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There are a lot of differences between the British industrial revolution and China’s opening up. However, there are also some similarities between the two reformations. This essay will compare the similarities between the industrial revolution and China’s recently opening up. Revolutions play a large part in history as change happens inevitably, the longer a system stays in action, the more disorganized it becomes; without changes to improve, the system will eventually collapse. That’s why reformations of our governing systems are needed to improve policies and resources and technology so we are ready when change happens. The industrial revolution is defined as “the period of time during which work began to be done more by machines in factories than by hand at home” in the Cambridge dictionary, this means that during that period, Britain rapidly industrialized, and factories began to be built and people transitioned from working at home at producing handmade little things to working in gigantic factories mass producing products. For example, before the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, using hand tools or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift towards powered, specialized machinery (which decreased the need for specialists because everybody could operate machines), factories, and mass production. ‘As China opens up wider to the outside world, this transition to a new model of development will create huge opportunities for many new industries, ‘It means opportunities for businesses not just in China but across the world.’’ (Liu He, 2018) What this means is that as China opens up to the rest of the world, people all around the world can have more chances for business in China. For example, if China didn’t open up, China would not have become the factory of the world and there wouldn’t be inexpensive products flooding the world now, with everything “made in China”, just like there wouldn’t be British products flooding the world 2 hundred years ago. So, If you still want to read my incredibly tedious essay which will probably bore you to death, the key points that we are going to discuss are government policies, urbanization, and factories.
First, let’s compare how the 2 events started. It was very not different between China and the Industrial Revolution in Britain if you look at the right place. The reform of China only happened because Deng Xiaoping passed a law in 1978. This is different from the Industrial Revolution because it happened slowly and was not led by one person like in China. It had many factors like the availability of resources (coal), new inventions like the steam engine, better transport systems, and new roads and canals were built, etc. Britain had a parliamentary monarchy which led to more freedom for the people. Britain was also a capitalist society, which led to the motivation for people to invent and work harder because they could keep the money they earned unlike China, which was a communist society. The people in China had no motivation, or incentive, to work harder because the money is split and shared equally between the people. The government gets to keep the extra money of someone decided to work harder. However, in Britain, who was “a country that a century before still had an economy dominated by farming and agriculture, much as it had been for 2000 years, had become the world’s first industrial giant in just a few generations.” What took place in Britain was far more than a growth spurt. It was the dawning of a whole new way of organizing labour and production, a whole new way of thinking about how a society ought to be organized and how wealth could be obtained. This was all made possible because of how their government operated. Absolute monarchy was all about maintaining power and the rulers didn’t want their citizens to get strong and rich as the citizens might get more powerful than themselves and start an uprising. This was kind of like how China operated during Mao’s era before Deng Xiaoping came into power. Mao’s communism places strict rules as to how businesses operate in such a way that a classless society is born. No matter what field a business specializes in, the same amount of funds will be allocated to each, and each worker will receive the same amount of money, thus creating no reason to work harder and try to help the country move forward with inventions or technological advancements as the workers get paid the same amount of money no matter what. Britain was the same, its switch to a parliamentary monarchy (which was kind of like passing a law similar to China) helped the people and allowed them to get rich and bring money back to Britain. This led to people with purpose, with a reason to work hard and strive for better. Their way of thinking was brilliant, they would let some people get rich first, bringing the money back to Britain so the government could then collect taxes and help the whole society move out of poverty too. It is not until the introduction of controlled capitalism into a small region before the industrialization of China begin to take hold as people found reasons to work harder.
Next, China and Britain both experienced urbanization. Urbanization is defined as “the increase in the population of the total population living in an urban area.” (Retrieved from Mr. Cabrelli, who probably read it off an unreliable website, 2019) This means that the percentage of people living in cities increased. This is closely tied to and most likely triggered by the rise of the factory system. People living in rural areas felt “pulled” to the city. New industrial labour opportunities caused a population shift Often they assume that the standard of living in urban areas will be much higher than in rural areas. They also hope to find more stable jobs that earn more money. They were usually wrong in both countries. Industrialization changed material production, wealth, labour patterns, and population distribution. People living in small farming communities migrated to cities because of increased job opportunities in many industrial areas. As a result of workers looking for wage labour moving to cities, the population growth led to horrible living conditions. The wealthy fared far better than the industrial workers because they could afford to live in the suburbs in the outskirts of the city. The city was packed, and epidemics often erupted. Overcrowded row homes created to accommodate the workers and their families contributed to the below-standard living conditions, Government studies have shown that more than six people could share a bed at that time. The sanitary conditions in the early industrial cities were also very dirty, the government did not care about hygiene at the time. The city did not have a proper garbage disposal system, and the coal burned in the factory coated everything with a layer of dirt in the city, polluting the air, and the water supply was contaminated by waste. Cities population’s growth during the industrial revolution was unreal, for example, Manchester went from 90 thousand people to 351 thousand people (that’s 290%); Birmingham grew from just 74 thousand people to 344 thousand people (that’s about 365%), and London grew from 1117 thousand people to 3890 thousand people (that’s about 248%). Glasgow grew the most, from 77 thousand people to 522 thousand people (that’s almost 578%)! China’s urbanization wasn’t much better. Often referred to as the factory of the world, China’s industry-oriented economy depends on these migrant employees who make up the bulk of their workforce, they are very poor and were most likely migrants from the rural area who didn’t have any power to negotiate with factory owners. There are approximately a hundred and fifty million internal migrant employees in China who, because of their status, do not receive any state benefits or protection. They have to endure poor working conditions such as excessive and forced overtime, denial of social security rights, and failure to provide employment contracts, as well as severe health risks. However, because of these factories, China experienced urbanization rather quickly, in 1950, 13% of China’s population lived in cities. By 2010, the urban population had grown to 45%; by 2030, it is predicted that it will reach 60 percent. Twenty-five of the one hundred largest cities in the world are in China. The urbanization that happened during the Industrial Revolution and China was largely similar because they were both caused by the factory system. However, both countries experienced urbanization in different ways. The location where the urbanization happened were determined by different factors. In China, it was decided by the government SEZs (Special Economic Zones). SEZs are coastal areas selected to attract foreign investment, they are special areas for foreign companies to operate (controlled capitalism). They operate with special economic laws separate to the rest of China, foreign companies opened factories, which created jobs for Chinese people, this then attracted more people to the SEZs. This was urbanization, Shenzhen grew from 30,000 to 10,000,000. There were five major SEZs in China, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen, and Hainan. In Britain during the Industrial Revolution, the location of the urbanization was determined by the factory owners themselves, they could choose wherever they wanted to build factories.
Finally, let us discuss factories which goes hand in hand with urbanization. People hope for well-paid jobs and greater opportunities to work. They think that they will get better jobs that are more stable because if you’re working in a factory, you get your monthly salary but if you live and work on a farm, there are no written contracts and little or no protection, they tend to work for long hours on a farm, earning low and unstable incomes and often have to combine more than one job to make a living. The amount of income you get depends on many different factors like bad weather. Despite some obvious benefits to working in factories, the working conditions in factories during the industrial revolution were terrible and workers were often exploited because workers were easily replaceable as there were always people who wanted to work even if they got very little money for long hours. The working conditions were terrible during both the industrial revolution and China’s opening up. During the industrial revolution, working conditions were terrible and factory owners wanted to keep their machines running as many hours as possible because it meant more production and hence, more money. Because of this, the average worker worked 6 days a week with 14 hours a day. Work did not change with the seasons, as it did on farms. Instead, work remained the same, week after week, year after year… Industrialization also presented new threats to workers, factories were seldom well lit or clean. Machines injured workers. A boiler might explode or a drive belt might catch an arm. There were no government programs to give support to workers who might injure themselves with reasons relating to work. In an investigation, it was discovered that laborers died about 8 years earlier than an average tradesman and 29 years earlier than the average gentlemen and professionals during the industrial revolution. As factories were being built, businessmen could set wages as low as they desired because workers believed in “the American dream” for they thought anything was possible if they worked hard enough. Many of them were disappointed. However, there were very few success stories and they were what kept the workers going. One example was in China where there was a woman who first worked on a factory assembly line, which paid only $50 a month. Over the next two years, she attends night school and gets several secretarial jobs, and lands a coveted position in the factory’s purchasing department that pays more than $1000 a month. However, there are many more “failure” examples, one of them was the one where a woman threw herself from the fourth floor of her Foxconn dormitory because she worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, and was forced to attend early work meetings for no pay, and had to skip meals to do overtime. Toilet breaks were restricted; you were shouted at for little mistakes and yet there was no training. And what was Foxconn’s solution to this problem? Put netting around the factories so even if workers jumped to attempt suicide, they couldn’t die. Wow. Instead of trying to fix the root of the problem (which would have been to treat workers better) they just eliminated the symptoms (well news flash Foxconn, there are many ways to die. They could strangle themselves in the netting, they could suffocate themselves with a bag, they could electrocute themselves with the many machines in the factory, they could hang themselves with a rope, they could poison themselves from a drug overdose, they could starve themselves by not eating, they could kill themselves because of dehydration and more. So, only treating the symptoms of sickness can never cure the whole problem). I watched a video where a young female former Foxconn worker was interviewed. She tells having entered Foxconn when she was 18 years old, at first earning just 1 Chinese yuan a day as a trainee but actually working the same amount as other workers. The dusty environment and corrosive chemicals used in the mold production shop floor put the workers’ health at risk. But when workers got injuries relating to work, they had to apologize publicly and are only allowed to take sick leave instead of getting proper treatment and compensation. Workers who stood up for better protection would be pressured to keep silent, they were not allowed to apply for industrial injury and were threatened if they asked. Her story adds to the growing number of accounts we hear, of young migrant workers being exploited. We are left to think: do we really understand the thousands of human faces behind the successful images and huge profits of those IT brands, including Apple?
So, in conclusion, however, different things may seem, we can always find something the two share amongst themselves. They both were started by government policies. They both experienced urbanization. They both witnessed the rise of the factory system. Guided by Deng Xiaoping’s bold policy of reform and openness, China has experienced groundbreaking changes in the last quarter century. Industrialization in Britain took off during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ‘The word “revolution” means great change or upheaval. The upheaval that happened over many years in Britain during those two centuries was so remarkable that by 1851 Britain was known as “the workshop of the world.”’ The industrial revolution that began in the 18th century in Britain spread to Europe and USA and changed the world forever. They both changed from rural countries, depending on the land and agriculture for their wealth, to industrial nations, where goods were manufactured in factories.
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