Vietnam to China and back: How one illegal factory worker embodies the trade war manufacturing exodus
- Seeking a better life for himself and his new wife, Manh travelled over 800km to work in a lingerie factory in Dongguan despite not speaking Mandarin
- Six years later and with the manufacturing landscape changing, he is back in Vietnam working as a Mandarin-speaking shift supervisor for a Chinese company
Six years ago, when thoughts of a trade war with the United States were non-existent and with China’s manufacturing sector booming, 27-year old Vietnamese worker Manh crossed the border into the neighbouring country seeking to earn enough money to eventually build a house for his new wife back in Vietnam.
Despite not speaking a word of Mandarin, Manh boarded a bus in Mong Cai, a city on Vietnam’s border with China, bound for Guangxi, an autonomous region in southern China around 260km north.
After arriving in Guangxi, Manh met a Chinese gang smuggling people around China and was taken on another bus for 10 hours and over 600km to Dongguan, China’s manufacturing powerhouse in Guangdong Province, containing thousands of export-oriented factories. The “referral” from the gang cost Manh 800 yuan (US$116), but he settled in at the small lingerie factory for the next three years.
In 2013, the average monthly wage in the manufacturing industry in Dongguan was around 3,000 yuan (US$437), according to Dongguan-based human resource training company Chtone. In Vietnam, Manh could have expected to earn about a third of that, based on data from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam.
I love money, and I want to earn as much as I can
“I love money, and I want to earn as much as I can,” Manh told the South China Morning Post at the factory in Bac Giang province in Vietnam where he currently works as a shift supervisor.