China Blue on AllMovie

Take a trip to the place where blue jeans are born in this revealing, clandestinely shot documentary from filmmaker Micha Peled, exploring the plight of South China factory workers struggling to balance Western demands with shrinking wages. Though at first 16-year-old Jasmine is excited to be working alongside her family as a thread-cutter at the Lifeng Factory in Shaxi, South China, her initial enthusiasm is soon squelched by 16-hour work days and payment that makes minimum wage look like a luxury. Pressured by Western companies to shrink their manufacturing costs to impossibly low numbers, the workers who toil away day after day in these factories are often left with little more than dreams of operating their own business when their bodies finally succumb to the damaging effects of their duties.