In the year 2007, it’s amazing that Americans can still buy jeans for less than twenty dollars. But a cursory glance at Wal-Mart’s Web site reveals at least a dozen pairs for less than this price. While bargain shoppers delight, few consumers will stop to consider just how those jeans got to be so cheap. When you see the documentary China Blue, you’ll understand.

Micha Peled’s film gives us a glimpse of the high human cost that is the ultimate price paid for our cheap blue jeans. His story follows the journey of a teenage girl, Jasmine Lee, who leaves her rural home in Sichuan Province to look for work in the city (Shaxi, South China). Along with approximately 130 million other migrant workers, most of them women, Jasmine finds employment in a denim garment factory manufacturing clothes that are exported to overseas companies.

Inside the sweatshop, Jasmine and the other teenage female workers are crammed twelve in one sleeping room, and work excruciatingly long hours. They have pay withheld for the food and hot water they consume, and for merely leaving the compound. Jasmine’s first paycheck is retained as a “deposit” to prevent her from leaving the company, a practice that makes her position more like that of an indentured servant than an employee. Since the girls earn only about six cents an hour, and receive only one paycheck every two months, the viewer is left wondering if these desperate young women will actually make any profit at all.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of the film is seeing how young workers’ dreams are stifled. Jasmine, an avid writer, shows creative potential that is never given the chance to develop; her friend Orchid has been accepted to college, but cannot attend—her family can only afford to send her brother.

Peled’s personalization of the workers’ plight helps contextualize the views of the Lifeng Factory owner, Mr. Lam. Self-satisfied and proud, Mr. Lam assures the camera that his “workers have rights”—as factory employees slog into their twentieth straight hour of relentless work, in order to make manufacturing deadlines.

Though it’s easy to blame Mr. Lam, with his blind devotion to profits and deadlines, Peled makes us realize that globalization and corporate greed are at the heart of the problem. A Chinese official in charge of labor inspections concludes that Chinese factories and American companies are playing an “elaborate game.” The multinational companies don’t really care about improving worker conditions, but conduct factory inspections to appease consumers. The factory owners coerce their workers into lying, in order to pass inspections. By insisting on untenably low production costs, and then threatening to take their business elsewhere if these are not met, multinational companies create an extremely cutthroat marketplace that implicitly encourages inhumane working conditions.

Peled chose to shoot his film in China because it is the world’s largest producer of consumer goods. Filming in China was not easy, and the crew encountered many obstacles. Peled eschewed the government-required filming permit—which would both allow and require an official to oversee production (and censor whatever did not meet government approval). Filming was clandestine, and equipment was smuggled onto location. The crew ended up being arrested, the film was confiscated, and production was delayed for eight months, due to a SARS outbreak.

Peled regards China Blue as a prequel to his previous documentary, Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town. Store Wars recorded the impact of a megastore’s construction on a small town. China Blue reveals the process by which retailers like Wal-Mart acquire their cheap goods.

China Blue won an Honorable Mention at the Vancouver Film Festival, and was an Official Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival.

China Blue can currently be seen at the Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, from Friday, January 19th, through Thursday, January 25th. The DVD is available on