Last Train Home by LiXin Fan

The film bring us to the insight of the mainland Chinese migrant worker's situation, this film stares a couple who travel from their humble home village to a city for grueling sewing factory job, leaving their mother to take care of their children and only come home for every Chinese New Year, that is how hard they have to work. Moreover they at times may not even get the train tickets for home due to the fact that China has crazily vast population of migrant workers ( 130 million ) wanting to go home and reunite with their families too, thus tickets sell out fast, this also make boarding the train a torture as everyone would be pushing each other to compete for the train, it is sometimes so bad that people actually cried about it and the scene of some people camping over at the train station so as to make sure they get the ticket was depicted in the film. The couple's job in city, Guang Zhou is their only bread-and-butter, they have to persevere the hardship as it is what floats their family's boat, living off farming is not enough to take care of the family, they can only work hard in the sweatshop ( factory ) in Guang Zhou ( long tedious working hours + the pay they get is only a petty margin < though considered enough for them already> + terrible food + strain on their eyes) and place their hope on their children to be good and studious in school ( extremely competitive and difficult to ace in China ) and achieve a higher paying job when they grow up to pay filial piety to them. Every nook and cranny of life as a migrant is seemingly excruciating, joy only comes in during reunion with their beloved ones. All they ask for is only sufficient income for them and their family to survive, nothing more. This is an incredibly touching film that I doubt anyone can watch through the whole film without a single tear in their eyes.

Now, here comes the questions: What gives them the job opportunities? What has made certain parts of  China so much industrialized than before? The answer is none other than the existence of global shift, in another words, global economic change which has resulted the agglomeration of high level services in developed countries ( DCs ) and outsourcing of low level services to less developed countries ( LDCs ) or newly industrialized economies ( NIEs )  E.g secondary sector of manufacturing - sewing job in Guang Zhou, China.

In the film, during their journey by the train, a man confessed that he works for a company that makes racquets but they are all foreign brands, for example Prince, Head are American brand names, China doesn't have its own brands, but is just a big manufacturer. The western countries order from them and they make the goods. The export price is amazingly low including their factory owners, they only make a petty margin. So in this case, US transnational corporation outsource low level services such as making racquets a low value product to China, US transnational corporation has the power to coordinate and control operations in China and other countries without owning them, injects money into Guang Zhou in order to purchase capital goods for a branch or a corporation to locate or develop its presence in the region and take advantage of China's low labor costs, however where capital inflow does occur, there will eventually be a reverse flow as the foreign operations remits earnings and profits back to its parent company and the entry of a US plant into China may have a number of repercussions on the structure of China's industry, particularly on the competitiveness, survival and birth of China's enterprises. 

In addition, negative impacts of global shift include poor environment and safety conditions of the factories, long working hours with low wages, ( some factories even hire child labor )  in the aspect of the workers. On the bright side however, Guang Zhou get to receive improvement in infrastructure and public services for example : transport network and power supplies, higher national income, widening of China's economic base- no longer rely heavily on primary sector industries and more growth opportunities All these lead raise the standard of living of the Chinese, creating a multiplier effect of economic development.