The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 36 | Number 1 | Aug 2015

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Interns or Workers? China’s Student Labor Regime

Jenny Chan, Pun Ngai, Mark Selden

Abstract

In the summer of 2010, Taiwanese-based FoxconnTechnology Group-the world's largest electronicsmanufacturer-utilized the labor of 150,000student interns from vocational schools at itsfacilities all over China. Foxconn is one of manyglobal firms utilizing student intern labor. Farfrom being freely chosen, student internships areorganized by the local state working withenterprises and schools, frequently in violation ofthe rights of student interns and in violation ofChinese law. Foxconn, through direct deals withgovernment departments, has outsourcedrecruitment to vocational schools to obtain a newsource of student workers at below minimumwages. The goals and timing of internships areset not by student educational or trainingpriorities but by the demand for productsdictated by companies. Based on fieldwork inSichuan and Guangdong between 2011 and 2012and follow-up interviews in 2014, as well asanalysis of the Henan government's policies oninternships, we find that the student labor regimehas become integral to the capital-staterelationship as a means to assure a lower costand flexible labor supply for Foxconn and others.This is one dimension of the emerging face ofChinese state capitalism.

Keywords

student labor, state capitalism, internship,vocational school, Foxconn Technology Group

I. Introduction

"My original plan was to seek an internship atHuawei Technologies, but our teacher persuadedmy whole class of 42 students to intern at

Foxconn Technology Group," a student from avocational school in Sichuan's Mianyang cityrecalled. Under pressure from the Sichuangovernment to fulfill a quota for interns atFoxconn in 2010, the teacher was directed torecruit entire classes and overcome studentobjections to taking Foxconn internships. "Duringthe night shift, whenever I look out in thatdirection [pointing to the west], I see the bigfluorescent sign of Huawei shining bright red,and at that moment, I feel a pain in my heart,"she said before sinking into a long silence.Huawei (founded in Shenzhen as a private-sectorfirm in 1987) and Foxconn (founded in Taipei in1974 and incorporated in Shenzhen as aTaiwanese-invested enterprise in 1988) haveheadquarters on opposite sides of the MeiguanExpressway in Longhua Town, Shenzhen City.Although neither the intern nor we can verifywhether the internship program offered byHuawei would have been any better than that atFoxconn, she regretted her inability to choose herinternship site (Fieldwork in Shenzhen City,Guangdong Province, April 2011).

Who are the interns? How are they recruited andmanaged at the workplace? In this article weshow the processes by which companies,vocational schools, and local governments jointlycarry out "internship programs" that turn largenumbers of teenage students into factoryworkers. We attempt to explain the emergence ofthis student labor regime in the context ofChina's rising manufacturing costs andintensified competition among companies foremployees in global production. Analyzing theorganization of student internships, we look intothe pivotal role of transnational capital and itsability to secure privileged access to labor in

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negotiation with the Chinese state. The activecooperation of provincial and lower levelgovernments in circumventing labor lawrestrictions, and ensuring corporate access to alower cost and flexible supply of student labor(xueshenggong 學生工), is fundamental to thecontemporary Chinese labor regime.

Our primary research is based on multiplefieldtrips to Foxconn's largest assembly facilitiesin Sichuan (Chengdu City) and Guangdong(Shenzhen City) between 2011 and 2012, andfollow-up visits in Shenzhen in August 2014,supplemented with inquiries made to seniorcompany executives between December 2013 andApril 2014.1 Drawing on interviews with 38interns and 14 teachers, who were dispatchedfrom eight vocational schools (based in Sichuanand Henan provinces) to Foxconn factories forinternships, we also conducted documentaryanalysis of the Henan government's majorpolicies on student internships and employment.There has been scant scholarly attention tostudent interns as temporary or contingent labor,leaving unexamined an important dimension ofthe precarity of Chinese labor that is the productof the triangular relationship linking capital, thelocal state, and vocational schools in internshipprograms. In the following we review thechanging labor market and ongoing legal reformsand structural transformation in China. We thenpresent the findings of our study of the Foxconninternship program, and conclude by assessingthe corporate and government responses tostudent labor abuses.

The majority of Foxconn's more than one million workers are rural migrants and teenage studentinterns. Fushikang, headquartered in Taipei (registered as Hon Hai Precision Industry Company),literally means "wealthy" and "healthy" in Chinese. Photographs taken during field trips toGuangdong and Sichuan (2011-2014).

II. Student Labor in China

The re-emergence of labor markets under China'sreforms since the late 1970s has transformed theeconomy in step with Chinese and internationalinvestment and the privatization of numerousstate enterpr ises . Employment in themanufacturing sector (relative to agriculture andthe service industry) reached an unprecedented15 percent of the economically active populationin the mid-1990s. The percentage would havebeen even higher if the other eight to 14 percentof those employed in uncategorized industrieswere added (Evans and Staveteig 2009, 78). Theincrease in industrial workers was mainly drawnfrom the hundreds of millions of rural migrantswho, in the wake of de-collectivization, wereabsorbed into booming township and villageenterprises and export-oriented privately-ownedfactories, along with state and collectiveenterprises. However, the labor rights andinterests of many internal migrants wereunprotected. It was not until July 1994, followingtragic industrial fires and deaths and numerousabuses, that the government promulgated aLabor Law to regulate the complex laborrelations of the market economy (Gallagher 2005,2014; Ngok 2008; Liebman 2014). The lawguarantees basic protections to all worker-citizens, regardless of household registrationstatus or ownership type, such as entitlement toemployment contracts, local minimum wages,overtime premiums, social insurance andretirement benefits, rest days, safe and healthyworkplaces, and access to government-sponsoredlabor dispute resolution mechanisms. Despite thenational labor compliance requirements,employers systematically "ignored the law withimpunity because of the lack of effectiveimplementation and enforcement by localregulatory or supervisory organizations,including the trade union, the local labor bureauand the courts" (Gallagher and Dong 2011, 44).

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When structural reforms and privatizationaccelerated in the 1990s and following China'saccession to the World Trade Organization in2001, many small and medium state-ownedenterprises lost out in the fierce new competition.Laid-off workers, especially those who wererelatively young, joined the rank and file of ruralmigrants to toil in the "world factory," facinggreat uncertainties in a more liberalized economy(Solinger 2009; Blecher 2010; Andreas 2012; Hurst2009, 2015). As of 2005, Chinese manufacturingwages as a percentage of US wages, compared tothose of Japan and East Asian Tigers like SouthKorea and Taiwan in the early years of theireconomic takeoffs, had remained consistentlylow (Hung 2008, fig. 1, 2009, fig. 5). Privatecompanies as well as restructured stateenterprises have generally offered fixed-termemployment contracts, effectively ending alifetime "iron rice bowl" tenure that had beenprevalent in large urban state enterprises. Otheremploying units, however, failed to providelabor contracts, minimum statutory wages, orwelfare benefits, generating worker grievancesand resistance (Chan 2001; Pringle 2011; Elfstromand Kuruvilla 2014; Zipp and Blecher 2015). Inthe face of increasing worker lawsuits andcollective protests since the mid-1990s, theChinese government was compelled to expandlegal reforms to ensure minimally acceptablesocial and labor standards as a means to alleviatethe growing tensions between legitimacy andprofitability (Lee 2007; Lee and Zhang 2013; Chen2012; Friedman 2014).2

From the mid-2000s, as a result of growingworker demands for better conditions, tighteninglabor markets due to demographic changes, andBeijing government measures to stimulatedomestic consumption such as boosting statutoryminimum wages and abolishing agriculturaltaxes, wages have been rising (Chu and So 2010;Eggleston et al. 2013; Davis 2014; Whyte 2014;Naughton 2014). Firms were increasinglypressured to cut costs and to cope withfluctuations in production orders by hiring

temporary workers, including student interns(also termed student apprentices or trainees) andagency laborers (also known as dispatchedworkers, who signed contracts directly withprivately-run or government-operated agenciesbut providing services to client companies). Inthe seven large state-owned and Sino-foreignjoint-ventured automobile assembly factories thatshe surveyed, Lu Zhang (2015) found that thenumber of temporary workers ranged from one-to two-thirds of the total workforce duringfieldwork in the mid-to-late 2000s. Downwardcost pressure in business competition,particularly during the 2008 global financialcrisis, eroded the wages and benefits as well asjob security of regular workers who have not yetbeen displaced by temporary laborers. Thelatter's per capita cost averages only one-fourthto one-third of the former's (Park and Cai 2011,33-35; Zhou 2013, 362-63). Unequal treatment ofthe temporary and regular workers performingidentical production tasks created a two-tieredemployment system. This system engenderedworker conflicts and social divisions. As EliFriedman and Ching Kwan Lee (2010, 513)insightfully observe, this dual labor regime "isproblematic not just from the perspective of theinformal workers, but also from [that of] theregular workers, who will find it increasinglydifficult to make collective demands on theiremployers."

Agency workers, who were long excluded fromnat ional legal protect ion pr ior to theimplementation of the significant Labor ContractLaw on 1 January 2008, eventually gained accessto basic employment rights, if only honored onthe books. Under the new law, under whichhiring agencies and client firms share joint legalresponsibilities, agency workers are supposed toreceive the same pay for doing the same work asdirectly employed workers. Moreover, they areassumed to take only "temporary, auxiliary, andsubstitute" posts, thereby placing certain limitson informalization while maintaining labor andorganizational flexibility (Chan 2009; Harper Ho

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2009; Wang et al. 2009; Cui et al. 2013; Gallagheret al. 2015; Zhang 2015, chap. 7). It is important tonote, however, that the 2008 law did not coverinterning students. Interns, who are not, after allclassified as workers, can be laid off withoutseverance pay and 30 days' prior notice to whichemployees are entitled. They continue to possessfewer legal rights than agency or regular workerseven when they are directly recruited andassigned to the same tasks (Pun and Chan 2012,2013; Chan and Selden 2014; Pun et al. 2014;Chan et al. 2013, 2015).

The vulnerability of interns as laborers, includingboth those who are unpaid and those who areunder-paid, has recently drawn discussioncentering on the applicability of relevant nationaland international laws. Earl Brown and KyledeCant (2014), in their provocative essay"Exploiting Chinese Interns as UnprotectedIndustrial Labor," ask whether interns-who arenot legally defined as employees under Chineselaw-are in practice provided equal labor rights atwork, and whether the internship experiencebenefits the intern. The controversy is not justabout poor management and lack of educationalcontent in some internship programs, asdocumented in the 2010 OECD (Organization forEconomic Co-operation and Development)review report on China's development ofvocational education and workplace-basedinternship training (Kuczera and Field 2010,18-27). It is ultimately about the well-being of,and fundamental fairness to, student internworkers. While the Chinese state has not fullyrecognized interns as workers, it has grantedthem certain rights under the domestic legalframework. Brown and deCant (2014, 195)compellingly assert: "When these programs [atFoxconn, Honda, and other workplaces] aredevoid of any relevant educational componentand maintained solely for the benefit of theemployer's bottom line, these interns should beafforded the full protection of China's laborlaws." We aim to extend the legalistic debates byevaluating the role of the local state as a direct

agent in a capitalist development process inwhich student labor governance is becoming anintegral and substantive part. As we will see, atstake is not a mere legal technicality; it is thedynamism of a capital-state alliance that chartsthe role of student labor with importantimplications both for student (mis)education andthe corporate bottom line.

From the national to the global level, thepromulgat ion of a set of non-bindingtransnational labor and environmental standardshas been among the key corporate responses tosweatshop charges made by workers and theirsupporters in many countries (Ross 2004; Smithet al. 2006; Litzinger 2013; Locke 2013; Lüthje etal. 2013; Ruggie 2013). Workers-includingstudent interns-are subjected to the pressure ofbuyers in multi-layered production networks.Image-conscious companies, in response tocharges of labor abuse in factories that producetheir products, pledge to adhere to good laborpractices in global production, such as respectingthe rights of "student workers" in China(Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition [EICC]2014, 44). Electronic Industry CitizenshipCoalition (EICC), the membership-basedindustry association representing Apple andFoxconn and 100-plus other companiesworldwide, has asserted that, "In the past 10years we have seen that consistent auditing,clearer guidelines, greater transparency and aCode of Conduct can play important roles" inregulating "student working hours, wages, [and]health and safety gaps" (EICC 2015, 4). In China'shigh-tech electronics manufacturing, researchersincluding ourselves have just begun to assess theimpact of corporate codes of conduct on workers'conditions.

In a nutshell, we locate student labor at the heartof key industries, notably electronics, inglobalized China. In contrast to the approach ofLu Zhang in Inside China's Automobile Factories(2015, chaps. 5-6), who did not distinguishbetween interning students and agency workers

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in her categorization of "temporary workers," agroup contrasted to "formal workers," we aim tounderstand the distinctive character of studentinterns in China's international politicaleconomy. Accordingly, we examine the centralrole of three parties in the recruitment andcontrol of students during the internship period,namely, factory managers, school teachers, andlocal officials. Our major goal is to explain thesystemic deployment of student interns inindustrial production through a study ofFoxconn's practice, thereby contributing todeeper understanding of the massive use ofstudent interns on worker fragmentation amongChinese workers.

III. The Foxconn Internship Program

With more than one million employees, Foxconnis the world's largest industrial employer(DeCarlo 2014) and probably maintains theworld's largest internship program. The Foxconninternship program, which brought in as many as150,000 young students during the peakproduct ion months in summer 2010 -approximately 15 percent of the company'sworkforce (Foxconn Technology Group 2010a)-and which continues to hire new interns acrossChina at present, dwarfs Disney's CollegeProgram, which received more than 50,000interns cumulatively over 30 years from collegepartners in the United States and abroad (Perlin2011, 6). How is the capital-state-school coalitionbehind the Foxconn internship programorganized?

Foxconn is a key node in the Asian and globalproduction networks, where the processing ofcomponents, final assembly, and shipment offinished products to world consumers continuesaround the clock 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.Inside Foxconn there are more than a dozen"business groups" (shiyequn 事業群), whichcompete on speed, quality, eff iciency,engineering services, and added value tomaximize profits. In one of these business

groups, iDPBG (integrated Digital ProductBusiness Group), which produces exclusively forApple, 28,044 student interns worked alongsideworkers in Shenzhen in 2010-a six-fold increasefrom 4,539 in 2007. They were recruited from"more than 200 secondary vocational schools"(Foxconn Technology Group 2010b, 23). At thecompany's 30-plus manufacturing mega-complexes across China (see Figure 1), workersand student interns toil day and night to churnout iPhones, iPads, and other electronic productsfor Apple and other IT corporations. FollowingChinese government stimulus-led growth andeconomic recovery, as well as large-volumeorders, in 2010, Foxconn registered a 53 percentyear-on-year increase in revenues to US$95billion (3 trillion NTD) (Foxconn TechnologyGroup 2011, 4). Student interns, amongassembly-line workers, played an indispensablerole in corporate expansion.

Foxconn locations in greater China, 1974-2015. Foxconn has more than 30 factoriesacross China. In many cities, Foxconn runs multiple manufacturing facilities. Sources:Foxconn Technology Group company websites and annual reports.

China has more than 13,300 registered vocationalschools and colleges (Xinhua 2015). In 2014,approximately 18 million full-time students wereenrolled in secondary vocational schools acrossthe country. The government projects an increasein vocational school enrollment to 23.5 million by2020 (not including those in vocational collegesor adult vocational education) (Ministry ofEducation of the People's Republic of China

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2010a, table 1). Upon completing nine years ofcompulsory education, students can compete tocontinue their studies in general track highschools or enroll in vocational institutions. Theage of admission to standard three-yearvocational schools is often as young as 15. Whilestudents in high schools are prepared foruniversity entrance, those in vocational schoolsare trained for skilled work or higher vocationaleducation.

Vocational schools offer employment-orientedcourses for first- and second-year students.During their third year, when they are 17 to 18years old, students are expected to intern atenterprises that are "directly relevant to theirstudies" (Ministries of Education and Finance ofthe People's Republic of China 2007, art. 3).However, our interviews revealed that Foxconnnot only recruits students regardless of their fieldof study, but also often much earlier than islegally allowed (that is, in their first and secondyears of vocational studies). In our sample, onlyeight of the 38 student interns were in their finalyear. Their average age was 16.5, just above thenational statutory minimum working age of 16.

The Working Conditions of Student Interns

The duration of the Foxconn internship programswe studied during fieldwork in 2011 and 2012ranged from three months to one year. From thebeginning of her internship, Liu Siying3, the final-year student aspiring to a meaningful learningopportunity whom we met at the opening of thisarticle, was "tied to the PCB [printed circuitboard] line attaching components to the productback-casing." In her words, "it required no skillsor prior knowledge." Students were assigned to aone-size-fits-all internship at Foxconn factories,which involved repetitive manual labor divorcedfrom their studies and interests.

Foxconn Chengdu's newly built 18-storyfactory dormitory, Block 2. Teachers are

housed in dorm rooms next to theirstudents to strengthen control during the

off-work hours throughout the"internship."

Sichuan Zhongjiang Vocational Schoolstudents, many of them 16 years of age,

arrived at Foxconn (Chengdu) in themorning on 3 March 2011 to begin

"internships."

China's leaders seek to boost labor productivitythrough expanded investment in vocational skilltraining (Woronov 2011; Hansen and Woronov2013; Ling 2015). At Foxconn, interns were placedon assembly lines to work illegally long shifts often to 12 hours, six to seven days a week. Article5 of the 2007 Administrative Measures forInternships at Secondary Vocational Schools(Ministries of Education and Finance of thePeople's Republic of China 2007) states that"interns shall not work more than eight hours aday," and the 2010 Education Circular (Clause 4)specifies that "interns shall not work overtimebeyond the eight-hour workday" (Ministry ofEducation of the People's Republic of China2010b). Not only must interns' shifts be no morethan eight hours, all their training activity isrequired to take place during daytime to ensurestudents' safety and physical and mental health,in line with the Law of the People's Republic ofChina on the Protection of Minors (2013).4 Inreality, interns ranging in age from 16 to 18 weresubjected to the same working conditions asregular workers, including alternating day andnight shifts and extensive overtime, defying theletter and the spirit of the education law.

A typical comment by interns, their hopes forgaining technical knowledge dashed, underlinesthe harsh reality of life on the line: "We're sent to

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do trivial tasks like checking iPad screens andcleaning the product surface ... we're frustrated atrepeating the same boring work all day"(Interviews on 19 March 2011; 18 December2011). Foxconn Global Social and EnvironmentalResponsibility Committee Executive Director,Martin Hsing, has defended the internshipprogram, saying that "it meets the needs andexpectations of the interns," even when theeducational value of internship is reduced toassembly-line labor, pure and simple. Heemphasized that school participation is"voluntary" and that interns are "free to terminatetheir internship at any time;" more importantly,the company has "specific policies to ensure that[the internship program] is implemented in fullaccordance with China law" and its "own Code ofConduct" (Foxconn Technology Group 2013).Several students told us that they phoned theirparents after the first week of the internshipasking them to pressure Foxconn managers toimmediately "release the interns." They failed.They were told that they "risked not being able tograduate" if they refused internships at Foxconn(Interviews on 3 March 2011; 1 April 2011; 20January 2012).

At Foxconn, student interns are paid. As ofJanuary 2011, while student interns and entry-level workers had the same starting wage of 950yuan/month (USD $154 / GBP £100 / EUR€128), only employees could receive a skill bonusof 400 yuan/month (USD $65 / GBP £43 / EUR€54). Interns were not entitled to have their skillsassessed in order to qualify for the bonus (seeFigure 2). China's Vocational Education Law,effective 1 September 1996, states that studentsparticipating in vocational education programs"shall be paid properly for their work" (Article37, shidang de laodong baochou 適當的勞動報酬)(Ministry of Education of the People's Republico f C h i n a 1 9 9 6 ) . S i m i l a r l y , t h e 2 0 0 7Administrative Measures for Internships atSecondary Vocational Schools stipulate thatemployers should "pay reasonably for the laborof interns" (Article 8, heli de shixi baochou 合理

的實習報酬). Maintaining that student interns arenot employees-even when they perform workidentical to that of production workers-Foxconndoes not enroll interns in government-administered social security, which coversmedical insurance, work injury insurance,unemployment benefits, maternity insurance,and old age pensions, nor in a housing providentfund (known collectively as "wu xian yi jin" 五險一金). By dispensing with all of these benefits, thecompany saves money.

For the period of our investigation, Foxconnclaimed to have provided "work-related injuryand health insurance" for all interns (quoted inFair Labor Association 2012, 10), but ourinterviewed interns said they had received noinformation about an insurance policy. A quicklook at the math reveals that, in 2015, assuming atotal of 150,000 student interns working invarious Foxconn factories during one month inthe peak season, the savings from not providingthem with welfare benefits is roughly 150,000persons × 300 yuan = 45,000,000 yuan (economicconditions and statutory minimum wages varysubstantially across China; we use the lower endof 300 yuan/month per person for thisillustration5). While this is a simplified exercise, itconveys a good sense of employer savings forjust one month; considering that many internswork for a full year, the annual savings must befar greater.

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Foxconn (Chengdu) job ad, 2011. Theadvertisement makes clear thecompany's savings in employingstudent interns who are ineligible forthe 400 yuan per month wage hikeafter three months. It does notdisclose other savings such aspayments toward pensions. Source:Foxconn Technology Group.

Cost cutting is especially imperative in electronicmanufacturing where profit margins are thin(Kraemer et al. 2011; Lüthje et al. 2013). In recentyears, state minimum wages have steadilyincreased and companies have faced pressure toraise wages to retain workers, particularly ayoung cohort, who frequently changed jobs in anattempt to get better pay and benefits. NationalBureau of Statistics of the People's Republic ofChina (2014, fig. 1) reported that average totalincome of rural migrant workers had risensteadily following the economic recovery in 2009,reaching unprecedented 2,609 yuan/month in2013, a 13.9 percent increase from the previousyear. However, "speed, not just cost," might be"the killer attribute" that gives Foxconn and otherlarge manufacturers "the winning edge to remaincompetitive" (Dinges 2012). Pressure from brand-name buyers to stay responsive to consumer

demand is strong (Hamilton et al. 2011).Accordingly, Foxconn translates productionrequirements for fast time-to-market and highquality into increased work pressure and longerhours. In a rare reference to the productionpressures that Apple and its competitors apply,Foxconn CEO's Special Assistant Louis Wooexplained his company's perspective on overtimein an April 2012 American media program(Marketplace 2012):

The overtime problem-when acompany like Apple or Dell needs toramp up production by 20 percentfor a new product launch, Foxconnhas two choices: hire more workersor give the workers you alreadyhave more hours. When demand isvery high, it's very difficult tosuddenly hire 20 percent morepeople. Especially when you have amillion workers-that would meanhiring 200,000 people at once.

Woo's statement indicates that, when faced withsoaring demand from Apple, Dell, and otherelectronics brands, Foxconn's first response is toimpose compulsory overtime on its existing laborforce. However, it also tries to hire more peopleto respond seamlessly to corporate demands forrush orders. Recruitment through vocationalschools is an efficient way to pick up tens ofthousands of new workers at once, who arepurportedly hired in the name of skills trainingand school-business cooperation (xiaoqi hezuo 校企合作).

In Shenzhen's Longhua Cultural Square, studentintern Zhang Lintong, 16, talked about school lifeand music. He told us he admires the 19th centuryRussian realist artist Ilya Repin and praised TheSong of the Volga Boatmen, which reminds himof Repin's seminal painting Barge Haulers on theVolga.6 Barge Haulers depicts a foreman and tenlaboring men hauling an enormous barge

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upstream on the Volga. The men seem on theverge of collapse from exhaustion. The leadhauler's eyes are fixed on the horizon. Thesecond man bows his head into his chest and thelast one drifts off from the line, a dead manwalking. The haulers, dressed in rags, are tightlybound with leather straps. The exception is thebrightly clad youth in the center of the group,who raises his head while fighting against hisleather bonds in an effort to free himself fromtoil. "I often dream, but repeatedly tear apart mydreams; like a miserable painter, tearing up mydraft sketches…I'm not interested in assemblingiPhone parts. It's exhausting and boring. I wantto quit. But I can't," Lintong sighed (Interview on29 November 2011).

All 14 female and male teachers we interviewedwere aware that the Foxconn program violatedthe purpose of internships, which are mandatedto provide an integral part of students' educationand skills training. Fearing punishment from theschool, however, teachers and students playedtheir parts in the charade called internship. Theteachers reported for duty at the companyadministrative building from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.,Monday to Friday. They were housed in thefactory dormitories throughout the internship.Only one teacher expressed criticisms of theinternship system in the course of our fieldwork.Mr. Tian, a Sichuanese in his 40s, was a Chineseliterature teacher with more than two decades ofteaching experience. "My daughter is 17 yearsold, my only daughter. She's now preparing forthe national college entrance exam. No matterwhat the result is, I won't let her come to intern,or work, for this company." And yet he told usthat "paid internships at Foxconn were one of themain attractions for students attending hisschool." He also admitted, however, that "atFoxconn, there's no real learning throughintegration of classroom and workshop. Thedistortion of vocational education in today'sChina is deeply rooted" (Interview on 16December 2011).

Student Internship Recruitment throughGovernment and School Mobilization

50-seater public buses line up for Foxconn (Chengdu) in PiCounty, Sichuan. Drivers provide transportation service to

Foxconn at government discounted rates.

Government-printed banners on the sides of the buses read,"Use fighting spirit to overcome earthquakes and natural

disasters to provide transportation for Foxconn."

Foxconn, given its powerful market position,gains access to numerous resources with stronggovernment support all over China. In the yearssince the magnitude 7.9 earthquake that struckSichuan in May 2008, killing 87,150 people andleaving 4,800,000 homeless, the provincialgovernment has redoubled efforts to attractinvestments to fund reconstruction. ZhuangHongren, Foxconn's chief investment officer,pledged to "help Chengdu to become anunshakeable city" in world electronics (quoted inSichuan Provincial People's Government 2011).In response, local off icials subsidizedtransportation services and provided numerousbenefits for the company. Foxconn employeesnow commute to work in public buses that havebeen dedicated to the exclusive use of Foxconn(Fieldwork in Pi County, Chengdu City, March2011). Government-printed banners on the sidesof the buses read, "Use fighting spirit againstearthquakes and natural disasters to providetransportation for Foxconn" (yong kangzhenjiuzai de jingshen, nuli wancheng Fushikangbaoche yewu 用抗震救災的精神，努力完成富士康包車業務). Foxconn's economic influence hasbecome so great that CEO Terry Gou is widelyknown among workers as the "Mayor of'Foxconn City'" in Chengdu, provincial capital ofSichuan, southwest China.

Manager Zhu, a 31-year-old college graduate,joined the human resources department ofFoxconn Chengdu on its opening in October 2010after seven years in a small state-owned factory,was chiefly responsible for liaison linking

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government, vocational schools, and Foxconn.He explained (Interview on 14 December 2011):

Over the past year, I held monthlymeetings with government leadersresponsible for the "Number OneProject" [yihao gongcheng 一號工程]tailored for Foxconn. Over a fewdrinks and shared cigarettes, ourcolleagues and local governmentofficials regularly updated eachother on the company's recruitmentschedules, thereby establishing agood working relationship.

The Sichuan provincial government prioritizedhelping Foxconn as its "Number One Project." Itoffered Foxconn partial funding to construct itsgigantic production complex and 18-storydormitories. In addition to the constructionprojects, it undertook large-scale recruitment ofstudent interns and workers at new Foxconnfactories (there are two mega production sites ofFoxconn Chengdu), leaving other Taiwanesemanufacturing competitors such as Wistron andCompal far behind (Global Times 2012). Localeducation bureaus pitched in by compiling andupdating lists that identify vocational schoolssuitable for linking to Foxconn internshipprograms. All qualified schools were required toparticipate in recruitment.

A government employment and social security office converted into a Foxconn recruitment stationat Hongguang Town, Pi County (in Chengdu City, Sichuan). Local states subsidize the growth ofprivate business with free hiring services and cheap labor supply.

To assure the vocational schools' cooperation,governments disburse funds to those that fulfillcompany targets for the number of student

interns. If schools fail to meet human resourcesrequirements, education bureaus withhold funds(Interview with a township government officialin Chengdu City, 17 December 2011). Foxconnhas taken advantage of this system to extend itslabor recruitment networks to schools, where itdraws on the assistance of local officials andteachers to utilize student labor. Figure 3 showshow Foxconn in Sichuan province draws upplans for student labor recruitment, then top-level government officials lead work teamsacross different administrative levels (city,county, district, township and village) to meetthe deadlines and quotas, with the cooperation ofthe vocational schools under their jurisdiction.

Foxconn internship recruitment through local mobilization, Sichuan. For illustrative purposes, wesimplify the complex, multi-level power relationships in the recruitment of student internsthrough the triple alliance of Foxconn, local governments (from the provincial to the village level),and vocational schools (under the jurisdiction of Sichuan province). The seven vocational schoolsthat we specify were publicly reported in local news and/or on school websites as participating inthe Foxconn internship programs. Source: Field data collected in Sichuan province.

All production workers, including studentinterns, at Foxconn Chengdu are engaged inmaking iPads exclusively for Apple. BetweenSeptember 2011 and January 2012 (a schoolsemester), in Foxconn's Chengdu factories, morethan 7,000 students-approximately ten percent ofthe labor force-were working on the assemblyline (Interviews with human resources managersand teachers in December 2011 and January2012). One of the participating schools, PujiangVocational School, sent 162 students on 22September 2011 to undertake three-monthinternships that were subjected to extension inaccordance with iPad production needs. Thelarge Pengzhou Technical School signed up 309students, accompanied by three male and threefemale teachers during the entire internship. This

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is typical of the 1:50 teacher-student ratiomaintained throughout the Foxconn Chengduinternship program in 2011-2012. Contrary to ourfindings, the Apple-commissioned factoryinspector Fair Labor Association "found nointerns had been engaged at [Foxconn] Chengdusince September 2011" (our emphasis) (Fair LaborAssociation 2013, 5).7

A recruitment poster introducing the corporate background of Foxconn (Chengdu) is displayedoutside the Chengdu rail station, Sichuan. Since October 2010 Foxconn (Chengdu) has producediPads exclusively for Apple. In one semester during 2011-2012, it employed more than 7,000"student interns" on the assembly line.

Government officials support the timelyfulfillment of labor recruitment assignments forFoxconn by doing public relations work toimprove the company's image. The targetsinclude students and fresh graduates. Atownship official-in-charge elaborated, "We weretasked by upper level governments to eliminatenegative social attitudes toward Foxconn afterthe [2010] suicide wave"8 (Interview on 14December 2011). The main contents of studentlabor recruitment are Foxconn's corporatedevelopment, its economic and technologicalstrength, and its expansion prospects. Thegovernment team deploys messages "across theinternet, radio, television, posters, blogposts,leaflets, telephone calls, door-to-door visits, andthe mail to publicize Foxconn's culture, andguide recruitment targets in correct thinking andunderstanding" (The People's Government ofGuangyuan City [Sichuan] 2011a). Villages,towns, and schools are saturated withpropaganda to assure that Foxconn achieves thestatus of a household name. The division of laboris summarized as follows (Interview with atownship government official in Chengdu City,16 December 2011):

1. The Human Resources and SocialSecuri ty Department makesrecruitment a top priority.

2. The Education Departmenta r r a n g e s s c h o o l - b u s i n e s scooperation, ensures that thenumber of graduates and internsmeets the assigned goal, andarranges for their transportation onschedule and properly supervisedby teachers.

3. The Finance Department ensuresthat recruitment is adequatelyfunded.

4. The Public Security Departmentc o m p l e t e s j o b a p p l i c a n t s 'background investigations.

5. The Transportation Departmentassures appropriate transportcapacity and safety.

6. The Health Department providesp r e - e m p l o y m e n t p h y s i c a lexaminations.

7. Other relevant departmentsensure that recruitment progressessmoothly.

Foxconn obtains wealth of resources frommultiple government departments to enhance itscost-competitiveness and business capacity whileassuring an abundant supply of workers at atime of tightened labor markets. Indeed, in thepast 30-plus years, preferential treatment by localgovernments has increased capital mobility andfacilitated the growth of transnationalcorporations, first in southeast coastal regionsand then in interior cities (McNally 2004; Leng2005; Selden and Perry 2010). What is new is theoutreach to vocational schools to tap studentlabor through a partnership of capital and state.

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One municipal government actually conductsinvestigations of departments that "do notcomplete 50 percent of monthly tasks," pushingfor a 100 percent completion rate of therecruitment quota handed down by Foxconn(The People's Government of Guangyuan City[Sichuan] 2011b).

"In Chengdu," Andrew Ross (2006, 218)concludes from his research on global IT serviceoutsourcing to China that "it was impossible notto come across evidence of the state's hand in thefostering of high-tech industry." From Sichuan tocentral China's Henan province, provincialgovernments have similarly channelled financialand administrative resources to support Foxconnhiring. In June 2010, the Zhengzhou CityEducation Bureau directed all vocational schoolsunder its jurisdiction to dispatch students 1,000miles away to Foxconn's Shenzhen factories foremployment and/or internships. This step wastaken to make sure students would completetheir training in time for the August opening of anew manufacturing base in Zhengzhou,provincial capital of Henan. Foxconn Zhengzhouexclusively assembles iPhones for Apple. Theopening passage of the government notificationto all education units reads (Zhengzhou CityEducation Bureau (Henan) 2010):

To promote the city's vocational education,accelerate the pace of educational development,deepen school-business cooperation, strengthencustomized training, and promote industry, ithas been decided to launch an employment(internship) partnership with FoxconnTechnology Group, and to arrange for allvocational school students to work (intern) atFoxconn Shenzhen.

Specifics of the sweeteners offered to Foxconninclude the following (Henan Provincial PovertyAlleviation Office 2010.):

1. Implementing a policy of rewardsfor job introductions at the standard

rate of 200 yuan per person from thed e s i g n a t e d g o v e r n m e n temployment fund.

2. Giving every successful worker(or intern) a 600-yuan subsidy fromthe des ignated governmentemployment fund.

The Henan provincial government, usingtaxpayers' money, pays for incentives to schoolsor labor agencies ("the job introduction fee" of200 yuan/person) that arrange for employmentand/or internships at Foxconn. In August andSeptember 2010, local government officialsdivided the 20,000-recruit goal among 23counties and cities (each new worker/internreceives 600 yuan). For the targeted recruitmentof 20,000 persons, the government bill would be16,000,000 yuan (= 20,000 persons × (200 + 600)yuan). Each city or county government wasassigned specific recruitment targets, with quotaswithin each district subdivided down to villagesand towns. Table 1 shows the number of newFoxconn recruits that each of the 23 localities wasordered to produce. From this moment, studentinternships were transformed into a government-organized activity in the service of a privateemployer (see also, Henan Provincial EducationDepartment 2010).

G o v e r n m e n t R e c r u i t m e n tAssignments for Foxconn, Henan

Name Targets for

August 2010(persons)

Targets forSeptember 2010(persons)

Total (persons)

1 Xinyang 1,000 1,000 2,0002 Zhoukou 940 940 1,8803 Luoyang 850 900 1,7504 Nanyang 850 850 1,7005 Shangqiu 850 850 1,7006 Zhumadian 850 850 1,7007 Puyang 750 700 1,4508 Xinxiang 680 680 1,3609 Anyang 650 650 1,30010 Pingdingshan 550 550 1,10011 Kaifeng 500 500 1,00012 Zhengzhou 200 200 40013 Hebi 200 200 40014 Jiaozuo 200 200 40015 Xuchang 200 200 40016 Luohe 200 200 40017 Sanmenxia 200 200 40018 Gushi County, Xinxiang 100 100 20019 Jiyuan 50 50 10020 Dengzhou City, Nanyang 50 50 10021 Yongcheng City, Shangqiu 50 50 10022 Xiangcheng City, Zhoukou 50 50 10023 Gongyi City, Zhengzhou 30 30 60 Total 10,000 10,000 20,000

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The Henan provincial governmentestablished an inter-departmentalcommittee to coordinate laborrecruitment at Foxconn. The 20,000new recruits included students andnon-student job seekers.

Source: Henan Provincial PovertyAlleviation Office 2010.

Student interns-cheap, youthful, and productive-are a new source of labor that is growing largerin step with the expansion of vocationaleducation. Steven McKay in Satanic Mills orSilicon Islands concludes that high-techcommodity producers "focus their labor concernson cost, availability, quality, and controllability"to enhance profitability (2006, 42, italics original).On 1 November 2011, Han Chinese and Tibetanstudent interns got into a brawl during workinghours. The incident sounded an alarm and a viceprincipal from one of the participating vocationalschools arrived on the scene the next day to "lookafter his students," reported interviewee TeacherJiang. He added, "All of the few dozen studentswere laid off. Foxconn demanded that theschools concerned immediately 'take back thebad students' to prevent any disruption to work"(Interview on 15 December 2011). The assistanceof the vice principal in removing the interns towhom Foxconn objected reveals otherdimensions of how the schools and the enterprisecooperate in exercising dual control overstudents (Smith and Chan 2015). Psychosocialbehaviour, such as playing video games all nightand not going to work on time, as well asslowing down due to loss of motivation to workhard, however , cont inued. Foxconn'spresentation of Outstanding Student InternAwards-also known as the "hardworking bee"prize-failed to instill stronger commitment andloyalty among interns who perceived theinternship as squandering their education andfound the work demeaning.

None of the 38 interviewed interns expressedinterest in working for Foxconn after graduation.If they were interested in assembly line jobs, theywould have started working straight away afterfinishing middle school rather than seekingspecialized training in multiple fields. "Come on,what do you think we've learned standing formore than ten hours a day manning the machineson the line? What's an internship? There's norelation to what we study in school. Every day isjust a repetition of one or two simple motions,like a robot," Lintong emphasized (Interview on29 November 2011).

IV. Conclusion

If the Chinese government's goal is to encourageworkforce preparedness by investing invocational training, with student internships as acore component, the policy is a failure. Foxconnhas shifted hiring costs onto local governmentsand outsourced recruitment to vocational schoolsto obtain a flexible, low-cost labor supply. In thiscapital-state-school alliance, the incorporation ofstudents into the workplace in the guise ofinternships has served the interests of capital,while generating intern protests over unfair andillegal treatment.9 Intense competition amonglocalities to lure foreign investment hasundermined enforcement of labor andeducational laws. Notwithstanding significantChinese legal reforms to date, there remains adeep-seated conflict between state legitimationand local accumulation, with the result thatstudent workers' rights and interests aresacrificed. Companies have continued to exploitthe internal contradictions of the state tomaximize their gains, and local states have benteducation and labor rules and regulations toattract businesses. This is one important facet ofChina's distinctive state capitalism.

Speaking of the dynamism of state-societyrelations, Ching Kwan Lee (2007, 17) "seescontradictions within different state imperativesand insists that state power is not independent of

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but rather constituted through its engagementwith social groups in their acquiescence andactivism, triggered by contradictory state goalsand policies." We observe that, under mountingpublic concerns of student worker abuses,including child labor hidden in the guise ofinterns at Foxconn's labor-hungry factories(SACOM 2012), the Chinese central governmenthas recently proposed new "Draft Rules on theManagement of Vocational School StudentInternships" (Ministry of Education of thePeople's Republic of China 2012). These rules, ifvigorously implemented, would require thatstudent internships have substantial educationalcontent and work-skill training plans, along withcomprehensive labor protections for teenageworkers. As of December 2014, however, thedraft rules still had not been issued (Ministry ofEducation of the People's Republic of China2014), suggesting opposition from employers andtheir allies.

At the industry level, in an attempt to polish itscorporate image, Apple (2013, 19) reiterated inJanuary 2013 its standards for suppliers' hiring ofstudents: "Student working hours must complywith legal restrictions.... We've begun to partnerwith industry consultants to help our suppliersimprove their policies, procedures, andmanagement of internship programs to gobeyond what the law requires." Claiming toexercise corporate social responsibility in globalsupply-chain management, Apple neveracknowledged its own culpability in imposingtight delivery schedules and high qualitydemands at the lowest possible prices (Chan eta l . 2 0 1 3 , 2 0 1 5 ; C h a k r a b o r t t y 2 0 1 3 ) .Manufacturers, faced with buyers' tightdeadlines and ruthless demands, in turn placetremendous pressure on frontline workersincluding interns to retain contracts and stayprofitable. In February 2014, Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Programat Stanford University, announced a monitoringand evaluation program of student internships atthe invitation of Apple in Apple's China-based

major suppliers (Rural Education ActionProgram 2014). As of our writing in August 2015,the findings were still not publicly available.

Ross Perlin in his book on American andEuropean internship practices, Intern Nation,comments, "The very significance of the wordintern lies in its ambiguity" (2011, 23, italicsoriginal). In the four years we have been workingon this research, we have seen that therecruitment of interns as cheap and disposablelabor at Foxconn has become routine practice thatcontinues in the present day, and extends tomany other companies such as Samsung andLenovo (see also China Labor Watch 2014; Dou2014). Schools, facing financial and politicalpressure, are unable to shield students frominternships that violate the letter and spirit of thelaw. Business-friendly local authorities sponsorsuch internship programs through directsubsidies and administrative support to largecorporations. In China, the student labor regimeh a s b e c o m e i n t e g r a l t o i t s e c o n o m i cdevelopment, frequently at the sacrifice of allworkers' interests.

Acknowledgements

*This article is jointly published by The Asia-Pacific Journal and Asian Studies (OfficialJournal of the Hong Kong Asian StudiesAssociation) . Asian Studies 1(1): 69-98,September 2015, DOI: 10.6551/AS.0101.04

The authors would like to thank Asian Studiesand The Asia-Pacific Journal editors andreviewers, as well as colleagues Amanda Bell,Jeffery Hermanson, Greg Fay and Debby Chanfor their intellectual insights. An earlier draft ofthis paper entitled "Student Interns in China:Foxconn Internship through Government andSchool Mobilization" was presented atPennsylvania State University in March of 2013at the symposium "Global Workers' Rights:Patterns of Exclusion, Possibilities for Change,"where Jenny Chan received constructive

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15

comments from organizers Mark Anner, JillJensen, Daniel Hawkins and many participants.

We acknowledge academic funding support fromUniversity of Oxford, University of London,Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and HongKong Research Grant Council.

Jenny Chan (PhD in 2014) is a Lecturer inSociology and China Studies at the School ofInterdisciplinary Area Studies, and an electedJunior Research Fellow (2015-2018) at KelloggCollege, University of Oxford. Educated at theCUHK and the HKU, she was a Reid ResearchScholar while pursuing her doctorate at theUniversity of London. In 2013-2014 she receiveda Great Britain-China Educational Award. Shewas the SACOM Chief Coordinator (2006-2009)and a Board Member of the InternationalSociological Association's Research Committeeon Labor Movements (2014-2018).

E m a i l : w l c h a n _ c u h k @ y a h o o . c o m(mai l to :wlchan_cuhk@yahoo.com) /j e n n y . c h a n @ a r e a . o x . a c . u k(mailto: jenny.chan@area.ox.ac.uk)

Ngai Pun is a Professor in the Department ofApplied Social Sciences and the Director of ChinaDevelopment and Research Network at HongKong Polytechnic University. She is the author ofMade in China: Women Factory Workers in aG l o b a l W o r k p l a c e(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1932643001/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (2005), for which she won theC. W. Mills Award. Recently she has co-authoredand co-edited several books on labor and socialeconomy in Hong Kong and China (in Chinese).

E m a i l : p u n n g a i @ g m a i l . c o m(mailto:punngai@gmail .com)

Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate in theEast Asia Program at Cornell University, aV i s i t i n g R e s e a r c h e r a t t h eAsian/Pacific/American Studies Institute atNYU, and editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal. A

specialist on the modern and contemporarygeopolitics, political economy and history ofChina, Japan and the Asia Pacific, his work hasranged broadly across themes of war andrevolution, inequality, development, regionaland world social change, social movements andhistorical memory.

H o m e p a g e : w w w . m a r k s e l d e n . i n f o /(http://www.markselden.info/)

E m a i l : m a r k . s e l d e n @ c o r n e l l . e d u(mailto:mark.selden@cornell .edu)

Recommended citation: Jenny Chan, Pun Ngaiand Mark Selden, "Interns or Workers? China'sStudent Labor Regime", The Asia-Pacific Journal,Vol. 13, Issue 36, No. 1, September 7, 2015.

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Notes

1 Concerning the rights protection of China-basedstudent interns in transnational production, on 16December 2013, we wrote letters to, respectively,Foxconn CEO Terry Gou and Apple CEO Tim

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Cook. Apple is the world's most profitabletechnology company, which contracts Foxconn,among others, to manufacture its brandedproducts. The two letters, and companystatements, are on file with the authors.

2 On the inherent contradictions betweenlegitimacy and profitability in global capitalism,and the varied responses of industrial capital andthe state under specific historical context, see alsoBurawoy (1985), Silver (2003), and Webster et al.(2008).

3 The names of our interviewees, unlessotherwise specified, are changed to protect them.

4 Law of the People's Republic of China on theProtection of Minors (Zhonghua RenminGongheguo Wei Chengnianren Baohu Fa 2013)protects young people under 18 for theirbalanced development and healthy growth.Article 20 stipulates that schools, includingvocational schools, shall "cooperate with theparents or other guardians of the minor studentsto guarantee the minor students time forsleeping, recreational activities and physicalexercises and may not increase their burden ofstudy."

5 As of December 2013, in Shenzhen, Foxconnpaid ten percent of employees' basic monthlywage for social insurance (180 yuan) and fivepercent for the mandatory housing provident

fund (90 yuan), that is, 270 yuan/month in total.

6 T h e S o n g o f t h e V o l g a B o a t m e n(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlABtBm6V5o) (in Russian with Chinese illustration)

7 The Fair Labor Association (FLA) received fromApple membership dues of US$250,000, plusaudit fees for conducting its investigation atFoxconn Chengdu and two other Foxconnfactories in Shenzhen (Longhua and Guanlan)between 2011 and 2012 (Weir 2012). Given thecomplete financial dependence of the FLA on thecompanies that support it, we question its abilityto fulfill its purported mission to protect workersin the global economy.

8 In 2010, at least 18 workers attempted suicide atFoxconn's facilities in Shenzhen and other cities,resulting in 14 deaths and four crippling injuries,see Chan and Pun (2010) and Chan (2013).

9 I t w a s e s t i m a t e d t h a t i n M a y 2 0 1 0approximately 70 percent of the 1,800 workerswere student interns at a Honda parts plantbased in Nanhai District in Foshan City,Guangdong. Following a significant victory inwhich Honda workers received an additional 500yuan per month and underpaid interns over 600yuan more per month, auto workers at supplierfactories of Toyota and Hyundai wereemboldened to take their demands to managers(see Butollo and ten Brink 2012; Chan and Hui2014; Friedman 2014, chap. 5; Lyddon et al. 2015).