Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Globalization 1658

Name: Andrés Rivera

Code: 211971

Sister in time

Around the world there are many people who work in very bad conditions, as is the
example in China, within the textile industry where people work eight hours a day for six
days a week, in very bad conditions. The pay and living conditions that these people who
work in these industries that use low-income people have been very bad and do not serve
them to survive in the way that a person does in any other job.

During the 1950s in communist China there was a system called "Hukou", which is that the
government chooses where the population will live, regardless of where people are. Here
the government controlled the workers so that production within the textile industry would
never stop, this is where the human rights of Chinese workers were ignored. The hukou
system was divided into the rural part and the urban part. Where the rural part were the
people who oversaw working on the crops to be able to distribute to the cities, with this the
government found a stable system where food could be distributed. In short, this system
was an experiment to control the population. Similarly, with this system, citizens who lived
in rural areas could not visit cities or urban areas. these people and workers were called
"floating people". These floating people worked 25% more than anyone in the city but
earned 40% less than people in the cities. This created a great inequality in the population
of China.

Hukou people were called second-class citizens. People from rural areas could not enter the
cities to get work and if rural people did not have "three not haves" which were papers,
work, and address, they were detained or even tortured. Subsequently, several regulations
were created which were going to help rural citizens, but these were only written. Seeing
the great potential of these people, the managers of various companies began to hire them
to do the hardest jobs and those that the people of the city did not want to do, such as
construction and textiles. With all this discrimination, the government decided to create
another system so that rural workers can be included as citizens.

Comment

 The main theme of this reading is discrimination against people who live outside the
cities. This is one of the issues that have been discussed for a long time in all
countries. This is currently still present in several companies, where workers have a
very long working day and a very low pay; this occurs even in the cultural part, as
in several countries they discriminate against women.
 It can also be seen how the power of the government influences in a negative way
when creating a system where they themselves choose the place of residence of
their citizens and subsequently do not help people who live in rural areas. Currently
in Ecuador we can still see how people in rural areas live in very poor conditions
compared to people in the city and the government over the years has seen this, but
they still cannot give equal resources to both parts of the population.
 Another point of view that caught my attention was how large companies in cities
hire people from rural areas to do the hardest work and the one that people from the
city do not want to do. I feel that this is also a discriminatory act towards these
people because some of them also have knowledge about various things and could
be of great help to develop and promote these companies. In addition to the fact that
people in rural areas accept these jobs out of necessity since they have no income.
 In a certain way, it should be possible to integrate people from rural areas with
people from the city so that there are more opportunities and discrimination is much
less.
 The government should also strengthen laws so that they better help rural areas. So
that they can have more technology and education than currently these are a very
important issue for human beings.