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CHANGMINGZHEN, China – The smell, salty and pungent, wafts through the freshly cobbled streets near the sparkling new factory.
The plant is owned by a company called Laoganma, which makes a hot pepper soy sauce famous throughout China for its mouth-watering power. In a time of a global pandemic, when the jobs of workers around the world are on the line, factory fragrances signal an opportunity.
Since opening in March, when China was still in the grip of Covid-19, the plant has struggled to find enough machine operators or quality control technicians. Today, workers flock to Changmingzhen, a once quiet farming town surrounded by lush green mountains and rice paddies, from where young people once fled to find better jobs elsewhere.
Changmingzhen is a testament to China’s astonishing post-coronavirus revival – fueled by the callused hands of the country’s factory and construction workers. With few exceptions, the rest of the world remains in a state of unease over a pandemic. But when China releases economic figures for 2020 on Monday, they should show that its economy has grown despite losing the first few weeks to the lockdown.
One recent evening, cash-brimming workers left the factory at the end of their shift and flooded the nearby market stalls looking for hand-cut noodles, bananas and tangerines. The family business pays its production workers up to $ 1,200 per month. “Not bad for workers our age,” said Wang Mingyan, an employee leaving her shift.
The petite 50-year-old said she was given a rent-free apartment, free cafeteria meals and other perks as Laoganma competed with other companies for workers. The menu isn’t always to his liking, but it’s a small price to pay.
“When you are not at home,” said Ms. Wang, who left her hometown more than two hours away, “you just fill your stomach.
China froze a $ 15 trillion economy last February. He used brute force to isolate cities and provinces and drag people into quarantine.
Beijing has turned to the same blunt set of tools to revive the economy. He ordered factories to reopen and public banks to lend. He told state-owned companies to restart.
Now the economy is moving forward. Government grants fuel new rail lines and factories. A state-owned company, a potential competitor to Boeing and Airbus, says it will invest $ 3 billion in 22 large construction projects.
The role of government makes China’s renaissance a distinctive blue collar. State levers are the most effective when it comes to restarting large factories or large construction projects. It has long focused on keeping the working class happy for fear of the kind of upheavals that have shaken politics in the United States and Europe.
Beijing has a harder time solving other issues. Buyers remain nervous and may become even more so as the virus has resurfaced in several cities in recent times. Its economy is based even less on innovation and services than on the manufacture of objects. Legions of university graduates continue to find satisfying shortage jobs.
About 50 miles on the Changmingzhen Expressway in the provincial capital Guiyang, Laoganma advertised positions with three-foot-high signs at a local job fair. But work is unattractive for young people looking for work.
“You can find one if you look, but it just won’t be the kind you imagined,” said Grace Cai, a senior who specializes in tourism management at a university in Guiyang, “and not the kind that answers on demand in your heart, or achieved your goal. “
Ms. Cai did an internship last fall as a waitress in a hotel restaurant. She dreads finding a full-time job.
“There are too many students now,” she said, “and because of the epidemic it is actually not easy to find a job.”
The villagers of Changmingzhen may not agree. It was in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, a county so poor five years ago, that it became a target of China’s anti-poverty campaign.
Even before the coronavirus, officials struggled to get to work empty-handed. The national government has just built a modern highway and a high-speed train connecting Guizhou with a neighboring province. Laoganma and other companies quickly followed. The city is buzzing with construction workers throwing apartments for new workers.
“Every factory is short of workers – the locals have all been recruited,” said Zhou Xin, a former farmer who abandoned his paddy fields so that Laoganma could build his factory. “It’s too painful and the local people are unwilling to do it.”
Her own daughter studied in Shanghai and stayed on working for an industrial design company. He now runs a small restaurant across from the factory and still fishes in an adjacent river. He only likes one thing: the constant rumble and hiss of the plant.
“It’s okay if you get used to the sound,” he says. “There are billions of renminbi invested here.”
The factory was scheduled to open in February. Then the pandemic struck.
The streets were emptying. Residents set up barricades at city entrances, checking everyone’s temperature. A mixture of fear and camaraderie kept virtually everyone home for six weeks, living on corn, potatoes and greens from the gardens.
Yang Xiaozhen runs a Changmingzhen restaurant with his parents, charging $ 1.50 for a plate of dumplings. They closed. Her parents stayed inside. Ms. Yang barely ventured out either.
“We have tried to be aware,” she said, “because we Chinese are certainly very united and very aware.”
But the virus never hit Changmingzhen. At the end of February, with the economy still at a standstill, local officials and leaders in Laoganma took action. (Laoganma did not respond to requests for comment.)
Neighborhood officials across the county have been ordered to find unemployed workers for the factory. City workers spend long hours finishing nearby roads. Even the gardeners rushed to plant rows of saplings inside the plant fence.
Wen Wei was one of the first workers. She transports spices to the production line and earns $ 620 per month. Her husband, who fry hot peppers, earns $ 1,200 a month.
The Laoganma Comprehensive Agreement drew them to Changmingzhen. He offered them a free apartment for themselves and their two children and free meals in the company cafeteria. They only pay for water and electricity.
“You can’t find such a high salary anywhere else,” she says.
A few blocks south of the Laoganma plant, Zhu Haihua drives trucks for a steel plant that makes towers for wind turbines. Her monthly salary of $ 2,300 does not include food or accommodation.
That’s barely half of what the average American truck driver earns. But the money goes much further in a Chinese mountain village. Frenzied construction over the past few years and permissive zoning bylaws have produced a glut of newly built apartments. This allows Mr. Zhu to rent a three-bedroom apartment for only $ 175 per month.
“Renting here is very cheap,” he says.
For now, the sounds of machinery and construction often drown out the sounds of birds in the Chinese maples surrounding the city. But the signs of weakness are not far off. Business at Ms. Yang’s restaurant never fully recovered.
As the Laoganma factory continues to pump its spices into the air, government-funded construction projects may not last. High-speed train construction crews move beyond the village. They come back less often to spend money.
Cai Liuzhong, the owner of a drilling supply store next to Ms. Yang’s restaurant, prepares to follow the work to the next booming city.
“We just follow where it’s going,” he says.
Yang Faxue, a regular at dinner, has the quiet confidence that he will always have work. The 36-year-old construction worker has been on the road for most of the past two decades, leaving his home about two hours’ drive from Changmingzhen to initially work in the big city of Nanjing. His wife – and, ultimately, three children – stayed home.
Mr. Yang was happy to find a job in Changmingzhen, closer to his home. And work barely stopped during the pandemic.
“The houses have yet to be built,” he said. “Work is work.”
Claire Fu contributed to the research.
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