Lu Erfeng mostly spends his day off each week watching movies on his PC. Zou Zhongpin / China Daily

The factory worker

Lu Erfeng has just handed in his resignation. After almost four years of punching out chips for Apple gadgets on the manufacturing line at Foxconn in Shenzhen, the 21-year-old migrant worker from Henan province says he has had enough.

He doesn't particularly like the job. But that's not his main reason for leaving. With wages rising across China, Lu reckons he can make more elsewhere, and get work he finds more interesting and engaging in the bargain.

Lu ranks among the new generation of Chinese worker who, unlike their forebears, aren't necessarily burdened with the responsibility of financially supporting their parents. They are marrying later and when they do, their families are generally smaller.

Young workers like Lu have a choice that is relatively new in China: they can pick and choose where they want to work.

It's the evening before payday, and Lu is sitting on his bed in the shoebox apartment he's been renting in Shenzhen for 450 yuan ($72; 52 euros) a week.

"I have only 1 yuan left until tomorrow," he says.

The building he lives in rises up out of a labyrinth of alleyways filled with strolling elders and children at play.

Seven flights of stairs above street level, his room contains a cardboard box for a side table, a clunky old PC, and not much else.

"I don't really like the job because I don't make enough money," he says.

He looks embarrassed and frustrated as he explains why he doesn't keep in frequent touch with his parents back home, even though he misses them.

"I only call my parents once a month because I don't know what to say to them, because I don't make enough money."

Lu is one of Foxconn's roughly 1 million employees on the Chinese mainland, and among the nearly 269 million men and women in China who have left their hometown temporarily or permanently to work in the nation's cities and manufacturing centers.

He is what Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun refers to as the company's "young laborers", the backbone of the workforce it depends on to churn out goods for Apple, HP, Nokia, IBM, Samsung, Amazon, Sony and Dell.

"We rely on our young laborers very much," Liu says.

It's one of the reasons why Liu says Foxconn is sinking money into automating some of the more mundane and menial tasks in its facilities.

In 2012, the world's most populous nation saw an alarming decline of 3.45 million working-age Chinese, the result of a plummeting birthrate and rapidly aging population. Currently, about 14 percent of the population has reached or passed the male retirement age, and conservative projections suggest that by the early 2030s a quarter of China's population will be aged 60 years or older.

Liu says Foxconn has no shortage of applicants, yet.

But the writing is on the wall, and Liu says the company is taking the initiative to prepare for the near future, when workers must be wooed.

"The main reason a lot of young boys and girls dislike being engaged in manufacturing is because manufacturing compared with other industries is very dull," he says. "Robots are the direction of the future to liberate the workers from some very tough and very dull jobs," says Liu.

In the past 10 years, the average national wage for a migrant worker like Lu - the demographic that makes up the bulk of Foxconn's labor force - has increased by 280 percent.

But Liu the spokesman refutes the suggestion that rising overheads from wage hikes in China have now reached a point where automation is financially more viable than cheap human labor.

"The purpose of automation is not to decrease your laborers, but to make laborers want to work for you."

Lu is big, broad-shouldered and thoughtful. He speaks slowly, considering each word.

He believes management has the best intentions for their workers, but says not all policies survive implementation on the factory floor.

And at the end of the day, the nature of his job remains unchanged. He is still punching out 3,000 to 4,000 motherboards for Apple computers during each eight to 10-hour shift, six days a week.

"The work is very boring," he says. "You can't talk to each other, you can't listen to music. If you do, your boss will come and scold you.

"I think it's very depressing. My friends (at Foxconn) think it's very depressing."

Lu began working for Foxconn after he graduated from middle school, when he was 17 years old. In those days the base wage was 900 yuan a month. He says there were several across-the-board pay rises after the highly publicized string of attempted suicides among employees in 2010, but free accommodation and meals were also revoked along the way.

"I make about 3,000 yuan a month now," he says. If there's no emergency, I can save 1,500."

With his father making a similar wage in construction back home in Henan province, and his brother making 6,000 yuan a month for a manual labor job, Lu is betting on being able to earn more elsewhere.

He doesn't see a clear career path or opportunity for advancement.

"It's not that easy," he says. "Out of all of my friends only one has been promoted on the production line. He only makes an extra 300 yuan a month."

There's another push factor in Shenzhen, and particularly at Foxconn, that Lu and his friends find challenging.

There are too many boys, and not enough girls.

In the Shenzhen factory, spokesman Liu says there are roughly six male employees for every four females.

Some of Lu's peers have tried advertising with personal ads in the hope of finding romance, but have had no success.

The lucky ones find love on the factory floor.

"Lots of people meet inside the factory and get married," Lu says.

Foxconn spokesman Liu says the company has placed a lot of emphasis on improving facilities on its campuses to meet the needs of a new generation of younger workers, including the creation of a support network for their psychological needs. But with 1 million employees in China, Liu concedes it's a difficult task, and some problems are beyond Foxconn's abilities to solve.

"Most of them are unmarried young men," he says. "To deal with their psychological needs, especially when it comes to sex, is hard."

Lu shyly admits he'd like to meet a nice girl one day. At the moment though, he mostly spends his day off each week watching movies on his PC.

The majority of the films he likes are Chinese or South Korean, but he's also a fan of US actor Sylvester Stallone.

Although he tries to save as much money as he can, Lu admits his generation likes to let their hair down occasionally, and he's no exception.

"Young kids like me, when we get paid, sometimes we spend like crazy on really expensive cigarettes and stuff," he says.

Lu wants, more than anything, to one day take his entire family on a holiday. They've never had one.

"It doesn't matter where," he says, "I just want us to all go together. That is when I will feel complete."

The young man believes the most important thing in life is family, and he wants to make his proud.

Lu doesn't know exactly where he'll work next, but he's optimistic, and feels like he's in a position where he can leave Foxconn. That he can choose to do so speaks of a changing China.

"I haven't thought that far ahead," he says. "Maybe I'll go home. Maybe I'll try to start a business. I don't know. All I know is I'm sick of working in a factory."

Contact the writers through josephcatanzaro@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 04/25/2014 page9)