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For many Chinese workers, the country's zero-COVID policy has tested family bonds

Dec 12, 2022
Most workers who leave small towns for higher pay in big cities can't bring their families with them. For nearly three years, travel restrictions have kept them apart.
A masked factory worker works on a machine line.
Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Are factory jobs leaving China because of the U.S. tariffs?

Dec 18, 2019
China's statistics show 3.8 million manufacturing jobs disappeared from urban areas last year.
Workers at a shoe factory in Southern China. Most of them come from the poor countryside to give their families a better life.
Shanghai 808 Studio

The children of Chinese factory workers

Oct 2, 2019
As part of a series on Communist China’s 70th anniversary, Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak and Shanghai bureau news assistant, Charles Zhang, spoke to people in the country’s shoe industry – the world’s biggest – about their achievements and challenges over the last few decades. You can read more stories from the China 70 series here. China’s […]
Hu Maolin was left in the care of his grandmother when he was two years old, while his parents worked in the cities.
Photo courtesy of Shanghai 808 Studio

42 charged two years after Bangladesh factory collapse

Jun 1, 2015
17 face murder charges; the owner allegedly ignored safety warnings.
Bangladeshi relatives of missing garment workers take part in a protest marking the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on April 24, 2014. More than 1,100 people were killed in the country's worst industrial disaster.
MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images

The struggles to unionize workers in Bangladesh

May 7, 2014
Labor unions in Bangladesh continue to struggle for expanded worker rights.