All the Yuan in China

By Bruce@UnderstandingChina on February 6, 2010

The value of China’s currency–the Yuan (pronounced like “y-When”)–has been a virtually permanent topic in the news for the last decade.  As China’s economy expanded at a fierce rate, the Yuan has been kept artificially low and undervalued, making China’s exported goods cheaper. Although the Yuan was allowed to grow 21% between 2005 and 2008, the Central Bank once again pegged it to the US dollar in mid-2008 amidst the global financial crisis.

Rather than attempting to provide some new and original analysis on the global impact of a weak Yuan, or how a freely appreciating Yuan would ripple through China and the rest of the world, I would like to give some perspective on the Yuan in Chinese society–i.e. what the average Chinese person has to do to earn it.

China Labor Network ( http://zhaogong.chinalao.com/ ) offers online postings of jobs across the country, and as a result a compelling look at Chinese society that does not often get coverage in the Western press. Here are some quickly translated job postings that went up today (February 5, 2010).

http://zhaogong.chinalao.com/f30/29440/   A factory in Guangzhou is looking for 10 men aged 21 and over to be Mold and Dye Mechanics, the monthly salary is 1,800 Yuan ($263 ) .  The bad news is that a month consists of 26 working days, 4 days off.  The good news is there is no finder’s fee for the job.

Here is one in Shandong Province  http://zhaogong.chinalao.com/f30/29719/    This factory is looking for a hundred people for manufacturing jobs, the same 26 day month, but the pay is a bit less at 1,500 Yuan ($219).  The up side is that holidays are off.

Like electronics?  A factory in Guangdong Province needs people, aged 16 to 30, to work assembly. http://zhaogong.chinalao.com/f30/29616/  The pay seems quite low at 1,000 Yuan ($143)  per month, but you only need to work 22 days per month; and, if you work the weekends or holidays you get 11.5 Yuan ($1.60) per hour as opposed to the midweek rate of 8.62 Yuan  ($1.26).  The application process probably won’t be overly selective on this one as they have 3,000 slots to fill.

Who says there is an unemployment crunch?  Another posting from today from another  Guangdong factory, again in electronics assembly, is looking for 100 qualified workers, but they are only offering 770 Yuan ($112) a month for a rigorous 26 day month.

Factory work not what you had in mind? How about something in the booming hospitality industry?  The Macao Hotel is hiring food servers, waitstaff,  and reception personnel. All positions require fluency in Cantonese and very good English. Applicants must be at least high school graduates and have one year experience in the hotel industry. Oh, and you need to be of a certain height.  Male applicants need to be at least 5 ft. 7 in, females need to be at least 5 ft. 3 in.  But if you can qualify the pay is 6,000 Yuan  ($878) a month, which is not too bad until you realize that there is a whopping 22,000 Yuan ($3,200) fee that the successful applicant will need to pay. Interested?  Go here  http://zhaogong.chinalao.com/f25/24259/ to apply.

As weak as the Yuan is, it sure doesn’t seem all that easy to earn it.

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UnderstandingChina.org Blog

By Bruce@UnderstandingChina on January 12, 2009

As this is the inaugural post to the UnderstandingChina.org blog, a statement of purpose is in order. Our Mission Statement lays clear the vital importance for greater awareness about China and Chinese culture in the changing global dynamic. This blog will afford us the opportunity to offer analysis and commentary on contemporary events with an eye towards China’s long historical evolution.

My own understanding of China largely began when I spent the fall and early winter of 1988 as an exchange student at Peking University in Beijing.  In the months before I left for this trip, I recall reading as much as I could in the American newspapers about what was happening in China.  Naturally in my college library there were editions of multiple papers from across the nation, but there was a scarcity of content related to China. The occasional article here and there, but that was it.

Shortly after I returned to the U.S., the situation shifted dramatically as China became the front page news with the events in Tiananmen Square unfolding in the Spring of 1989. I remember watching with bemusement as the nightly national news anchormen struggled to pronounce the names of the Chinese leaders, their eyes widening in disbelief as the words Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang appeared on the copy before them. It was as if they had never encountered such strange combinations of letters, and even “Li Peng” seemed daunting to annunciate, as the anchors’ confidence withered with these newly discovered additions to their lexicon.

Today, the Western media consistently covers China, reflecting our more complex relationship that has evolved in the past two decades, as well as China’s increasingly imposing stature as a major player in the global game. Analysis of the coverage is fascinating. The headlines betray anxieties and uncertainties about what China means, and the bodies of the articles are stuffed with improbable numbers that emphasize the sublime enormity of China.

Witness today’s papers.  The front page of the New York Times asks “As China Rises, Fear Grows as to Whether Boom Can Endure”. The Washington Post reports that “China Car Sales Tops U.S.” The Christian Science Monitor wins a prize for having the most alarming with “When China Rules the World”, however that screamer of a headline is taken from the title of a newly released book by British journalist Martin Jacques, and the reviewer, Dan Southerland turns the volume down on the author’s predetermined conclusion. On a daily basis there will also be the inevitable passage about China’s rise in exports, often complimented with something about the shoddy quality and unsafe nature of those products being sent abroad.  Yesterday it was melamine in the milk and antifreeze in toothpaste, today it is cadmium in toy jewelry.

The sheer amount of ink generated in the mainstream media is a stark contrast to twenty years ago and indicative of China’s increasing presence in all of our lives. Whether you are happy with the situation or not is beside the point, as this mutual dependency won’t be changing any time soon.  The smart approach is to educate ourselves and learn to understand China, and we will all be better off.


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