Sociological Film Review on China Blue: In series of my analysis of the Communist Manifesto.

China Blue is a documentary released in 2005 directed and produced by Micha X. Peled. The title says ‘blue’ since the movie revolves around one Lifeng factory which makes jeans for Europe and South America. The purpose of the documentary was to reflect on the largest human migration that is happening in China which leaves those looking for work with little choices and thus gives owners the perfect opportunity to exploit them. The film gave insights into a workers’ lives in China in the form of narration by one Jasmine who joins the factory after leaving her village in order to earn for her sister’s graduation by working in the city.

Jasmine, a 17-year old, arrives at the factory and stays in a dormitory with twelve other girls, some of whom are younger than her but they knew the place fairly well than she. Jasmine’s first experiences come as shock to both her and the viewers, for example the time when she realises that fines are imposed every minute a worker is late for work, workers don’t even get proper bathroom breaks and that average sleep time of workers is 4 hours or less! There are cases when workers fall asleep with their eyes open, Jasmine too gets used to sleeping that way.  This goes on to show that the lives of these workers centre around work rather than work being an extension of life.

Jasmine is shown to love writing but later work eats up her time for writing. Thus, this extraction of ‘surplus value’ lead to ‘alienation from self’ for the workers. However, interestingly, workers of the jeans producing factory are not ‘alienated from the product’ since they themselves wore jeans which would mean that they could afford jeans?

The story of Jasmine’s love for writing runs parallel with Mr. Lam’s (the factory owner) love for calligraphy. But certainly, only Mr. Lam’s work gets appreciated by his peers. There is another parallel story that runs about Mr. Lam with Jasmine and other young workers that he too worked when he was a child in order to continue his education. The fact that child labour is illegal in China is no hindrance to the phenomenon at all. Workers in the factories have fake IDs with fake age on them. Since no action can be claimed by the workers, the owners automatically are at a position to dominate and thus the employment contracts list fake terms regarding the dues. To worsen the situation, strikes by workers are banned in China. It is almost as if China, which claimed to be a ‘communist’ nation has reinforced Capitalism through its laws.

The factory sold jeans to international retailers and thus had to maintain tight schedules for the workers which is not an easy job for the owner. To add to the onus on him, inspectors of the international retailers often visited to look at the workers’ conditions; ironically this wasn’t for the workers’ benefit but for ‘customer assurance’. But wasn’t Capitalism supposed to be very profitable for those who owned the means of production? Well, Mr. Lam does not have full autonomy on the production and receives only 1/10^th of how much the retailers sell each pair of jeans for- this makes him a petite bourgeoisie.