"Ms. Jenner, it's late. If you have something to tell me-"
Pearl raised her voice and spoke right over David. "He's seen the outside world. He's seen the good part of the U.S., but he's also seen the shit. You know what I mean? Put a greedy American and a hundred illegals together and you've got a nice sweatshop operation going. But he knows how it should be. So he's back in China and he starts poking around. He hears about these American companies that have been opening in his home province. He gets hired by one, works a couple of days, and if he were a different kind of person he probably would have stayed there because the pay's good, the dormitories are better than government-assigned housing, and the work's not too hard. But he quits and tries another factory-Knight International. The problem here is he's only a day worker in the warehouse, so he can't see what the place is really like. Then one Saturday he gets an idea. On Saturdays at one the local men and women leave the compound together. He sidles up to the most beautiful girl he can find and strikes up a conversation."
David interrupted, "How long ago was this?"
The young man looked up. "Three months," he said. "But she"-he motioned to Pearl with his elbow-"is making it into something it wasn't. I wanted to know about the factory, but when I first saw Miaoshan, all I wanted to know was her. On that day I walked her home. She didn't want me to come inside, but she said she would meet me the next day." He hesitated, then asked, "Did you know her?"
When David shook his head, Guy said, "She was beautiful, but she had inside of her so much…" He struggled to find the word, then said, "She wanted to know all about America, and I told her. When she found out why I was at the factory, she said she'd help me. She was alive with ideas. She told me what it was like in there: the girls who were too young to work, the way the managers lied about the pay, the way people got injured and how often."
"Did she have proof?" David asked, thinking that if the factory employed child labor, Hulan surely would have told him.
"She told me what she saw."
"But those could have been made-up stories," David suggested. "Just how young are the women? Did she get ID's from them? Was she able to introduce you to anyone who'd been hurt? Did she have medical records?"
"Mr. Stark, hear him out," Pearl said. "He'll get to all that." Then to Guy she said, "Tell him what you thought you'd do with the information you collected and why it was important."
Not knowing Hulan's background, Guy explained that in America things were very different. If someone got hurt from a product, then the manufacturer could be sued. If a product was made in an unsafe manner, then the workers could sue. Most amazing, if the manufacturing process caused damage to the environment, then neighbors or the government could go after the company to clean it up and even make retribution to the people and the state.
"When I left China, we didn't have any recourse if we were burned or dismembered by products," he continued. "But while I was away, a consumer-rights law went into effect. Now even state-owned enterprises can be sued! There have been about half a million individual suits each of the last three years. I am sure you have read of the different campaigns in regards to this movement."
Although Hulan always tried to avoid campaigns, she-like any other citizen of China -couldn't avoid them, especially since the cornerstone of any campaign involved the press. So of course she'd seen articles like "Is a Chinese Life Worth Less Than a Foreign Life?" and "A Needle in My Father's New Kidney!" In fact, the media was very much at the heart of the new consumer law. Since press reports could be introduced in court as evidence, smear campaigns went a long way in swaying judges. This resulted in costly counterattacks mounted in the media by the defendants. And while awards to plaintiffs weren't as lucrative as in the States-the record still stood at about $30,000 U.S., given to the family of a woman who'd been asphyxiated by a faulty water heater-judges regularly granted monies to dubitable claimants based on a "fairness principle" that implied that the rich should help the poor.
"But what does this have to do with Knight?" David asked. "They've never had a product-liability case."
"It's not the products I care about," Guy said. "It's how they're made. For me that includes not using child labor and providing a safe environment. Three years ago we didn't have consumer rights or product liability, but we have them now. Why can't we take the next step and push for workers' rights?" Guy searched David's face. "Every country, including yours, had to start somewhere. Miaoshan and I thought that somewhere could be Knight. But the women in the factory never helped us. They never said a word because they were afraid they would lose their jobs. Still, she kept asking."
"Even after the women wouldn't respond?" Hulan asked.
Guy nodded. Hulan put two fingers to her lips and tapped gently, deep in thought.
"When the women wouldn't help," Guy continued, "I said, 'Let's forget it.' But Miaoshan had another idea. There was a man in the factory, an American, who liked her. Sometimes during the week she would go and talk to him at night. She said he was worried about the factory. He thought it was unfair how the women were treated. He began to tell her things-money things-that went on inside. That's when I knew we couldn't do everything on our own. I have a friend who's in business in Taiyuan. He has computers in his office, and he let me use one. I got on the Internet and looked for help."
"That's how he found me," Pearl interjected. "At the paper we get information out of China in the usual ways-press conferences and speeches by politicians. The things the government wants you to know are easy to find out. But what about something like Tiananmen? We had reporters in Beijing at the time, but we also relied heavily on the students who communicated with us through fax machines. The same goes for a lot of other stories. We hear about things, but it's difficult to work officially, if you know what I mean. Nowadays, with the Internet, getting information is easier than it used to be. China blocks the Times' website, but enterprising people like Guy are able to get around the firewalls."
"So for you it's not personal," Hulan said. "It's professional."
"What isn't?" Pearl asked. "There isn't a business reporter in the
States who hasn't tried to get at a story like this, but it's been completely closed to us by both the Chinese and the Americans."
"Why does it matter to you what happens in a factory in China?" Hulan asked.
"Because it's a human-rights issue and that's a hot-button issue that sells."
Hulan said, "The people who work in the Knight factory aren't prisoners…"
"Human-rights violations come in many forms: political prisoners in solitary confinement, prison laborers, but I would also include what happens to the women and girls in factories like Knight."
"I agree it's bad in there," Hulan said, "but is it worse than working in the fields?"
David hid his surprise. Hadn't Hulan just gotten on his case for using this same argument? Was she using this as a tactic to provoke Pearl?