or the young Chinese man who jumps off a rooftop

0:00:23.090,0:00:27.130
after working overtime assembling your iPad.

0:00:27.130,0:00:30.738
We, the beneficiaries of globalization, seem to exploit

0:00:30.738,0:00:33.441
these victims with every purchase we make,

0:00:33.441,0:00:35.074
and the injustice

0:00:35.074,0:00:38.163
feels embedded in the products themselves.

0:00:38.163,0:00:40.723
After all, what's wrong with a world in which a worker

0:00:40.723,0:00:44.499
on an iPhone assembly line can't even afford to buy one?

0:00:44.499,0:00:47.149
It's taken for granted that Chinese factories are oppressive,

0:00:47.149,0:00:49.880
and that it's our desire for cheap goods

0:00:49.880,0:00:52.241
that makes them so.

0:00:52.241,0:00:56.056
So, this simple narrative equating Western demand

0:00:56.056,0:00:58.868
and Chinese suffering is appealing,

0:00:58.868,0:01:01.503
especially at a time when many of us already feel guilty

0:01:01.503,0:01:04.081
about our impact on the world,

0:01:04.081,0:01:07.864
but it's also inaccurate and disrespectful.

0:01:07.864,0:01:10.848
We must be peculiarly self-obsessed to imagine that we

0:01:10.848,0:01:14.016
have the power to drive tens of millions of people

0:01:14.016,0:01:16.728
on the other side of the world to migrate and suffer

0:01:16.728,0:01:19.523
in such terrible ways.

0:01:19.523,0:01:22.341
In fact, China makes goods for markets all over the world,

0:01:22.341,0:01:25.929
including its own, thanks to a combination of factors:

0:01:25.929,0:01:29.335
its low costs, its large and educated workforce,

0:01:29.335,0:01:31.801
and a flexible manufacturing system

0:01:31.801,0:01:34.952
that responds quickly to market demands.

0:01:34.952,0:01:38.001
By focusing so much on ourselves and our gadgets,

0:01:38.001,0:01:40.464
we have rendered the individuals on the other end

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into invisibility, as tiny and interchangeable

0:01:43.824,0:01:46.879
as the parts of a mobile phone.

0:01:46.879,0:01:49.544
Chinese workers are not forced into factories

0:01:49.544,0:01:52.023
because of our insatiable desire for iPods.

0:01:52.023,0:01:55.095
They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money,

0:01:55.095,0:01:59.048
to learn new skills, and to see the world.

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In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's

0:02:01.441,0:02:04.872
been missing is the voices of the workers themselves.

0:02:04.872,0:02:07.177
Here are a few.

0:02:07.177,0:02:10.926
Bao Yongxiu: "My mother tells me to come home

0:02:10.926,0:02:14.650
and get married, but if I marry now, before I have fully

0:02:14.650,0:02:18.735
developed myself, I can only marry an ordinary worker,

0:02:18.735,0:02:21.238
so I'm not in a rush."

0:02:21.238,0:02:24.280
Chen Ying: "When I went home for the new year,

0:02:24.280,0:02:27.536
everyone said I had changed. They asked me,

0:02:27.536,0:02:30.633
what did you do that you have changed so much?

0:02:30.633,0:02:33.911
I told them that I studied and worked hard. If you tell them

0:02:33.911,0:02:37.279
more, they won't understand anyway."

0:02:37.279,0:02:40.664
Wu Chunming: "Even if I make a lot of money,

0:02:40.664,0:02:42.815
it won't satisfy me.

0:02:42.815,0:02:47.184
Just to make money is not enough meaning in life."

0:02:47.184,0:02:51.896
Xiao Jin: "Now, after I get off work, I study English,

0:02:51.896,0:02:53.685
because in the future, our customers won't

0:02:53.685,0:02:57.547
be only Chinese, so we must learn more languages."

0:02:57.547,0:03:00.318
All of these speakers, by the way, are young women,

0:03:00.318,0:03:03.400
18 or 19 years old.

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So I spent two years getting to know assembly line workers

0:03:06.342,0:03:10.271
like these in the south China factory city called Dongguan.

0:03:10.271,0:03:12.791
Certain subjects came up over and over:

0:03:12.791,0:03:14.695
how much money they made,

0:03:14.695,0:03:17.074
what kind of husband they hoped to marry,

0:03:17.074,0:03:19.199
whether they should jump to another factory

0:03:19.199,0:03:21.399
or stay where they were.

0:03:21.399,0:03:23.592
Other subjects came up almost never, including

0:03:23.592,0:03:27.039
living conditions that to me looked close to prison life:

0:03:27.039,0:03:29.322
10 or 15 workers in one room,

0:03:29.322,0:03:32.681
50 people sharing a single bathroom,

0:03:32.681,0:03:36.015
days and nights ruled by the factory clock.

0:03:36.015,0:03:39.503
Everyone they knew lived in similar circumstances,

0:03:39.503,0:03:42.264
and it was still better than the dormitories and homes

0:03:42.264,0:03:44.832
of rural China.

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The workers rarely spoke about the products they made,

0:03:47.558,0:03:49.902
and they often had great difficulty explaining

0:03:49.902,0:03:52.344
what exactly they did.

0:03:52.344,0:03:54.055
When I asked Lu Qingmin,

0:03:54.055,0:03:56.157
the young woman I got to know best,

0:03:56.157,0:03:58.624
what exactly she did on the factory floor,

0:03:58.624,0:04:01.029
she said something to me in Chinese that sounded like

0:04:01.029,0:04:02.806
"qiu xi."

0:04:02.806,0:04:05.775
Only much later did I realize that she had been saying

0:04:05.775,0:04:08.999
"QC," or quality control.

0:04:08.999,0:04:12.862
She couldn't even tell me what she did on the factory floor.

0:04:12.862,0:04:15.319
All she could do was parrot a garbled abbreviation

0:04:15.319,0:04:19.313
in a language she didn't even understand.

0:04:19.313,0:04:22.935
Karl Marx saw this as the tragedy of capitalism,

0:04:22.935,0:04:26.978
the alienation of the worker from the product of his labor.

0:04:26.978,0:04:30.602
Unlike, say, a traditional maker of shoes or cabinets,

0:04:30.602,0:04:33.849
the worker in an industrial factory has no control,

0:04:33.849,0:04:37.106
no pleasure, and no true satisfaction or understanding

0:04:37.106,0:04:39.297
in her own work.

0:04:39.297,0:04:41.713
But like so many theories that Marx arrived at

0:04:41.713,0:04:44.532
sitting in the reading room of the British Museum,

0:04:44.532,0:04:47.358
he got this one wrong.

0:04:47.358,0:04:49.657
Just because a person spends her time

0:04:49.657,0:04:52.425
making a piece of something does not mean

0:04:52.425,0:04:54.977
that she becomes that, a piece of something.

0:04:54.977,0:04:58.080
What she does with the money she earns,

0:04:58.080,0:05:01.585
what she learns in that place, and how it changes her,

0:05:01.585,0:05:04.346
these are the things that matter.

0:05:04.346,0:05:06.646
What a factory makes is never the point, and

0:05:06.646,0:05:10.730
the workers could not care less who buys their products.

0:05:10.730,0:05:13.218
Journalistic coverage of Chinese factories,

0:05:13.218,0:05:15.330
on the other hand, plays up this relationship

0:05:15.330,0:05:18.159
between the workers and the products they make.

0:05:18.159,0:05:21.248
Many articles calculate: How long would it take

0:05:21.248,0:05:24.092
for this worker to work in order to earn enough money

0:05:24.092,0:05:26.552
to buy what he's making?

0:05:26.552,0:05:29.040
For example, an entry-level-line assembly line worker

0:05:29.040,0:05:32.312
in China in an iPhone plant would have to shell out

0:05:32.312,0:05:35.857
two and a half months' wages for an iPhone.

0:05:35.857,0:05:39.194
But how meaningful is this calculation, really?

0:05:39.194,0:05:41.184
For example, I recently wrote an article

0:05:41.184,0:05:42.162
in The New Yorker magazine,

0:05:42.162,0:05:45.401
but I can't afford to buy an ad in it.

0:05:45.401,0:05:47.457
But, who cares? I don't want an ad in The New Yorker,

0:05:47.457,0:05:50.322
and most of these workers don't really want iPhones.

0:05:50.322,0:05:53.082
Their calculations are different.

0:05:53.082,0:05:54.896
How long should I stay in this factory?

0:05:54.896,0:05:57.359
How much money can I save?

0:05:57.359,0:05:59.929
How much will it take to buy an apartment or a car,

0:05:59.929,0:06:04.519
to get married, or to put my child through school?

0:06:04.519,0:06:07.210
The workers I got to know had a curiously abstract

0:06:07.210,0:06:10.968
relationship with the product of their labor.

0:06:10.968,0:06:14.110
About a year after I met Lu Qingmin, or Min,

0:06:14.110,0:06:16.144
she invited me home to her family village

0:06:16.144,0:06:18.367
for the Chinese New Year.

0:06:18.367,0:06:20.753
On the train home, she gave me a present:

0:06:20.753,0:06:25.144
a Coach brand change purse with brown leather trim.

0:06:25.144,0:06:26.817
I thanked her, assuming it was fake,

0:06:26.817,0:06:30.294
like almost everything else for sale in Dongguan.

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After we got home, Min gave her mother another present:

0:06:34.103,0:06:36.288
a pink Dooney & Bourke handbag,

0:06:36.288,0:06:38.711
and a few nights later, her sister was showing off

0:06:38.711,0:06:42.215
a maroon LeSportsac shoulder bag.

0:06:42.215,0:06:46.015
Slowly it was dawning on me that these handbags

0:06:46.015,0:06:48.032
were made by their factory,

0:06:48.032,0:06:51.198
and every single one of them was authentic.

0:06:51.198,0:06:53.663
Min's sister said to her parents,

0:06:53.663,0:06:57.025
"In America, this bag sells for 320 dollars."

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Her parents, who are both farmers, looked on, speechless.

0:07:00.064,0:07:02.623
"And that's not all -- Coach is coming out with a new line,

0:07:02.623,0:07:07.424
2191," she said. "One bag will sell for 6,000."

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She paused and said, "I don't know if that's 6,000 yuan or

0:07:11.671,0:07:17.318
6,000 American dollars, but anyway, it's 6,000." (Laughter)

0:07:17.318,0:07:19.913
Min's sister's boyfriend, who had traveled home with her

0:07:19.913,0:07:22.030
for the new year, said,

0:07:22.030,0:07:24.863
"It doesn't look like it's worth that much."

0:07:24.863,0:07:27.688
Min's sister turned to him and said, "Some people actually

0:07:27.688,0:07:31.232
understand these things. You don't understand shit."

0:07:31.232,0:07:35.887
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:07:35.887,0:07:39.927
In Min's world, the Coach bags had a curious currency.

0:07:39.927,0:07:42.247
They weren't exactly worthless, but they were nothing

0:07:42.247,0:07:44.957
close to the actual value, because almost no one they knew

0:07:44.957,0:07:48.887
wanted to buy one, or knew how much it was worth.

0:07:48.887,0:07:52.242
Once, when Min's older sister's friend got married,

0:07:52.242,0:07:55.070
she brought a handbag along as a wedding present.

0:07:55.070,0:07:57.238
Another time, after Min had already left

0:07:57.238,0:08:00.380
the handbag factory, her younger sister came to visit,

0:08:00.380,0:08:04.491
bringing two Coach Signature handbags as gifts.

0:08:04.491,0:08:06.566
I looked in the zippered pocket of one,

0:08:06.566,0:08:10.805
and I found a printed card in English, which read,

0:08:10.805,0:08:14.063
"An American classic.

0:08:14.063,0:08:16.573
In 1941, the burnished patina

0:08:16.573,0:08:18.935
of an all-American baseball glove

0:08:18.935,0:08:21.135
inspired the founder of Coach to create

0:08:21.135,0:08:23.544
a new collection of handbags from the same

0:08:23.544,0:08:26.753
luxuriously soft gloved-hand leather.

0:08:26.753,0:08:30.928
Six skilled leatherworkers crafted 12 Signature handbags

0:08:30.928,0:08:35.064
with perfect proportions and a timeless flair.

0:08:35.064,0:08:37.344
They were fresh, functional, and women everywhere

0:08:37.344,0:08:42.680
adored them. A new American classic was born."

0:08:42.680,0:08:45.006
I wonder what Karl Marx would have made of Min

0:08:45.006,0:08:46.914
and her sisters.

0:08:46.914,0:08:49.521
Their relationship with the product of their labor

0:08:49.521,0:08:51.816
was more complicated, surprising and funny

0:08:51.816,0:08:54.074
than he could have imagined.

0:08:54.074,0:08:56.897
And yet, his view of the world persists, and our tendency

0:08:56.897,0:08:59.506
to see the workers as faceless masses,

0:08:59.506,0:09:03.380
to imagine that we can know what they're really thinking.

0:09:03.380,0:09:06.781
The first time I met Min, she had just turned 18

0:09:06.781,0:09:09.436
and quit her first job on the assembly line

0:09:09.436,0:09:11.751
of an electronics factory.

0:09:11.751,0:09:14.397
Over the next two years, I watched as she switched jobs

0:09:14.397,0:09:17.473
five times, eventually landing a lucrative post

0:09:17.473,0:09:21.047
in the purchasing department of a hardware factory.

0:09:21.047,0:09:23.572
Later, she married a fellow migrant worker,

0:09:23.572,0:09:25.714
moved with him to his village,

0:09:25.714,0:09:27.917
gave birth to two daughters,

0:09:27.917,0:09:30.105
and saved enough money to buy a secondhand Buick

0:09:30.105,0:09:34.511
for herself and an apartment for her parents.

0:09:34.511,0:09:37.644
She recently returned to Dongguan on her own

0:09:37.644,0:09:41.260
to take a job in a factory that makes construction cranes,

0:09:41.260,0:09:43.460
temporarily leaving her husband and children

0:09:43.460,0:09:45.443
back in the village.

0:09:45.443,0:09:48.024
In a recent email to me, she explained,

0:09:48.024,0:09:52.070
"A person should have some ambition while she is young

0:09:52.070,0:09:54.732
so that in old age she can look back on her life

0:09:54.732,0:09:59.515
and feel that it was not lived to no purpose."

0:09:59.515,0:10:03.911
Across China, there are 150 million workers like her,

0:10:03.911,0:10:06.664
one third of them women, who have left their villages

0:10:06.664,0:10:10.207
to work in the factories, the hotels, the restaurants

0:10:10.207,0:10:12.812
and the construction sites of the big cities.

0:10:12.812,0:10:16.556
Together, they make up the largest migration in history,

0:10:16.556,0:10:19.556
and it is globalization, this chain that begins

0:10:19.556,0:10:22.075
in a Chinese farming village

0:10:22.075,0:10:25.852
and ends with iPhones in our pockets and Nikes on our feet

0:10:25.852,0:10:28.276
and Coach handbags on our arms

0:10:28.276,0:10:30.565
that has changed the way these millions of people

0:10:30.565,0:10:35.478
work and marry and live and think.

0:10:35.478,0:10:37.427
Very few of them would want to go back

0:10:37.427,0:10:39.984
to the way things used to be.

0:10:39.984,0:10:43.164
When I first went to Dongguan, I worried that

0:10:43.164,0:10:47.539
it would be depressing to spend so much time with workers.

0:10:47.539,0:10:50.310
I also worried that nothing would ever happen to them,

0:10:50.310,0:10:52.939
or that they would have nothing to say to me.

0:10:52.939,0:10:55.589
Instead, I found young women who were smart and funny

0:10:55.589,0:10:58.436
and brave and generous.

0:10:58.436,0:11:00.767
By opening up their lives to me,

0:11:00.767,0:11:02.973
they taught me so much about factories

0:11:02.973,0:11:07.179
and about China and about how to live in the world.

0:11:09.486,0:11:12.198
This is the Coach purse that Min gave me

0:11:12.198,0:11:14.608
on the train home to visit her family.

0:11:14.608,0:11:17.251
I keep it with me to remind me of the ties that tie me

0:11:17.251,0:11:19.975
to the young women I wrote about,

0:11:19.975,0:11:24.245
ties that are not economic but personal in nature,

0:11:24.245,0:11:27.812
measured not in money but in memories.

0:11:27.812,0:11:31.231
This purse is also a reminder that the things that you imagine,

0:11:31.231,0:11:34.773
sitting in your office or in the library,

0:11:34.773,0:11:37.176
are not how you find them when you actually go out

0:11:37.176,0:11:38.683
into the world.

0:11:38.683,0:11:40.671
Thank you. (Applause)

0:11:40.671,0:11:47.343
(Applause)

0:11:47.343,0:11:49.412
Chris Anderson: Thank you, Leslie, that was an insight

0:11:49.412,0:11:52.009
that a lot of us haven't had before.

0:11:52.009,0:11:55.496
But I'm curious. If you had a minute, say,

0:11:55.496,0:11:59.217
with Apple's head of manufacturing,

0:11:59.217,0:12:01.577
what would you say?

0:12:01.577,0:12:02.705
Leslie Chang: One minute?

0:12:02.705,0:12:04.218
CA: One minute. (Laughter)

0:12:04.218,0:12:06.144
LC: You know, what really impressed me about the workers

0:12:06.144,0:12:09.370
is how much they're self-motivated, self-driven,

0:12:09.370,0:12:11.987
resourceful, and the thing that struck me,

0:12:11.987,0:12:14.952
what they want most is education, to learn,

0:12:14.952,0:12:16.499
because most of them come from very poor backgrounds.

0:12:16.499,0:12:19.443
They usually left school when they were in 7th or 8th grade.

0:12:19.443,0:12:21.682
Their parents are often illiterate,

0:12:21.682,0:12:24.322
and then they come to the city, and they, on their own,

0:12:24.322,0:12:26.447
at night, during the weekends, they'll take a computer class,

0:12:26.447,0:12:28.715
they'll take an English class, and learn

0:12:28.715,0:12:30.839
really, really rudimentary things, you know,

0:12:30.839,0:12:32.578
like how to type a document in Word,

0:12:32.578,0:12:35.242
or how to say really simple things in English.

0:12:35.242,0:12:37.370
So, if you really want to help these workers,

0:12:37.370,0:12:40.593
start these small, very focused, very pragmatic classes

0:12:40.593,0:12:43.722
in these schools, and what's going to happen is,

0:12:43.722,0:12:45.141
all your workers are going to move on,

0:12:45.141,0:12:48.548
but hopefully they'll move on into higher jobs within Apple,

0:12:48.548,0:12:51.489
and you can help their social mobility

0:12:51.489,0:12:52.486
and their self-improvement.

0:12:52.486,0:12:54.264
When you talk to workers, that's what they want.

0:12:54.264,0:12:56.938
They do not say, "I want better hot water in the showers.

0:12:56.938,0:12:58.923
I want a nicer room. I want a TV set."

0:12:58.923,0:13:00.546
I mean, it would be nice to have those things,

0:13:00.546,0:13:01.704
but that's not why they're in the city,

0:13:01.704,0:13:03.793
and that's not what they care about.

0:13:03.793,0:13:07.343
CA: Was there a sense from them of a narrative that

0:13:07.343,0:13:10.755
things were kind of tough and bad, or was there a narrative

0:13:10.755,0:13:13.768
of some kind of level of growth, that things over time

0:13:13.768,0:13:15.391
were getting better?

0:13:15.391,0:13:17.298
LC: Oh definitely, definitely. I mean, you know,

0:13:17.298,0:13:19.664
it was interesting, because I spent basically two years

0:13:19.664,0:13:21.658
hanging out in this city, Dongguan,

0:13:21.658,0:13:23.769
and over that time, you could see immense change

0:13:23.769,0:13:26.564
in every person's life: upward, downward, sideways,

0:13:26.564,0:13:28.385
but generally upward.

0:13:28.385,0:13:30.172
If you spend enough time, it's upward, and I met people

0:13:30.172,0:13:32.467
who had moved to the city 10 years ago, and who are now

0:13:32.467,0:13:34.574
basically urban middle class people,

0:13:34.574,0:13:36.595
so the trajectory is definitely upward.

0:13:36.595,0:13:38.530
It's just hard to see when you're suddenly

0:13:38.530,0:13:40.651
sucked into the city. It looks like everyone's poor and

0:13:40.651,0:13:42.389
desperate, but that's not really how it is.

0:13:42.389,0:13:44.543
Certainly, the factory conditions are really tough,

0:13:44.543,0:13:46.860
and it's nothing you or I would want to do,

0:13:46.860,0:13:50.005
but from their perspective, where they're coming from

0:13:50.005,0:13:52.002
is much worse, and where they're going

0:13:52.002,0:13:54.010
is hopefully much better, and I just wanted to give

0:13:54.010,0:13:56.371
that context of what's going on in their minds,

0:13:56.371,0:13:58.734
not what necessarily is going on in yours.

0:13:58.734,0:14:00.230
CA: Thanks so much for your talk.

0:14:00.230,0:14:04.599
Thank you very much. (Applause)