In China, an average factory worker now earns around $600 per month on the coast and just under $500 inland, about 20 times what they would have earned three decades ago. This is a huge improvement over the past few decades and represents the largest decrease in poverty in history. The process which folks went through certainly wasn't fun and wasn't without its problems, but it worked like nothing else ever has. The real reason wages went up is because China's labor pool is shrinking while demand for labor is still strong. Unions in China are there to promote state propaganda, not to represent workers.
Also, the strikes are more about venting frustration than achieving results. This is a big difference from the US where those partaking in protests overstate what they can accomplish, those in China know that a protest is unlikely to achieve anything. I've seen more than once where folks were knowingly protesting in front of an empty building just because they feared the repercussions of protesting against the local officials.
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In China, an average factory worker now earns around $600 per month on the coast and just under $500 inland, about 20 times what they would have earned three decades ago. This is a huge improvement over the past few decades and represents the largest decrease in poverty in history. The process which folks went through certainly wasn't fun and wasn't without its problems, but it worked like nothing else ever has. The real reason wages went up is because China's labor pool is shrinking while demand for labor is still strong. Unions in China are there to promote state propaganda, not to represent workers.
Also, the strikes are more about venting frustration than achieving results. This is a big difference from the US where those partaking in protests overstate what they can accomplish, those in China know that a protest is unlikely to achieve anything. I've seen more than once where folks were knowingly protesting in front of an empty building just because they feared the repercussions of protesting against the local officials.