China Rising? Trade and Production in Low-Wage Manufacturing and the Impacts on Labor and Inequality.

China's market reforms and the "opening" of China to the world have had major implications at home and for the global economy. In the past decade China became a leading exporter of manufactured goods, prompting some to call it the new "workshop of the world." Some social scientists hail China as a model of economic growth; others see China's export-driven growth, fueled by corporate buyers like WalMart, as essentially a "low road" strategy that not only won't benefit Chinese workers but may also undermine labor interests elsewhere. Clearly "the rise of China" has global implications, impacting countries such as the U.S. and Mexico. We attempt to contribute to the debates by applying a global commodity chain approach to China's new role in world trade: where and how these chains "touch down" has deep ramifications for labor relations, economic growth and inequality in localities and nations. We will focus on low-wage consumer goods industries, like world apparel industry. Examining data on changing patterns of international commodity trade allows us view a rapid and fundamental transformation of the world apparel industry. Immediately post-NAFTA Mexico seemed an increasingly attractive location for production for the US market, raising expectations that it would overtake East Asia as the leading center for sourcing in the 1990s. But today China is the undisputed leading apparel producer for both the US and world market. We will discuss some of the reasons this has occurred and the implications it has for producing firms, labor, and competing nations, like Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]