China’s factories must be ‘armed with automation’, as coronavirus gives boost to machines in manufacturing

Trade war with US saw many companies relocate outside China, but orders came back last year as Chinese production rapidly rebounded from the coronavirus

Beijing has splashed out huge subsidies on the robotics industry, seeing it as a key element in its push to upgrade the nation’s manufacturing industry

He Huifeng in Guangdong
Published: 10 Jan, 2021

Xpeng’s factory, in the southern Chinese city of Zhaoqing, touts 100 per cent automation in the installation of car bodies at its welding workshops, with more than 200 robotic arms.

\ Photo: Handout

The US-China trade war weakened demand for automation on Chinese assembly lines from 2018-19, but a shortage of manpower during the pandemic reversed that trend last year, and analysts expect manufacturers to further embrace robots in 2021.

“The impact of the pandemic on the global industrial supply chain has been a major stimulus, forcing a huge number of orders to return to China,” said Peng Biao, an analyst with Fashionprint.com, which monitors the fashion industry. “Last year was like a roller-coaster ride for Chinese manufacturers, from huge drops in revenue at the beginning of the year to a huge rebound later that year. And now there is a growing shortage of manpower everywhere, so medium- and large-sized companies are now, again, having to step up the replacement [of workers] with robots.

“For example, among garment printers that survived last year, it can be said that 80 per cent of them have plans this year to invest in automation. Otherwise, it will be difficult to survive in the future, because they would be eaten up by the soaring cost of labour and materials.”

After the trade war with the United States kicked off in July 2018, many Chinese companies – particularly in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta manufacturing bases – said they were relocating production lines out of China, fearing the knock-on effect of trade tariffs.

But now, with China being the only major economy to fully resume production amid the coronavirus, domestic manufacturers and overseas buyers are re-evaluating the need for relocation and the importance of maintaining production capacity in China, according to Luo Jun, CEO of the International Robotics and Intelligent Equipment Industry Alliance, a government-backed think tank on smart manufacturing.

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And if the pandemic continues to impact the production capacity in other major economies in the coming year, there will be a steady and considerable flow of orders coming to Chinese manufacturing, resulting in a robotics boom, he predicted.

Robotics was one of the 10 cutting-edge industries singled out in Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial policy initiative that sparked international controversy and stood at the heart of the Sino-US trade war. While the plan has since been sidelined, Beijing has still splashed out huge subsidies on the robotics industry, seeing it as a key element in its push to upgrade the nation’s manufacturing industry and provide a solution to soaring labour costs amid a shrinking labour force.

In 2018, the number of newly installed industrial robots in China fell 1 per cent, to around 154,000 units. The market continued to shrink in 2019, dripping 8.6 per cent from a year earlier to 144,000 units, according to figures from China Robot Industry Alliance and the International Federation of Robotics.

But there was a sharp rebound in the latter part of 2020.

Even though China’s industrial robot production plunged 19.4 per cent from a year earlier in January and February at the height of the coronavirus outbreak, total year-on-year output jumped 22.2 per cent in the first 11 months of 2020, indicated a swell in demand as the nation’s overall economy rebounded, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

The GG Robotics Research Institute, based in Guangdong province, estimates that there were more than 169,000 new industrial robot installations last year. That total would represent a 17.4 per cent increase over the 2019 figure of 144,000 units given by the China Robot Industry Alliance and the International Federation of Robotics.

And business is looking up for this year.

Dongguan-based Topstar Technology, one of China’s leading intelligent manufacturing integrated service providers, said it expects to add 5,000 clients this year to the 10,000 it had in 2020. According to the firm, it invested 5 per cent of its 2019 revenue into research and development.

China had a “robot density” of 187 units per 10,000 workers in 2019, according to the latest figures from the International Federation of Robotics, up from 140 in 2018 and 68 in 2016. Globally, there were 113 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees, on average, in the manufacturing sector in 2019, the figures showed.

Government-backed incentives and funding are still the main engines driving Chinese manufacturers to replace humans with robots in industries including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, new infrastructure projects and food processing.

Robotics-enabled automation is the solution to rising labour costs, said Pink Zhang, manufacturing director of TROX Air Conditioning Components (Suzhou), which invested more than 10 million yuan (US$1.55 million) last year to upgrade its automated production lines.

The company’s sales pitch is ambitious, with Zhang saying TROX aims to achieve annual sales growth in the domestic market of 30 per cent starting this year by providing tailored air conditioning solutions for hundreds of hospitals, institutes, airports and commercial buildings across China.

“We understand the importance of automation in fulfilling our goal, especially after seeing the sudden, huge impact of pandemic-induced [transport] lockdowns on freezing staff mobility,” he said. The company is planning to invest at least three per cent of its annual revenue in replacing human labour with robots in the coming years.

An automation boom is also expected in the food-processing sector after Beijing’s call to ensure food security and eliminate food waste.

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“About 20 per cent of the 7,600 rice-processing factories in China have been partially automated so far. The rest all need to be armed with automation in the near future,” said Zhou Ying, chairman of the board at Hunan Hailian Grain and Oil Technology, which produces “flexible polishing devices” for rice processing.

“In the 2000s, my father sent me to study in Europe to prepare to take over the family business. At that time, all rice-colour sorting machines and packing machines were made and imported from the UK, Italy and Japan. Now, domestic suppliers account for over 80 per cent of the market,” Zhou said.

Beijing’s domestically focused economic strategy is proving to be a golden opportunity for Chinese tech firms of their kind, she said.

Financial support for robotics manufacturers and automation businesses at various levels of government – in the form of subsidies, low-interest-rate loans, tax relief, or land rental incentives – is still considerable. Nonetheless, China remains heavily reliant on imports of core robotic parts from Japan and the European Union, according to Luo at the International Robotics and Intelligent Equipment Industry Alliance.

The goal, he said, is to gradually reduce that dependency in the coming years, and that could be expedited “if global demand remains strong and continues to rely on Chinese production capacity”.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Pandemic boosts use of factory robots

As China’s coronavirus rebound gathers steam, export-oriented manufacturers struggle to find worker

Factories in China’s south and east are struggling to find enough workers to fill surging export orders thanks to strong demand in Western countries

The uptick in orders is proving a double-edged sword for many manufacturers, driving up wages and in some case forcing them to delay shipments

Chinese factory owners scrambling to find enough workers to keep pace with overseas orders. Photo: Xinhua

A sharp rebound in China’s manufacturing in recent months, spurred on by surging demand for exports in the West, has caused labour shortages in the country’s south and east, with many factory owners scrambling to keep pace with overseas orders.

Employers are offering higher wages to entice migrant workers back from their hometowns, but analysts say the shortfall in employees is likely to last well into next year.

China’s exports surged at the fastest pace in almost three years in November, the sixth consecutive month of growth, with manufacturers continuing to capitalise on coronavirus restrictions elsewhere in the world.

Exports grew by 21.1 per cent last month from a year earlier, as China continued to ship medical equipment to combat the virus and electronic goods for people stuck at home.

The export growth has underlined China’s strong recovery from the pandemic, with the
economy growing 4.9 per cent year on year in the third quarter and the official survey-based unemployment rate falling to 5.2 per cent last month, the same level as December 2019.



But amid a tight labour market, the rapid uptick in orders is proving a double-edged sword for many factory owners.

“Factories that have recently received new orders are paying a high price to recruit short-term workers,” said Lu Zhou, an operations director at a foreign-invested medical equipment maker in Taicang, a city in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

“The industrial zones in Taicang and [nearby] Suzhou are full of recruitment ads and labour agencies asking for 300 yuan for introducing a worker, and the price is still rising.”

Some factory owners have increased wages to about 22 to 24 yuan (US$3.60) per hour, Lu said, although most small and medium-sized businesses prefer to hire temporary workers due to the uncertain global economic outlook.

News that skilled workers are now earning up to 10,000 yuan (US$,1528) a month has spread like wildfire among China’s army of 290 million migrant workers, many of whom have been out of work for part of the year due to factory closures and lockdowns.

After months of living under lockdown in Hubei province, the epicentre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, Cao Jin has bounced from province to province, picking up work on the night shift at a factory in Foshan, Guangdong province, before heading west to Xinjiang province to work in construction.

The labour market will further tighten, and there may be a relatively strong labour shortage problem next year   Liu Ligang

But the 39-year-old is now eyeing a return to one of China’s export-oriented manufacturing hubs, like Guangdong or Zhejiang, after hearing he could be earning 20 per cent more than in 2019.

“My [old] boss welcomes me to join anytime because the factory is short on labour and he estimates there are enough orders for employees to work on rotating [12-hour] shifts until next October,” said Cao, who spent years working in Guandong factories.

“In the middle of the year, the boss was worried the factory would close down. But output is now 20 per cent higher than last year.”

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Liu Ligang, chief China economist at Citigroup, said the labour market will further tighten, and there may be a relatively strong problem next year.

“Many workers stayed at home because of the pandemic ... As more go back to work after the economy recovers and quarantine rules are lifted, that could help curb labor shortage,” he said.

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Not even rising wages are enough to lure all migrant labourers back to work, particularly those in younger generations.

“Earning 8,000 yuan a month sounds good, but it’s actually exhausting work,” said Li Dian, who is in her 20s, from Hunan province. “It’s a lot of pressure working 12 hours per day, 6 days per week, with only half an hour for meals and no rest during the shift.”

Li worked for an electronics factory in Dongguan, a manufacturing hub in Guangdong province, before quitting in the summer and returning to her hometown, where she now earns between 3,500 yuan and 5,000 yuan a month at a local factory.

For employers, the unstable global recovery from the pandemic is still a concern.

“In October and November, there were many new orders, but in December we suddenly saw an obvious drop,” said Wang Jie, who runs a footwear factory in Dongguan.

“We have heard that the pandemic is becoming even worse [outside China] … we are actually very scared.

“We could not survive another round of cancellations and postponements of orders.”

In late February, Wang took orders for more than 90,000 pairs of shoes, but 80,000 were cancelled in late March, when the outbreak began to gather pace around the world and many countries started to seal their borders.

“Many payments have also been delayed, and I still haven’t got the payments I should have in summer,” he said.

Shanghai General Sports, a motorcycle and bicycle manufacturer, has had a good year as bicycle sales boomed this year in the United States, its primary export market.

But general manager Ge Lei said a shortage of workers had forced it to delay delivery for most of the year and orders are already lined up until June 2020.

At the same time, an appreciating Chinese yuan and little room for price negotiation with foreign clients has not made business particularly profitable.
The yuan has steadily appreciated against the US dollar this year and many economists believe it could strengthen further.

“Our payment period is normally three months. It’s OK when we start delivering goods. But when we get payments, there is a foreign exchange loss,” Ge said.

China sees outpouring of support for workers laid low by Beijing coronavirus outbreak, and online censors have stepped in

Beijing has gone into ‘emergency response mode’ after detection of first local infections in five months

Travel records of some infected individuals are casting a spotlight on how difficult it can be to make a living in the nation’s capital

Sidney Leng and Jane Cai in Beijing
Published:  28 Dec, 2020

Commute times in Beijing are among the worst in China, with many residents sitting in traffic for hours every day. Photo: AFP

As Beijing braces for a rise in coronavirus infections during the winter months, Chinese citizens are lamenting the hardships facing infected workers in the nation’s capital, based on newly disclosed descriptions of their circumstances.

Beijing went into “emergency response mode” on Wednesday after 13 cases were detected in the capital city in 10 days, including the first local infections in 152 days. Beijing has reported nine local cases in less than a week.

Among the five confirmed cases and one asymptomatic infection reported over the weekend, all are migrant workers living in Nanfaxin township, in the city’s northeastern Shunyi district near Beijing Capital International Airport.

The district has more than a million residents, nearly half of whom are not locals. Most have blue-collar jobs.

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The latest wave of local infections began when a 34-year-old man in Shunyi, surnamed Fu, tested positive for the virus. When his test results came back early on Wednesday morning, Fu was on a business trip to Ningbo, nearly 1,400km (870 miles) from home – and just three days before he was due to take his graduate school exam, according to his travel records released by the Beijing government.

The details of Fu’s travails struck a chord with many people, particularly those living in Beijing, by casting a spotlight on the hard life of a typical working father in the city.

Fu spends at least three hours every day making the 50km (31-mile) round trip between his home and office, accompanies his child to early education classes and shopping on his weekends, and uses his evenings to prepare for his graduate school exam.

On Tuesday, he took a coronavirus test, as required for every exam taker, and flew to Ningbo in the afternoon before he was confirmed to have been infected.

During the latest outbreak in Beijing, what’s being disclosed is not just itineraries [of confirmed cases], but also the lives of ordinary people in BeijingWeibo comment

“This is typical life in Beijing,” said a netizen on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service. “While it is common to work hard for a better life, the long commuting time is unbearable. That’s why I left Beijing two years ago.”

Other shared itineraries also offered glimpses into the working lives of men and women in Beijing. A 31-year-old man living in Shunyi, whose infection was confirmed on Saturday, spent his days working at a trading company while also holding down a night shift at a delivery transfer station for courier firm SF Express.

“During the latest outbreak in Beijing, what’s being disclosed is not just itineraries [of confirmed cases], but also the lives of ordinary people in Beijing,” said one popular Weibo comment.

“Life is so hard. These are the real lives of contemporary workmen, especially in first-tier cities,” another said.

A 32-year-old woman, whose infection was also confirmed on Saturday, was working full-time at an electric-vehicle firm during the day, then part-time at a delivery station from 10pm to 2am on five of the 14 days before her hospitalisation.

And a 40-year-old male patient had been driving for a ride-hailing company in the city for 17 hours a day in 11 out of the 14 days surveyed, from 6am to 11pm, to make ends meet.

“Beijing’s cases always tell people what survival looks like,” another Weibo commenter said. “In a city where it takes more than 45 minutes to commute , many people even spend three or four hours commuting every day. It is difficult for you to feel the breath of life in such a city most of the time.”

Many such postings on Chinese social media have been removed by censors. On Monday, a popular Weibo hashtag referring to the “hard life in Beijing’s coronavirus cases” generated zero results.

As China’s capital, Beijing has one of the highest costs of living among cities in China, and in the world. According to an annual survey by asset management firm Mercer, Beijing ranked 10th this year on its list of the most expensive cities for expatriates to live in, with Shanghai coming in seventh place and Hong Kong ranked first.

Beijing also has the longest commuting distances and times among all Chinese cities, with an average journey of 12.4km and 56 minutes, according to a 2019 report by the Beijing Transport Development and Research Centre.

This year, young people in Beijing are spending an average of 5,100 yuan (US$782) a month on rent – the highest average among China’s four largest cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, according to a report published by the Beijing-based real estate brokerage platform Beike.

Steamed buns and cheap noodles comprise most meals of the working class, according to the report.

Life is so hard. I cannot help sighing. We live in the same city and are under similar pressure Douban user

“While ‘low-end workers’ may be unwelcome in the capital city, the pandemic survey shows they work hard and deserve our respect,” a Weibo post said.

Beijing’s population stood at 21.5 million at the end of last year, with around 34 per cent of residents being migrants from other provinces, official data showed.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers were forced out of their homes in Beijing amid a citywide clean-up campaign in the aftermath of a blaze killed 19 people in 2017. The Beijing government has denied that it was aiming to evict lower-class segments, but there are widespread concerns that ordinary workers have become unwelcome in Beijing’s urbanisation and industrial upgrading drives.

“Life is so hard,” said a user on Douban, a social-networking platform. “I cannot help sighing. We live in the same city and are under similar pressure.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: New cases expose misery of Beijing’s working class

How China’s ‘dibao’ social safety net is being used to silence dissent, according to one researcher

China’s minimum living standard guarantee, known as ‘dibao’, was conceived as a social safety net to help the poor during a period of reform in the 1990s

But over time it has transformed into a means to control ‘targeted populations’ and repress social unrest, says Jennifer Pan, from Stanford University

China’s minimum living standard guarantee, known as ‘dibao’, provides unconditional cash transfers and benefits to the poor.
Photo: EPA

The role of China’s social safety net programme, known as dibao, has shifted over time from providing support to the poor and vulnerable to being used partly as a tool to repress dissent, according to research from a US-based social scientist.

The minimum living standard guarantee is China’s sole social security programme targeted at reducing income inequality. The scheme provides unconditional cash transfers and benefits to recipients whose income falls under a threshold set by local governments.
But what has long puzzled scholars – and many dibao applicants – is its opaque and seemingly inconsistent eligibility standards. A 2012 study from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that only 20-30 per cent of households entitled to the benefit ended up receiving it.

Jennifer Pan, author of the recently published Welfare for Autocrats, which introduces the idea of “repressive assistance” in China, thinks she may have struck on an explanation.

In its early years, dibao was used mainly to help reduce urban poverty as reform of state-owned enterprises led to mass lay-offs in the 1990s. But the programme gradually became part of Beijing’s regime to maintain stability in the 2000s, following crackdowns on practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement considered an evil cult.

“What’s unique about dibao is that over time, especially following the Falun Gong protests in 1999, you see a change in how the Chinese government thinks about stability - how important it is, what its relationship to economic development means, as well as how to pursue it,” said Pan, an assistant professor of communication at Stanford University, in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

“So there’s a comprehensive management of public security. And because of those changes, dibao is then used very specifically to control individual

As part of her field research between 2012-13, Pan interviewed dozens of government officials, as well as applicants and recipients of dibao.

You can make someone less likely to take action … by giving them material benefits

Jennifer Pan

She also surveyed 100 neighbourhoods to test whether political order was tied into distribution, and conducted field experiments to show provision was not only shaped by economic considerations.

Over time, as it became clear to authorities that security alone could not guarantee political order, dibao began to be used to control what Beijing deemed “targeted populations”, including former prisoners and people considered threats to stability, Pan said.

“You can make someone less likely to take action … by giving them material benefits,” she said.

“It’s not threats or violence, it’s instead giving them very minimal resources. That keeps them in a particular socio-economic state.”

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She said it was different to buying people off because it was a small amount of money and “a lot of the people receiving it are not making an exchange decision.”

“They’re not saying, OK, fine, I’ll take dibao and I won’t do this,” she said.

The level of assistance varies between provinces, but is generally lower than unemployment insurance and minimum wage. For instance, in Beijing, the government compensates you the difference between your monthly income and the dibao threshold of 1,140 yuan (US$174) per month, whereas the monthly unemployment benefit is more than 1,800 yuan, according to government data.

For instance, in Beijing, recipients get 1,140 yuan (US$174) per month, whereas the monthly unemployment benefit is more than 1,800 yuan, according to government data.

An important aspect related to social control is that benefits are low enough for people to depend on, yet not enough to enable them to mobilise against the state, Pan said.

Apart from feeling stigmatised because all dibao recipients’ names are made public, beneficiaries receive regular visits from neighbourhood party officials who keep tabs on them as part of information gathering.

The number of dibao recipients has been shrinking since 2011 in both
urban and rural areas, partly because of local government funding constraints and resistance from the public who believe welfare decreases incentives to work.

Local governments might also want to have fewer people living on dibao to show they were successfully reducing poverty, Pan said.

“When I was doing my fieldwork in 2013, I talked to local governments that were setting a cap on the number of participants, which means the programme is not based at all on fundamental economic conditions,” she said.

When Pan started her work on dibao in 2012, there was a push for local governments to be transparent and many policy documents on how to monitor “targeted populations” with social security were available online.

People who are put into targeted populations, for the most part, are those who have some history in the past that make them easy to identify for the governmentJennifer Pan

By 2019, when she reviewed her research, most of these documents had been removed from the internet.

But she said it was reasonable to believe such a campaign continued because many Chinese academic articles on using video surveillance and big data to identify these groups had been published in recent years.

“People who are put into targeted populations, for the most part, are those who have some history in the past that make them easy to identify for the government,” Pan said.

“For the most part, I think these people are very unlikely to be doing anything again, because most of them have been through the penal system.

“But at the same time, I think for a government like China, which is very different to a government like in the US, it doesn’t matter if there are a lot of people who are placed in that category who will never do anything, as long as the system is able to get the few who may do something.”

China’s birth rate push trumps gender equality, with women hit with ‘parenthood penalty’

• China’s birth rate is declining so Beijing is encouraging couples to have more children, but employers are worried about extra maternity costs
• China still exceeds the global average participation rate for women in the workplace at 60 per cent in 2019, but the rate has been falling since 1990

China ranked 106th behind Hungary last year on the annual gender gap index compiled by the World Economic Forum, having been 61st in 2008. Photo: Xinhua

China’s ongoing battle to boost its population is having a knock-on effect on its efforts to ensure gender equality in the workplace, with female applicants increasingly being told they are unsuitable for roles for “unsubstantiated” reasons, including because the role required overtime work, business trips, driving or even moving books.

“These excuses are so unsubstantiated. Overtime and business trips have nothing to do with gender. It’s up to your abilities and tolerance. It can not persuade us at all,” said Helen Tang, who has been battling gender equality while claiming to be the victim of discriminatory practices since 2018.

China has been struggling with a declining birth rate in recent years and so is encouraging couples to have more children. But with employers worried about maternity costs, discrimination, at least recently, has been rising, particularly since Beijing officially ended its one-child policy in 2016.

While China exceeds the global average participation rate for women in the workplace of 47 per cent with 60 per cent in 2019, the rate has fallen by more than 12 percentage points since 1990, according to the United Nations-backed International Labour Organization.

I am puzzled. I don’t understand why a clerk role is only offered to men Helen Tang

The gap between male and female labour participation rates in China expanded from 11.6 percentage points to 14.8 percentage points between 1990 and 2019, while it has been shrinking in major economies during the same period.


“I am puzzled. I don’t understand why a clerk role is only offered to men,” added Tang, who was told male applicants would be prioritised when she called to inquire about the position.

Her treatment saw Tang reach out to Workplace Gender Equality Watch, an informal social media group, and discovered that the problem was more prevalent than she first feared. She later volunteered to work for the organisation.

Founded in 2014, the group is made up of more than 50 part-time volunteers who regularly highlight on social media hiring practises that they believe are discriminatory. The group also files complaints with relevant authorities and companies, and sometimes provides legal help.

Although China has laws and regulations to protect women’s employment rights, gender discrimination in the workplace is still very seriousRen Zeping

“Although China has laws and regulations to protect women’s employment rights, gender discrimination in the workplace is still very serious,” said Ren Zeping, chief economist at the Evergrande Research Institute.

“Generally speaking, a smaller labour participation gap between men and women means better protection of women’s employment rights and higher fertility rates.”

China ranked 106th behind Hungary last year on the annual gender gap index compiled by the World Economic Forum, having been 61st in 2008. The index considers employment opportunity, education attainment, health and political empowerment.

In a survey of more than 66,000 people conducted by recruitment portal Zhaopin last year, overall pay for female workers was 17 per cent lower than male workers, and only 5 per cent of women took management roles compared to 9 per cent of men.

Within the Communist Party, less than 30 per cent of members were women in 2018, and less than 27 per cent of party and government leadership roles were taken by women in 2017, according to government data.

Last year, Workplace Gender Equality Watch published notices on more than 100 discriminatory job listings on average per month, up from an average of 69 in 2019.

Based on submissions via social media, many of the roles involved law firms, public institutions, state-owned construction and engineering firms, as well as schools.

The civil service, particularly at the local level, is a hot bed for gender discrimination, according to an analysis of all published jobs from 2017 to 2020 conducted by the group.

The share of roles preferring men accounted for more than 10 per cent of all listings each year of the study, with women preferred for just over 1 per cent of roles last year, up from zero in 2019.

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Based on official data, the government of Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse in the south of the country, had the most gender discriminatory roles than other provinces, offering 1,449 civil servant roles for men only last year, six times more than for female-only offerings.

Workplace Gender Equality Watch also argued that while some government agencies offered the same number of jobs for men and women, there remains discrimination in hiring practices with less qualified men often hired instead of more qualified women.

In a study conducted before and after China officially abolished its one-child policy in 2016, three researchers led by He Haoran from Beijing Normal University sent fictitious résumés with varied gender information to real job postings in the three most developed cities to test labour market discrimination against expected motherhood.

They found that women, particularly those seen to be within childbearing ages, received fewer responses than before 2016, indicating that women were suffering from a “parenthood penalty” that did not apply to men.

For companies, maternity costs are a big consideration … the costs of having children cannot be shared by the society, they can only be shared by firms Helen Tang

Unlike the planned economy era, when state-owned firms built schools and dormitories to take care of employees’ children and provide social services, China today has a large shortage of nurseries and childcare services that has forced some working aged women to leave the workforce.

In the Zhaopin survey, close to 60 per cent of women said they had encountered questions about their marriage and maternity status during the hiring process.

“For companies, maternity costs are a big consideration … the costs of having children cannot be shared by the society, they can only be shared by firms,” added Tang.

“When they take this into consideration, they will reduce job opportunities for women and prefer men more.”

By law, China protects equal employment, and in 2019 the government started imposing a fine of up to 50,000 yuan (US$7,700) for gender discriminatory job postings.

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At the end of last year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security also published a notice banning gender discrimination via online recruitment.

But less than a third of women surveyed by Zhaopin believed that the rules could actually improve the work environment for women.

Lawsuits against gender discrimination during recruitment, though, are rare. One of the first such cases appeared in Zhejiang province in eastern China in 2014, when a new graduate sued a culinary school for repeatedly declining her applications for a clerk role. She was eventually awarded 2,000 yuan (US$309), which failed to even cover her legal fees.

“We are fully aware that recruitment is only the first step. There is more hidden gender discrimination at work, too,” said Tang.

“What we can do is to get rid of discrimination in the hiring process first. And hopefully we can have more government oversight in the future.”

The Trump administration’s parting outrage against Cuba

Just like millions of U.S. citizens, Cubans are counting the days until the Trump administration becomes history and hoping the next administration will offer some relief.

By Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flories
-January 12, 2021
SOURCE NationofChange

Photograph: Yander Zamora / EFE

On January 11, in his final days before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added one parting blow to the series of bludgeons his administration has inflicted on Cuba for four years: putting the island on the list of “state sponsors of terror” that includes only Iran, North Korea and Syria. The designation drew swift condemnation from policymakers and humanitarian groups as a decision widely characterized as “politically motivated.” It comes six years after the Obama administration had removed Cuba from the same list as part of his policy of rapprochement.

In the six years since, Trump’s State Department could not point to a single act of terror sponsored by Cuba. Instead, Secretary Pompeo based his decision on Cuba’s alleged support for the ELN (National Liberation Army – Colombia’s second-largest guerilla group) and the harboring of a handful of U.S. fugitives wanted for crimes committed in the 1970s, including renowned Black revolutionary Assata Shakur. Lacking more specific accusations, the State Department criticized Cuba for its supposed “malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.”

These claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. Regarding the ELN, the gist of the story is that the Trump administration is punishing Cuba for its role in attempting to bring peace to the long-simmering conflict in Colombia. ELN negotiators arrived in Cuba in 2018 for peace talks with the Colombian government. As part of the protocols for these meetings, ELN negotiators were allowed entry into Cuba and promised safe passage back into Colombia after their conclusion. Guarantor countries, including Cuba and Norway, assumed responsibility for their safe return. The talks collapsed in January 2019 following an ELN car bombing in Bogotá that killed 22 people. Colombia requested the extradition of the negotiators, but Cuba refused because the Colombia government will not honor the previous government’s commitment to guaranteeing the negotiators’ freedom upon returning home.

Regarding Secretary Pompeo’s other arguments, Cuba’s main influence in the Western Hemisphere has been the opposite of “malign”: it has deployed its doctors throughout the region and the world, saving thousands of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

And when it comes to harboring terrorists, it’s worth noting that for decades the United States harbored Luis Posada Carriles, mastermind of a 1973 bombing that killed 73 people on a Cuban commercial airliner.

Cuba’s placement on the state sponsors of terror list is meant to be a thorn in any plan by the Biden administration for rapprochement. Taking Cuba off the list will require a review process that could take months, delaying any new initiatives to roll back Trump-era policies. It will also cause further pain to Cuba’s economy, already battered by tightened sanctions and the pandemic that has devastated the island’s tourism industry. The new terrorism label will likely scare off many businesses that import to Cuba, banks that financial transactions with Cuba and foreign investors.

A week before the designation, nine U.S. Senators wrote to Secretary Pompeo and warned that such a step “will politicize our national security.” It has drawn strong condemnation from Senator Patrick Leahy, who said it made a “mockery of what had been a credible, objective measure,” and House Foreign Affairs Chairman, Representative Gregory Meeks who said the hypocrisy from President Trump less than a week after he incited a domestic terror attack was “stunning but not surprising.”

Faith group Pastors For Peace was one of many organizations to condemn the designation: “We know that this latest act, in the waning days of the Trump administration, is not only an aggressive act against Cuba, but aggression against the incoming administration who have pledged to return to a policy leading to peace and civilized relations with our island neighbor.”

Policy group ACERE (which CODEPINK is a part of) drew a connection between the designation and recent events at home: “Perpetuating the myth that Cuba is a threat to the American people – while minimizing the threat posed by far-right extremists at home – is an embarrassment to our country on the world stage.”

The real motive behind this move is to offer a parting gift to the Cuban exile community and its allies that have been loyal supporters of the Trump administration and helped oust several Democratic members of Congress in the last election. This is par for the course for an administration that has repeatedly used sanctions for political gain with no regard for the Cuban people who, for four years, have borne the brunt of sanctions affecting everything from energy, tourism, medicines, remittances and flights. Just like millions of U.S. citizens, Cubans are counting the days until the Trump administration becomes history and hoping the next administration will offer some relief.


Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flories
Medea Benjamin is an author/activist, and cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK and the human rights group Global Exchange. Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and a campaign coordinator with CODEPINK

US air pollution regulation saved over 1.5 billion birds

“Our research shows that the benefits of environmental regulation have likely been underestimated.”

By Amanda Mills
-January 12, 2021
93 SOURCE NationofChange


According to a new Cornell University large-scale study, federal environmental regulation has improved air quality resulting in saving over 1.5 billion birds in American skies over these last four decades.

“Our research shows that the benefits of environmental regulation have likely been underestimated. Reducing pollution has positive impacts in unexpected places and provides an additional policy lever for conservation efforts,” says Ivan Rudik, the study’s lead author.

To examine the relationship between bird abundance and air pollution, the researchers used models that combined bird observations from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird program with ground-level pollution data and existing regulations, the Good News Network reports. They tracked monthly changes in bird abundance, air quality, and regulation status for 3,214 U.S. counties over a span of 15 years.

In humans, ground-level ozone pollution can damage and inflame the lungs and worsen respiratory conditions, including asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. But animals also suffer.

The study finds that ozone pollution causes the greatest harm to small migratory birds that make up most of all North American land bird species. Unhealthy air pollution damages their respiratory systems and harms their food supplies.

“Not only can ozone cause direct physical damage to birds, but it also can compromise plant health and reduce numbers of the insects that birds consume,” says study author Amanda Rodewald.

The Clean Air Act has been a positive move for humans and animals and these results are proving it.

'Nature Is Under Siege':
Scientists Sound Alarm About Insect Apocalypse

The lead author of the new research package notes that insects "are absolutely the fabric by which Mother Nature and the tree of life are built."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer
Published on Tuesday, January 12, 2021
by Common Dreams

A dragonfly sits in reedbeds on the Isle of Grain on August 31, 2016 in Isle of Grain, England. (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A collection of new scientific papers authored by 56 experts from around the world reiterates rising concerns about bug declines and urges people and governments to take urgent action to address a biodiversity crisis dubbed the "insect apocalypse."

"The Global Decline of Insects in the Anthropocene Special Feature," which includes an introduction and 11 papers, was published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences alongside a related news article. "Nature is under siege," the scientists warn. "Insects are suffering from 'death by a thousand cuts.'"

The set of studies—resulting from a symposium in St. Louis—comes as the body of research on insect declines has grown in recent years, leading to major assessments published in February 2019 and April 2020, as well as a roadmap released last January by 73 scientists detailing how to battle the "bugpocalypse."

As the new package and below graphic explain, human stressors that experts have tied to bug declines include agricultural practices; chemical, light, and sound pollution; invasive species; land-use changes; nitrification; pesticides; and urbanization.

Emphasizing the consequences of such declines, University of Connecticut entomologist David Wagner, the package's lead author, told the Associated Press that insects "are absolutely the fabric by which Mother Nature and the tree of life are built."

According to Wagner, many insect populations are dropping about 1-2% per year. As he put it to The Guardian: "You're losing 10-20% of your animals over a single decade and that is just absolutely frightening. You're tearing apart the tapestry of life."

While most causes of declines are well known, "there's one really big unknown and that's climate change—that's the one that really scares me the most," he said, warning the crisis could be causing "extinctions at a rate that we haven't seen before."


“To mitigate the effects of the sixth mass extinction event that we have caused, the following will be necessary: a stable (and almost certainly lower) human population, sustainable levels of consumption, and social justice"https://t.co/m3q4tLUxz4

— Damian Carrington (@dpcarrington) January 11, 2021

Roel van Klink of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research told The Guardian that "the most important thing we learn [from these new studies] is the complexity behind insect declines. No single quick fix is going to solve this problem."

"There are certainly places where insect abundances are dropping strongly, but not everywhere," he said. "This is a reason for hope, because it can help us understand what we can do to help them. They can bounce back really fast when the conditions improve."

The package's introduction points out that while much recent research and resulting news coverage focused on drops in bug populations, "four papers in this special issue note instances of insect lineages that have not changed or have increased in abundance."

"Many moth species in Great Britain have demonstrably expanded in range or population size," the paper notes. "Numerous temperate insects, presumably limited by winter temperatures, have increased in abundance and range, in response to warmer global temperatures."

Pollinators such as the western honey bee in North America, "may well thrive due to their associations with humans," the introduction adds. "Increasing abundances of freshwater insects have been attributed to clean water legislation, in both Europe and North America."

As @dharnanoor points out in this article, too many bugs (thanks to #climatechange) can be a problem too--natural systems are out of whack, and we're just beginning to come to terms with the consequences:https://t.co/VVaD7Mfejs

— erin sikorsky (@ErinSikorsky) January 12, 2021

In addition to the introduction, titled "Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts," the package includes seven perspectives:

"Agricultural intensification and climate change are rapidly decreasing insect biodiversity"

"To us insectometers, it is clear that insect decline in our Costa Rican tropics is real, so let's be kind to the survivors"

"Insects and recent climate change"

"The decline of butterflies in Europe: Problems, significance, and possible solutions"

"A window to the world of global insect declines: Moth biodiversity trends are complex and heterogeneous"

"Deep learning and computer vision will transform entomology"

"No buzz for bees: Media coverage of pollinator decline"

The body of work also includes three separate research articles:
"Arthropods are not declining but are responsive to disturbance in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico"

"Insect biomass decline scaled to species diversity: General patterns derived from a hoverfly community"

"Nonlinear trends in abundance and diversity and complex responses to climate change in Arctic arthropods"

The final piece is an opinion laying out "eight simple actions that individuals can take to save insects from global declines," which features five actions to create "more and better insect-friendly habitats, the loss of which is likely a leading cause of insect declines," and three that aim to adjust public attitudes.

As Dharna Noor wrote in her coverage for Earther: "I do not like bugs. Creepy, many-legged things make my skin crawl. But as unpleasant as they are, insects are absolutely crucial for our world's ecosystems to function, and sadly, new research shows that the creatures populations are on the verge of collapse."

To boost awareness and appreciation of insects, the scientists suggest countering negative perceptions, pushing for conservation efforts, and getting involved in local political advocacy. 

On the habitat improvement front, they recommend converting lawns into diverse natural habitats, growing native plants, cutting pesticide use, limiting light pollution, and lessening soap runoff from washing vehicles and building exteriors as well as the use of driveway sealants and de-icing salts.

"Avoiding some behaviors or adopting others will contribute both directly and indirectly to insect conservation," the scientists note. "Further, taking actions that address issues such as climate change can synergistically promote insect diversity. Climate change is increasingly recognized as a primary factor driving local and regional plant and animal extinctions."

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Will a More Dangerous Far Right Spring From the Corpse of Trumpism?

Deferring to the economic and political elites that have set the stage for this carnage will only the embolden the far right to continue to provide a kind of reactionary framing to the feelings of abandonment, isolation and betrayal.

by

Joe Lowndes, Daniel Martinez HoSang

Pro-Trump rioters entered the U.S. Capitol building after mass demonstrations in the nation's capital during a joint session of Congress to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. (Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)


Donald Trump's political fortunes may indeed be at an end. Abandoned by his allies, facing a possible second impeachment, and stripped of his most effective tool of popular mobilization – his Twitter account, he leaves office in a matter of days only to face multiple lawsuits and possible prosecutions when he returns to private life. But the political forces that produced the January 6th Capitol takeover haven't disappeared, nor have the groups and networks that have nurtured its growth. Indeed, the moment seems to have given the far right a coherent sense of purpose and identity, galvanizing yet more dangerous future actions.

There was no sense of pessimism, for instance, among the more than one hundred Trump supporters who rallied last Saturday on the steps of the Federal Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon for an "Anti-Socialism" protest. On the contrary, they were ebullient and aggressive, visibly armed with long guns, side arms, and knives. Unmasked, they protested the presidential election results, demanded the arrest of Governor Kate Brown for the state's Covid restrictions, and denounced BLM and Antifa. When a phalanx of Proud Boys in helmets and Kevlar arrived in formation, the emboldened crowd menaced journalists, and pounded on passing cars. Video from the scene showed a group of them beating a counter-protestor to the ground, jabbing him with the end of a flagpole. This was no ending.

The various groups that publicized the January 6 event—Three Percent Militia, Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, Ammon Bundy's People's Rights Organization, and all the local groups who had already been carrying out similar breaches at statehouses over the last couple of weeks, have a clear idea what this was about, and vow to continue.

It's not just the size of the rallies that matters. Indeed, the self-identified members of far-right groups remains relatively small. But their growth has anticipated and accompanied the expansion and development of Trump's grassroots base, as they narrate and channel a sense of loss and abandonment towards reactionary ends. The frequent militant protests at state capitols across the country in protest of COVID 19 restrictions over the last nine months helped set the terms for the capitol takeover. So did the thousands of armed "patriots" who appeared on the streets to oppose (and often attack) Black Lives Matter protestors in cities and towns across the country in the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Hedge fund leaders and oil barons may object to the unseemly sight of the mob rummaging through the Capitol, but they have been materially doing much the same work for years--pillorying public resources and bending the government to serve its interests.

These actions are hardly isolated from broader currents in the political culture, and there are many more complexities to untangle. Tens of millions of Americans believe that they were victims of a left-wing coup. For many of them the storming of the Capitol was a democratic act. They watched as people like themselves acted together to disrupt that supposed coup, and defend popular sovereignty. The capitol takeover wasn't a populist, let alone a white proletarian revolt. The far right has always been a cross-class phenomenon. Nevertheless, right-wing insurgency is endlessly nourished by narratives that pit the "the common people" against elites, which includes both the storming of the Capitol and the pleasures of excess once inside—from feet on the desks of legislators to the wrecking of historical artifacts. 

As the far right has lurched forward over the last four years with a mixture of victories and defeats, it has furnished a language of opposition, defiance, and civic virtue in the face of a declining polity. One key feature has been the disavowal of openly racist language, a distinguishing feature of a range of fast-expanding groups from the Three Percent Militia to the Proud Boys. This has allowed the far right to avoid the openly white nationalist brand associated with the torchlight march and murder of Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017. It is what allowed Kyle Rittenhouse, the militia-inspired killer of two Black Lives Matter activists in Kenosha, WI last summer to become a hero of the mainstream right.

White voters in general and white men in particular (across all income groups and geographic areas) have formed the base of Trump's support, as a visit to any Trump rally will reveal. Yet in spite of his unending litany of racist, nativist and misogynist attacks, that base has expanded to include more rather than fewer voters of color. Not just among Cuban and Venezuelan Americans in South Florida, but in working-class communities in Los Angeles, the Bronx, and in the Rio Grande Valley.

The reasons for this growth are complex, but it is fantasy to think that some final cover has been pulled back on the irrationality and violence of Trumpism. The experience of the last four years has revealed the opposite. The more aggrieved, combative, and violent his rhetoric grew, the larger and more diverse his base became. Four years of Trump's vitriolic grievance politics and his cataclysmic management of the pandemic delivered 11 million more popular votes in November's election. Last week's debacle might expel some voters from that camp, but how many?

The bipartisan condemnations of Trump and those who besieged the Capitol have been accompanied by calls for a return to "normal," in which the adults in the room would safeguard civility and reason and restore the authority of U.S. economic and democratic institutions from the populist mob.

Yet these responses play right into the hands of the very elites who rob us of the shared resources (both social and material) needed to build alternatives to Trumpism. Many sectors of the American economy where wealth is most concentrated—finance, tech, real estate, energy, military contracting—have realized enormous profits amidst Trump's ascent. Hedge fund leaders and oil barons may object to the unseemly sight of the mob rummaging through the Capitol, but they have been materially doing much the same work for years—pillorying public resources and bending the government to serve its interests.

These forces do not express the crudeness and violence of those who stormed the Capitol. But a future predicated on a deference to their authority is no less dystopian, characterized as it will be by rampant wealth hoarding, growing "deaths of despair," and cynicism towards many forms of public action and trust.

Trump's defeat in November surely was a necessary precondition to realize new alternatives. But deferring to the economic and political elites that have set the stage for this carnage will only the embolden the far right to continue to provide a kind of reactionary framing to the feelings of abandonment, isolation and betrayal, channeling those energies into ever more dangerous and violent conflicts.

Joe Lowndes is a professor of political science at the University of Oregon. He researches and writes on right-wing politics, race, and populism. He is most recently the author (with Daniel Martinez HoSang) of "Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-wing Politics of Precarity." Read more of his work at his website here.

Daniel Martinez HoSang is an Associate Professor of Ethnicity, Race & Migration and American Studies at Yale and co-author of Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity

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New Report Finds Oil and Gas Industry Responsible for 70 percent of Colorado’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Environmental groups call for a complete phase-out of the oil and gas industry over the next 10 years to achieve state’s climate goal.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

WASHINGTON - Nonprofit organization 350 Colorado released a report today outlining Colorado’s dangerous underestimation of the oil and gas industry’s contribution to the state greenhouse gas emissions. The report “Avoiding a Roadmap to Climate Catastrophe” finds that the oil and gas sector is currently responsible for 70 percent of Colorado’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in comparison to the state’s estimation of just 17.3 percent (a +52.7 percent difference). 

The report criticizes and provides recommendations to Colorado’s GHG Emissions Reduction Roadmap, the state's current plans to meet the emission reduction goals set by the Legislature in HB 19-1261. The report highlights the state’s failure to implement recommendations from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to deliver “rapid and far-reaching” transitions and “deep emissions reductions in all sectors” to keep global temperature rise below 1.5℃. The IPCC warns that net zero GHG emissions by 2037 are needed for a 66 percent chance of achieving that goal. Instead, Colorado’s HB-1261 Roadmap allows for an 86 percent increase in oil production and a 41 percent increase in gas production by 2030, which results in a 61 percent increase in GHG emissions (at average observed leakage rates). 

“If Colorado truly wants to lead in global efforts to solve the climate crisis, our state must begin with an honest and accurate accounting of Colorado’s actual GHG emissions resulting from the oil and gas sector and use that to guide policy decisions for attainment of our state’s GHG emission reduction goals,” said 350 Colorado Executive Director Micah Parkin. 

350 Colorado analyzed data from Colorado’s draft GHG Emissions Reduction Roadmap and used the best available science and recommendations from researchers at Cornell and the state of New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA 2019). 

“Accurately quantifying and including methane within state-level accounting is critically important because it will enable policy that will help us meet the climate challenge," said New York Assemblyman Steve Englebright, who sponsored the state of New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that incorporated the more protective assumptions recommended in the 350 Colorado report.

The report identified four main problems with the state’s current emission estimations and projections regarding the oil and gas sector in the draft Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Roadmap: 

1. The Roadmap relies on outdated assumptions, including using a 100-year global warming potential (GWP) factor of 28 for potent leaks of methane, when best available science now recommends using a more accurate 20-year GWP factor of 86 (minimum) to reflect the powerful heat-trapping effect of this short-lived gas, which averages about 12 years in the atmosphere.
2. The proposed roadmap assumes current methane leakage rates self-reported by industry that researchers from Cornell University have shown are unrealistically low.
3. The Roadmap does not consider the emissions of oil and gas produced in Colorado and then exported out of state.
4. The state’s Roadmap overestimates potential reductions in methane leakage, coming to a faulty conclusion that oil and gas production can be increased while emissions decrease. 

“The original choice of 100 years by the Kyoto Protocol was arbitrary, and as we have learned more about the role of methane in global warming in the years since 1997, a growing number of researchers have called for using a 20-year time frame, either instead of or in addition to the 100-year approach,” said Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D. of Cornell University whose book Methane and Climate Change is referenced throughout the report. Dr. Howarth is a leading world expert on methane emissions from shale gas as a driver of climate change.

The report provides recommendations to the Polis administration for improving the roadmap, urging state officials to start with the most accurate, science-based assumptions to create an accurate 2019 baseline of emissions from Colorado’s oil and gas sector. Additionally, the report calls for a rapid phase-out and just transition off oil and gas development in Colorado, calling for a 10 percent per year reduction in emissions for a full phase-out of oil and gas production in Colorado by 2030. 

“It is critically important to reduce methane emissions in a shorter time frame in order to reduce the risk of moving past tipping points in the climate system, reduce damage to society and natural ecosystems from global warming over the coming decades, and provide the best chance of meeting the COP21 climate goals,” said Dr. Howarth. “Given the state of increasing climate disruption in 2020, the continued use of natural gas would be a bridge to disaster. Atmospheric methane has been rising rapidly over the past decade, after having been stable to the first decade of the 21st Century. Given a full lifecycle emission rate of 4.1 percent of  production, shale gas is responsible for almost half of the total global increase in atmospheric methane from all sources since 2005. This increase makes it far more difficult to meet the COP21 target of keeping the Earth well below 2C from the pre-industrial baseline.” 

350 Colorado is circulating a sign-on letter that has already been signed by 19 organizations urging the Polis administration to implement these recommendations. They plan to deliver the letter in two weeks. 

Read the full "Avoiding a Roadmap to Climate Catastrophe" report here.

Organization Profile: 

350.org