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Childhood hardships inspire Chinese activist
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Childhood hardships inspire Chinese activist
At 14, Zhang Ye furtively learned her ABCs while herding sheep in frigid Inner Mongolia during China?s Cultural Revolution, a humble start on her path to a masters degree from Harvard University?s Kennedy School. Now 50, Zhang is country director for the Asia Foundation in China, where her suffering under communism run amok inspires her work helping vulnerable female migrant workers survive the upheaval of China?s headspinning capitalist revolution.
?It was a nightmare and we lost 10 years of normal life and a good education,? she said of the 1966-76 campaign by Mao Zedong. Zhang and her three sisters were scattered across rural China under Mao?s directive to ?learn from the peasants. But at the same time it turned into an asset, building a whole generation of people who understand China and have an attachment to the poor people in the countryside,? Zhang said.
?Even now I think of the farmers of Inner Mongolia and how they live,? she said in an interview in New York during a visit to the United States. With $ 200,000 in funding from firms including Levi Strauss & Co and Microsoft and support from the US Department of Labor, the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation helps 200,000 women who toil in 200 factories in southern China?s Guangdong province.
Working with the blessing of a Chinese government that often views civil society with wariness if not hostility, Zhang and her network counsel young women on labor laws, wage disputes, occupational hazards and HIV/-AIDS education.
The women come from bleak hamlets with a change of clothes and a primary school education and work up to 16 hours a day in shoe, garment and toy factories without health insurance. ?They sacrifice their youth to make more money for families that are in debt, parents that are ill, grandparents? funerals or brothers who get to go to school,? said Zhang. ?They work too long, using glue to make shoes and they become ill and numb and they faint,? she said.
The Asia Foundation and its partners operate legal aid centers to teach workers how to get legal redress for abuses and illnesses. They pressure factories to clean up their acts through media exposure and lawsuits.
<B>Paul Eckert</B>
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