Shaxi () is a town under the administration of the
prefecture-level city
A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province of China, province and above a Counties of the People's Republic of China, county in China's ...
of
Zhongshan
Zhongshan ( zh, c=中山 ), alternately romanized via Cantonese as Chungshan, is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is n ...
in
Guangdong
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
Province, China, located to the west of downtown Zhongshan. The township covers an area of and had a population of 223,625 in 2020, including
migrant worker
A migrant worker is a person who Human migration, migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have an intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.
Migrant workers ...
s. It is administered by 15 neighborhoods and one community committee ().
The town is the ancestral hometown for about 70,000
overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese people are Chinese people, people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. As of 2023, there were 10.5 milli ...
in such organizations as the Hook Sin
Tong. The Town speaks a unique language called the
Longdu dialect.
In 2002, the
GDP
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performance o ...
of Shaxi reached RMB 2.1 billion and foreign exchange earnings topped RMB 147 million
It is one of the leading manufacturing centers of casual clothing in the world producing blue jeans and shirts. Each year it holds one of the world's largest trade shows for casual wear, the Chinese International Casual Wear Trade Show ().
In 2002, it was designated as "China's Most Famous Town for Casual Wear" by the Chinese Textile Industry Association and Chinese Garment Association. There are currently 710 clothing manufacturers in the town, employing approximately 43,000 workers. In 2002, the township produced over 200 million garments, earning RMB 6.3 billion in sales and US $123 million in foreign currency.
The
sweatshop
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a cramped workplace with very poor and/or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperat ...
conditions of the Lifeng Clothes Factory () in Shaxi while producing Vigaze Jeans, a company based in
Istanbul
Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...
, were featured in the 2005 documentary ''
China Blue
''China Blue'' is a 2005 documentary film directed by Micha Peled. It follows the life of Jasmine Li, a seventeen-year-old worker from Sichuan, in a Chinese jeans factory, ''Lifeng Clothes Factory'' (丽锋服饰制衣有限公司) in Shaxi, ...
.''
China Blue film
- PBS Independent Lens
''Independent Lens'' is a weekly television series airing on PBS featuring documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of ''Independent Lens'' were hosted by Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrenc ...
References
External links
The Zhongshan News
Shaxi Township Government
*Lifeng Clothes Company:
*
Lifeng Factory
(archived copy 2003)
*
Lifeng Factory
(archived copy 2007)
{{Zhongshan
Zhongshan