REPORTER: Adrian Brown
They called it "The World's Factory". Computers, clothes and toys once poured off the production lines here destined for export to the West - But no more. China's manufacturing hub of Dong Guan has been at the sharp end of the global economic crisis. With mile after mile of deserted factories, it's a scene of industrial devastation on a vast scale.
TANLEY TZE, FACTORY OWNER (Translation): Since the financial crisis, the situation is worsening. And when you look at the way clients made their orders you feel very worried.
Up to 30 million Chinese are now jobless, says the central government. And for most there's no safety net. There are no reliable figures for the number of factory closures in South China but one report says it could be as high as 60,000. This abandoned printing plant is one of them.
We have managed to get in here by posing as potential buyers for this now empty factory and this scene, of course, is being replicated hundreds, if not thousands of times, across Southern China at the moment. The story here is that the factory closed last October and more than a thousand workers lost their jobs and the owner has now fled.
He fled without paying his workers, prompting a large protest that not long ago would have been quelled by police with brute force. This time it was settled with government cash.
REPORTER: So the government had to give the workers money?
TANLEY TZE: Yeah - Every factory in China now like that. If the boss run away, the local government have to pay the workers.
My guide is Tanley Tze, from Hong Kong, owner of the toy factory next door, and a very worried man these days.
TANLEY TZE (Translation): In the first half of 2008. Before July, we had lots of orders, big ones, and the factory was very busy. Once we came to September and October, it was very clear. It's like we were in a helicopter and it was plunging. All the orders suddenly vanished. Suddenly, there was no response. Clients stopped asking about orders. You can see out there. Many factories in the area, big or small, after October, gradually closed down or their bosses ran off. The dramatic changes are there for all to see.
April and May are traditionally the months when his company would receive large orders for Christmas. So far, Tanley Tze has none. Most of his 300 employees are poor migrants from China's inner provinces. 19-year-old Wang Dong Xian is worker No.27. Her wage varies - she's on what's called "piece rates".
WANG DONG XIAN (Translation): We're paid by the piece. The more we make, the more you get paid.
Most expect to work six days a week. 16-hour days are common. But it's work that allows Wang to dream of a better life.
WANG DONG XIAN (Translation): I want to save it so that I can study later. I'll study on my own. Since I left school, I haven't gone back. So I'll study on my own and sit for the qualification test.
90% of the soft toys made here are for export. This shipment should have left for France in February but the buyer cancelled at the last moment.
REPORTER: Here they are - your workers. Do they understand really what's going on outside?
TANLEY TZE: I am worrying for them, but they don't.
REPORTER: They don't seem concerned at all.
TANLEY TZE: I don't think so.
REPORTER: But you are concerned for them?
TANLEY TZE: Yes, I very worry about the future and also the workers.
REPORTER: Because their future is in your hands?
TANLEY TZE: Yah, yes.
REPORTER: It's a big responsibility for you.
TANLEY TZE: So it's difficult.
This was once one of Dong Guan's busiest streets. But on a recent Friday lunchtime, normally one of the busiest periods of the week, it was practically deserted. Dong Guan feels like a dying city.
TANLEY TZE (Translation): When I come here, the quiet atmosphere really scares me. When these factories closed down or sent workers on holiday there were fewer people here and it set off a series of chain reactions. This has affected business in entertainment, hospitality and even takeaway shops. Some of them have even disappeared.
REPORTER: What will happen? Is it over for places like Dong Guan? I mean, are they finished?
PROFESSOR JOSEPH CHENG, POLITICAL SCIENTIST: I tend to think so.
Hong Kong-based political scientist Professor Joseph Cheng has often been a staunch critic of the mainland government.
PROFESSOR JOSEPH CHENG: I tend to believe that these factories will seek places offering cheaper labour, cheaper land and, in fact, this whole process has been taking place, even before the financial tsunami.
Manufacturers are fleeing inland to cheaper provinces. Yet the economic collapse hasn't deterred jobless migrants trying their luck here. Zhou Zen Qui and his friend Duan Ming Ke are from Guizhou Province, one of China's poorest. Zhou is 20 and wants a job that pays around 1,000 yuan a month - that's about $190 - but after a week of job hunting he's prepared to accept less.
ZHOU ZEN QUI (Translation): 860 yuan a month for a worker isn't bad.
DUAN MING KE (Translation): If you got paid 860, that'd be pretty good. Sometimes they make deductions from your pay.
ZHOU ZEN QUI (Translation): You can't do anything else.
DUAN MING KE (Translation): You can only be a non-skilled worker.
But Duan's prospects aren't much better when he calls a job centre. He wants to be a security guard, but, at 40, is told he's too old. Undeterred, they go to the job centre anyway. But there's a catch.
ZHOU ZEN QUI (Translation): I have to pay 200 yuan for a referral. -I have to pay 200 yuan.
WOMAN (Translation): 200? -Is there any job for you?
ZHOU ZEN QUI (Translation): It's in a shoe factory.
On the day I met them, Zhou was down to his last few dollars. As a migrant, he's not entitled to welfare or unemployment benefit outside his home province. So his situation is becoming desperate.
ZHOU ZEN QUI (Translation): How shall I say it? Yes, I'm worried. The economy is rather bad. I'm concerned about food. I don't know what to do.
This is a very sensitive time for China, which is why we are here unofficially. It's sensitive because it's 60 years since the Communists came to power, 20 since the massacre in Tiananmen Square, and now China finds itself at the sharp end of this economic crisis. No wonder the central government is worried.
This was Dong Guan six months ago when riot police were deployed after a protest by jobless toy workers threatened to turn ugly. These days such scenes are happening more and more frequently.
PROFESSOR JOSEPH CHENG: Yes, Chinese leaders are very sensitive. They certainly feel a little bit insecure and that is exactly why there is no more talk of political reform.
There are 250 million migrant workers in China, and around a fifth of them are now in Guangdong. Each day, thousands throng the commercially run employment exchanges. They scan notice boards. I check a newspaper that lists what's available today in local industries.
REPORTER: What other jobs can you see?
WOMAN: Here is the factory jobs - but they only looking for female, aged between 18 to 28.
For those lucky enough to find a job, they're paying up to 40% less than they did a year ago. These days, a salary of $8 a day is typical, but even here that's barely a subsistence wage. With millions of university graduates now swelling the ranks of job hunters, most are having to lower expectations.
LI ZHI CHUEN (Translation): The competition is very tough, with many college graduates. I can't compete with them. So I'm worried. I'm really worried.
At a recruitment centre in the boom city of Shenzhen, I met Li Zhi Chuen. He has a wife and baby to support in faraway Shaanxi province and is surprised salaries are not higher. Like other jobless migrants I spoke to, he believes that some of the adverts here are fakes. Because whether the job is real or not, the applicant still has to pay a fee.
LI ZHI CHUEN (Translation): Put it this way. Those ads on display are almost all phoney. A very few may be genuine. The fake ones and genuine ones are mixed. It is, after all, a job market. It has to make money and goes after profits.
Li wants to be a traditional Chinese doctor, but can't afford the course. He's worried, but not angry, like jobless workers in Europe or America right now.
PROFESSOR JOSEPH CHENG: And there is a difference between Europe and China, in a sense that a lot of the unemployed can go back to their villages, where they have accommodation, they have basic food. It is subsistence-only in the absence of a satisfactory social security net.
To commuters on the morning ferry to Hong Kong Island, he's just another parent taking his children to school. Few realise that 20 years ago Han Dong Fang was a protest leader in Tiananmen Square. While students called for democracy, Han championed workers' rights.
HAN DONG FANG, RADIO BROADCASTER: No-one is standing on the workers' side. It's just sick.
Han was jailed without trial for two years. Although now banned from mainland China, he is allowed to remain in Hong Kong.
REPORTER: We always hear that China is now a modern country, and that the workers have never been better off than they.
HAN DONG FANG: No, we didn't hear that. We all know the workers are working in one of the worst situations and the workers' rights is one of the worst in the world. We never heard about that, that the workers in China are better off.
He broadcasts a weekly show on Radio Free Asia, funded by the US government, which reaches over 20 million mainland Chinese. That makes Han Dong Fang a potent voice, even in exile.
HAN DONG FANG (Translation): Hello, this is Han Dongfang. Hello. Are you free to talk?
The calls cover the gamut of labour grievances in today's China - Workers whose factories have closed, to those planning strikes.
HAN DONG FANG (Translation): Is it because the situation of your factory is impacted by the global financial crisis? It's possible. I see.
Industrial action is still illegal in China, but strikes are now happening every day, he says.
HAN DONG FANG: The government, one, have not enough prisons to keep these workers of course. Second, it's a bad image if the workers go on strike only for asking for legal payment. You arrest them? You sentence them? Of course it's a bad image for the government.
REPORTER: So we are seeing some change - China almost tolerating dissent in the workplace?
PROFESSOR JOSEPH CHENG: Yes, this is the case. This is what we call a very soft-handed approach in dealing with unrest. At least the top officials, they understand - they don't want to exacerbate the tensions, to sharpen the contradictions.
REPORTER: So that's progress?
PROFESSOR JOSEPH CHENG: This is progress. That is progress in the absence of genuine democracy, a more tolerant authoritarian regime.
Han Dong Fang says there's ample evidence of factory owners using the economic crisis as a pretext to cut pay and conditions.
HAN DONG FANG: This is definitely not the best way. The employers kick out the workers who get sickness and fire them without compensation. That is definitely not the right way. And the workers' rights are being violated, and the government will get into trouble too.
Today he's talking to a jewellery worker, 1 of 50 diagnosed with an incurable lung disease and now fighting the factory boss for compensation.
HAN DONG FANG, BROADCASTING (Translation): What kind of occupational disease did you contract? So the workers received the pay for December only now. What's the reason?
The caller lives in Haifeng, a small but historic city, 300 kilometres from Hong Kong. What we found here tells you much about how China's transition to a free market economy has often come at a terrible price for its workers. What's different now, though, is the willingness of many of them to speak up and demand legal redress. I don't go to their homes - they worry about company thugs who've been watching them - so we meet in the private room of a restaurant in a nearby town. Xiong Gao Lin is the worker I've come to meet, along with two others. He describes the symptoms of his deadly lung disease, known as silicosis.
XIONG GAO, LUNG DISEASE VICTIM (Translation): I have chest pain and feel like I can't breathe. Sometimes I cough. When I walk slightly faster or go upstairs, I find myself short of breath. I get tired easily. I have no strength and feel weak in my limbs. That's how I'm feeling.
He believes he contracted the illness grinding semi-precious stones. In theory, they should get to present their case in court, but the problem is, there’s a huge backlog, more than 100,000 disputes were filed in the first three months of this year alone.
CHEN SHE SHENG, LUNG DISEASE VICTIM (Translation): Several dozen workers are in a similar situation. We had the same problem. When we were found to have health problems, they sacked us or asked us to resign with three months' pay. If we refused to resign, we wouldn't get a cent. Some were too afraid and signed, but I didn't.
The local media has ignored their campaign. Taking the risk of talking to a foreign journalist is a measure of their desperation. Xiong Gao Lin was fired after refusing to accept a compensation offer of two months salary.
XIONG GAO (Translation): I went to see the factory head. He said that it would be useless to treat my condition. He said that silicosis was incurable. He refused my request for treatment. He said whatever I wanted to do, he didn't care. He just told me to my face "Go away and die."
It's hard to verify any of these claims because the company wouldn't return our phone calls or emails, but this is their sprawling factory complex on the outskirts of Haifeng, with its darkly ironic name. Xiong has been on sick leave since December but so far has only received one month's pay. He desperately needs the money to buy medicine. Before I left, the group wanted to show me Haifeng's most famous landmark - It's a local Revolutionary hero. For Chen, his wife, Ran Qi Mei, and their family, such outings are more precious now. Ran worked at the factory too and also has silicosis.
RAN QI MEI (Translation): I now have stage two silicosis. I hardly do anything but stay at home all day. I catch a cold when the weather changes. If I walk even slightly fast, I find myself breathless. Stage three is the most advanced stage. At stage three, one only has a couple of years. I was diagnosed with stage two in 2006. Now I should be very close to stage three.
Her biggest concern is to ensure there's enough money to take care of her 6-year-old son Chen Ling, and his sister.
RAN QI MEI (Translation): It has harmed both us and our children.
And she has one wish - that her son never works in a factory.
Reporter/Camera
ADRIAN BROWN
Fixer
SKY ZEH
Editors
MICAH MCGOWN
NICK O’BRIEN
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Translations / Subtitling
JING HAN
KONG WO TANG
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN