The documentary: China Blue

Last Updated on Friday, 12 August 2011 15:38 Friday, 12 August 2011 14:23

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The documentary China Blue follows Jasmine, one of many teenagers working at a blue jeans factory, struggling to survive brutal work conditions. Shot clandestinely and without permission from Chinese authorities, China Blue takes a rare and poignant look at the individuals who toil day-to-day to make the clothes we buy. The film remains banned in China.

Watch the clip below, as filmmaker Micha Peled gives some background on China Blue.

The most heartbreaking, moving film in theaters right now is not "Babel," "Letters From Iwo Jima" or "Little Children." It is "China Blue," a documentary about sweatshop workers at a denim factory.

The heart and soul of San Francisco filmmaker Micha Peled's follow-up to his "Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town" is 16-year-old Jasmine, a farmer's daughter who displays a talent for writing, faithfully keeping a diary and dreaming of being a martial arts princess. Instead, she works at the Lifeng factory in Shuxi, China, working 17-hour days and making 6 cents an hour. She is one of 130 million Chinese who have a factory job.

Documentary. Directed by Micha Peled. In Mandarin with subtitles. (Not rated. 87 minutes. At the Roxie)

They live crowded together in cement factory dormitories where water has to be carried upstairs in buckets. Their meals and rent are deducted from their wages, which amount to less than a dollar a day. Most of the jeans they make in the factory are purchased by retailers in the U.S. and other countries. China Blue takes viewers inside a blue jean factory in southern China, where teenage workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions. Providing perspectives from both the top and bottom levels of the factory’s hierarchy, the film looks at complex issues of globalization from the human level.

Seventeen-year-old Jasmine left her home village for a factory job in the city. There, like an estimated 130 million migrant workers on the move in China, most of them young women, she finds factory employment assembling denim clothing for export to overseas companies. She shares a room with 12 other girls and labors every day from 8 AM until 2 AM, seven days a week, removing lint and snipping the loose threads from the seams of denim jeans.

Jasmine’s initial excitement to be able to help her family with her wages quickly dissipates as she is overwhelmed by the long work hours and the delays in pay. The strong friendships she forms with her co-workers and memories of home are her only solace. The "new era” of economic progress in China has also created a new generation of entrepreneurs like Mr. Lam, a former police chief who is now the owner of the factory where Jasmine works. To get a new order from a promising British buyer, Mr. Lam must agree to extremely low prices and a very tight delivery schedule. For the deal to work, he cuts his workers’ pay and requires them to work around the clock.

While China Blue shows how the global economic system leaves the Chinese factory owner with few choices, it also explores in detail what that means for the workers. Anxious to avoid getting fined for falling asleep on the job, Jasmine and her friend Li Ping sneak out of the factory to buy energy tea, but they get caught and are fined. Other workers resort to clipping clothespins on their eyelids to keep their eyes open. When the workers’ endurance reaches a breaking point, their only recourse may be a strike, which is illegal in China.

China Blue, which was made without permission from the Chinese authorities, offers an alarming report on the economic pressures applied by Western companies and the resulting human consequences, as the real profits are made — and kept — in first-world countries. The unexpected ending makes the connection between the exploited workers and U.S. consumers even clearer.