Los Angeles Times

China's labor conundrum

LIPU, China - Many of the world's clothes hangers originate in two-story warehouses on the road to Lipu, a steamy town in southern China where the river flows between towering karst formations and vendors sell the sweetest taro.

Lights strung along the promenade form shapes of the town's lifeblood. Residents take pride in the smooth wooden products that ship to Target and Ikea from "China's hanger capital." But scribbled help-wanted signs on its factory doors hint at a new reality.

China became the world's manufacturer because it offered cheap, plentiful labor and a ready supply chain. In Lipu, workers produced billions of hangers that filled closets from Savannah, Ga., to Stockholm. These same factories now struggle to find employees, as wages rise and the population

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times3 min readCrime & Violence
Editorial: The Supreme Court Cannot Allow Homelessness To Be A Crime
If you are homeless and have nowhere to go — neither a temporary shelter bed nor a permanent home — can you be fined or, worse, jailed for sleeping on a sidewalk? Or is that cruel and unusual punishment? That’s the question that the Supreme Court wre
Los Angeles Times5 min read
Gaza Protests Roil Universities From California To New York; Tensions Grow At Humboldt, Berkeley
LOS ANGELES — Officials shut down the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt on Monday night after masked pro-Palestinian protesters occupied an administrative building and barricaded the entrance as Gaza-related demonstrations roiled campuses across the nation
Los Angeles Times8 min read
Bit By A Billionaire's Dog? Or A Case Of Extortion? A Legal Saga From An LA Dog Park
LOS ANGELES -- A dog-bites-woman story usually isn't much of a story at all. But an incident in one of L.A.'s wealthiest enclaves has become something else entirely. What began in a Brentwood park on a summer day in 2022, when a dog owned by billiona

Related Books & Audiobooks