A Path to Modernization: A Review of Documentaries on Migration and Migrant Labor in China -Manufactured Landscapes(2007) 90 minutes. Director: Jennifer Baichwal. Director of photography: Peter Mettler. Produced by Nick de Pencier, Daniel Iron, and Jennifer Baichwal. Released by Zeitgeist Films. -Bing Ai(2007) 114 minutes. Director, writer, and producer: Feng Yan. http://www.cidfa.com/modules/index.php -Up the Yangtze(2008) 94 minutes. Writer and director: Yung Chang. Director of photography: Wang Shi Qing. Producers: Mila Aung-Thwin, Germaine Ying-Gee Wong, and John Christou. Released by Zeitgeist Films. -Losers and Winners(2007) 96 minutes. Directors: Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken. Released by Icarus Films. -China Blue(2005) 86 minutes. Producer and director: Micha X. Peled. Released by Bullfrog Films. -Mardi Gras(2007) 74 minutes. Producer, director, and editor: David Redmon. Directors of photography: David Redmon and Kathleen Rivera. Released by Carnivalesque Films. -A Decent Factory(2005) 79 minutes. Directed, written, and produced by Thomas Balmès for Margot Films/BBC, and Kaarle Aho for Making Movies. Released by First Run/Icarus Films

In: International labor and working class history: ILWCH, Band 77, Heft 1, S. 174-189

Abstract

None of the award-winning films reviewed in this article has a blissful tone. In these films, we watch young girls in assembly lines producing all sorts of commodities in China as well as four hundred Chinese workers disassembling a coking plant in Germany. We are immersed in people's personal stories, such as a peasant woman forced to leave her farm and her lone hut, located in the area due to be submerged by the Three Gorges Dam project, and a sixteen-year-old girl learning to labor on a cruise ship along the Yangtze River. In most of the films we also meet managers, Chinese or foreign, who are concerned with nothing but maximizing profit through intense exploitation of labor. These films document how the massive force of modernization in a globalized world affects lives of common people in China. Their struggles with poverty, corrupt officials, and greedy business owners are displayed in sharp contrast to both shining metropolitan glory and rural banality. In this regard, the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's photographs of China, as shown in the filmManufactured Landscapes, seem emblematic enough: Modernization in China has altered the trajectory of people's lives as well as the landscapes of their nation. This article discusses the issues embedded in the stories the seven documentaries present: the impact of global capitalism; the relations between national development and globalization; the conflicts between corporate social responsibility and profit-making; and the predicament of migrant workers and their human agency.