Results tagged “work”

We've highlighted mini-documentaries on the plight of migrant workers before, but there can't be enough said about these 200 million generally faceless people who have borne the burden of China's economic boom on their backs.

Tudou cofounder and mastermind behind the Chinese online game site game.com.cn (we wonder how much he paid for that domain name!) Marc van der Chijs seems to think so:

This week we were analyzing the traffic figures on our Chinese online game sites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com, when we noted a strange effect. During weekdays there was hardly any growth on our portals, but on weekends the growth was similar to what we were used to. We looked a bit deeper into this and may have found a reason for this: staff in companies play less online games during working hours (normally we see a spike in traffic around 11:30 AM and from 4 PM onwards).

Continue reading "Is the global financial crisis making people work harder in the office?"

Scenes of China at work shot by Dror Poleg in May-July 2008 in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changzhou, Shenyang, Xi'an, Chengdu, and Chongqing.

"The man, a manager surnamed Liu, invited one of his new female staff into his office in southwestern China's Sichuan province to ‘discuss work matters’, but then told her he wanted to be her boyfriend, the Beijing News said, citing a local newspaper. When the woman turned Liu down, he turned off the lights, held her by the neck and kissed her, the report said. ‘Miss Chen screamed out and fought back. Colleagues next door heard her and dialed (the police),’ the newspaper said." [Reuters]

Beijing News reports a weird measure taken in a company in southern China. According to aujourdhuilachine.com, a company that makes loudspeakers has demanded that its employees keep quiet during work hours — otherwise they'll be asked to wear a protection mask for 3 days! The company explained the decision (taken in May) that they want to preserve the production's quality standards:

"If our employees talk, they are bound to splutter and it will do harm to the equipment parts."

An anonymous employee reported the tightening up of controls in the workshops. The newspapers asked lawyers about the matter and they say that this "silence rule" goes against the Chinese laws protecting the workers' rights and that this company's employees could file a complaint. Let's see if they do.

African nationals in the city have been running small businesses on flexible, six-month ``F'' visas and are now being given only tourist visas of up to 15 days, the Morning Post said.

• Via Danwei: For the first time, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has acknowledged that visa procedures have been tightened. Said Qin Gang, according to the AP:

  "We have made some arrangements according to usual international practice. That is, in the approval process we are more strict and more serious with the procedure," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

  Continue reading "China visa updates"

Here's an English news link:

CHINESE police have rescued 33 intellectually disabled people forced to work at a building site by slave labour merchants after the apparent suicide of a detainee alerted authorities.

The Chinese press offers some information. For example, the report above says that about 2/3 of the 33 people discovered were mentally disabled, and that they came from all over China. The ringmasters behind this operation go to train stations around China and target people who are mentally disabled and lure them to Harbin with a promise of the princely sum of 60 RMB a day. Most of them were recruited in recent months, and everyday they were taken to and from the construction grounds where they did hard manual labor, like piling brick and moving sand. They were only allowed to eat porridge and vegetables, or leftovers from restaurants. And if they got out of line, there was always someone there to beat them back into submission.