China Blue: The Cost of New Jeans


Groupjeans I’ll be honest, as a political blogger I rarely find documentary films on political subjects successful. I rarely see the level of nuance, persuasion, and emotional pull in the works of Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald that I’d like to see, even if I find their works transparently powerful. I’ll readily admit that this prejudice originates in my hyper-informed political nature; I don’t presume that my reactions are at all typical for documentary film viewers. The power of political persuasion through film rests, in my view, on the connection built between the narrative and the audience. I was taken by the documentary The Ground Truth in large part because of it’s almost tactile insertion of the viewer into the experiences of American soldiers in Iraq. The film moved beyond telling a story to doing what the medium most allows: showing the truth.

The distinction I’m making between what I expect for a powerful documentary film and the means by which the medium allows for a personal experience of the narrative leads me to the subject of this post, Micha X. Peled’s China Blue. China Blue tells the story of Chinese sweatshop workers who manufacture blue jeans for export to the western world. The film follows three teenage sweatshop workers who live in the factory that they spend fourteen to twenty hours a day working for six cents an hour. Their food and hot water costs are deducted out of their salary, which they receive once a month when they’re lucky.

Peled’s film gains its power not from the shocking statistics of economic disparity and the extent to which sale prices in the west tangibly impact the working conditions for workers in China, but from the sensation of being placed alongside these young laborers in their daily lives. For all practical purposes the workers of China Blue are indentured servants. The life they lead is defined by their lack of freedom and their confinement to constant labor. Peled takes his audience into their factory and gives them space to air all of their complaints (while conducting extra-legal filming). They tell us of their dreams, fears, and what makes them anxious. We live their poverty with them and experience what it is to be consumed by piles of jeans twice as large as their bodies.

The power of this experience leaves you repeatedly asking what kind of government would not only allow, but encourage their workers to be brutalized at the expense of an economy lifting factory owners and Communist Party members, but never workers. How can the prohibition on labor unions be viewed as anything other than a complete denial of human rights? Perhaps most importantly, how long can a government survive when major portions of its population live in such unsustainable conditions?

China Blue is a gut check for anyone who doesn’t know about labor conditions inside China. It was less of a surprise for me - I’ve refused to purchase Chinese-made goods for almost seven years - but it was shocking nonetheless. It’s a vivid reminder that the purchase choices we make have real consequences; the sales we seek impact the workers who make our consumer goods in the most profound ways. Thinking about the consequences of our consumer choices isn’t easy, but Peled’s story of Chinese factory workers makes us confront the connection between our cheap goods and their toil.

Find a screening of China Blue near you.

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February 7th, 2007
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