(2) Manufacturing | The End of Cheap China. What do soaring Chinese wages mean for global manufacturing? Economist, Mar 10, 2012 (cover date). http://www.economist.com/node/21549956
(a) "China of late has been trying harder to protect its workers. These efforts date to 2008, when a law took effect requiring, among other things, that companies buy workers insurance, pay double wages for overtime, and pay severance depending on an employee’s years of service.
"There’s a way to get around these regulations, though, and many Chinese and foreign companies are taking advantage of it. “Labor dispatch” companies recruit workers and send them as temporary staff to factories in need. Of China’s more than 300 million urban employees, an estimated one-fifth—or 60 million—are labor dispatch workers, up more than twofold since the promulgation of the stringent 2008 law, according to estimates by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. The plant owners pay the dispatchers, who in turn are supposed to compensate the temps, who pay a fee of 200 yuan ($30) or so to the dispatchers for landing them a job.
(b) "Anna Shipley, director of China communications [] says 30 percent of Nokia’s China workforce is contract labor
(5)
(a) Te-Ping Chen, Following Beijing, Hong Kong Releases PM2.5 Pollution Data. China Real Time, Mar 9, 2012 http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealti ... 2-5-pollution-data/
("Beijing began releasing hourly PM2.5 readings (in Chinese) in late January. * * * Shanghai is scheduled to begin releasing similar data in June and a number of other regional clusters across China are set to do the same by the end of 2012 * * * Though Hong Kong’s government has been monitoring PM2.5 levels since 1999, it has kept those readings from the public for years")
(b) 广州今起公布PM2.5等环境监测数据 加强噪音油烟监测. 中国广播网, Mar 8, 2012. http://www.cnr.cn/china/xwwgf/201203/t20120308_509262044.shtml
(小时浓度和每天平均浓度)