Contribution Of Tea Production To Spatial Injustice In China
Tea is one of the most important economic products in China, which has long history. Tea is distributed widely; in fact, China is the largest tea exporter worldwide. Chinese tea is continuously transported to all parts of the world by sea, which makes the tea fragrance spread all over the world. Meanwhile, tourists visit China to get to know its tea culture and rituals. According to the China Tea Marketing Association, China accounted for 20.6 percent of the global export value in 2017. In 2018, Chinese tea exports were worth more than $1.5 billion, ascending 10.41 percent year on year. Although China’s GDP is increasing due to its tea exports, I argue that tea production contributes to spatial injustice because it has caused serious environmental problems (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, soil acidification, water eutrophication and loss of biodiversity) and urgent social issues (e.g. the insufficient of labor wage and child labor).
Before proceeding to examine the spatial injustice of tea production, it will be necessary to analyze the commodity chain of tea. Here I will use yellow tea as an example. Yellow tea is one of the unknown types of rare tea that is hard to find outside China, which makes it a speciality of Anhui, Sichuan and Hunan provinces in China. It is made of the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, which is also used to make white tea, green tea, oolong tea, pu-erh tea, and black tea. The process for making yellow tea is time consuming and difficult. The production of yellow tea and green tea is almost the same (fresh tea leaves - withering- fixing- roiling- sealed yellowing- piling fermenting – drying) except that the drying process which makes yellow tea turning into light yellow. The drying process of making yellow tea is slower than that used to produce green tea so that yellow tea tastes more mellow than green tea. This slow drying process also eliminates the grassy taste and odor of standard green tea. In terms of transportation, merchants prefer to use trucks or cargo ships to transport to other regions such as India, Japan, North America and Europe due to the low cost. There are two major ports in China, which are situated in Shanghai Municipality and Guangdong Province respectively. The last step is selling through Amazon or Asian Groceries Stores.
Having defined what is commodity chain meant by tea, I now move on to discuss serious environmental issues caused by tea manufacturing. As the largest tea producing country in the world, China has a high demand for mineral fertilizers (inorganic substances, primarily salts, containing nutrients required by plants) in order to ensure the harvest of tea plant. A study by Ma et al (2013) determined that “a yearly application of 300–450 kg N ha−1 can ensure the normal nitrogen demand of a tea plant”. However, Han and researchers (2013) found that “the use of nitrogen fertilizer for tea plantations in China ranges from 0 kg N ha−1 to 2600 kg N ha−1, averaging 553 kg N ha−1, and an increasing trend of over-fertilization has been reported”. Moreover, Xu (2019) pointed out that the excessive use of chemical fertilizers leads to the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (such as N2O), soil acidification, and water eutrophication which means “the gradual increase in the concentration of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other plant nutrients in an aging aquatic ecosystem”. In addition, the over-planting of tea has decreased biodiversity.
Based on the data from FOASTAT (2017), “the tea plantation area in China reached 2.23 Mha in 2016 with a dry gross tea yield of 2.4 Mt, accounting for 50% and 43% of the global tea plantation area and total tea production”. With an increasing amount of land is taken to meet the demand for tea, the natural habitat has converted into large areas of tea monoculture which has affected the biodiversity. This loss of habitat has led to a decline in the number of species and threatens the survival of entire ecosystems. An experiment reported by Biervliet, Wiśniewski, Daniels and Vonesh (2009) compared the diversity of large invertebrate communities on cobblestone in forest-dominated basins with that in tea-plant-dominated basins. The results indicated that the cultivation of tea likely reduces the quality and biodiversity of stream habitat. Therefore, severe environmental issues are taking place because of the high demand of tea manufacture in China.
Tea production also causes social issues as well as environmental issues. In particular, labor force does not receive a living wage and many children work in the plantations illegally. As plantations grew, Chinese demand for labor grew steadily, which marginalized people living in these peripheral hill regions move into work force due to the reclamation and agricultural increment of less fertile lands. To meet this demand, the government began to encourage migrant workers with low skills and education to leave their families and homes (labor migration refers to migration for the main purpose of employment. Labor migrants often work in the informal sector such as plantations) by promising of housing, health care, land for farming and grazing, and good schools for their children (pull factors is used to describe factors that attract people to a country, region, religion, organization etc.) lured workers to mountain plantations and maintained a voluntary labor force. In labour-intensive industries such as tea production, lower labour costs increase profit margins and often lead to inhumane treatment of workers.
Plantation labourers are poorly paid. As proved in Besky’s (2008) research, plantation workers in China are not paid daily or hourly. They are expected to pick more than 8 to 10 kilograms per day, wages are as little as $1- 1.5 per day. Poverty levels on plantations are higher than the national average, with 30 per cent of the population living below the poverty line despite having jobs. Hence, McLennan (2011) concluded that “plantation work does not give labourers sufficient wages to pull themselves out of poverty, providing the multibillion dollar tea industry with a ready supply of cheap labour”. Even worse, the poor treatment of workers is not confined to adults, and child labor is quite commonplace. A report from the International Labour Organization (Hint: China is written as developing nation in this report) emphasizes that in 2006 more than 40,000 children worked hard picking tea leaves for as little as 30 US cents a day. Child labor is caused by poverty-stricken parents demanding that their children work to increase the family income. Thus, the labor condition of plantation workers is another contributor to spatial injustice of tea production because of the low wage and child labor.
In conclusion, tea production promotes spatial injustice due to environmental and social repercussions. The over-fertilization has led to some serious environmental problems such as greenhouse gas emissions, soil acidification, water eutrophication, and the overexploitation of land for the cultivation of tea has decreased the biodiversity. Furthermore, labor issues are significant factors that we cannot overlook. The huge workload of plantation workers is in sharp contrast to the meagre wages, which are pushing them into impoverished living conditions. Children at young ages have to “sell” their cheap labor force. I believe that exploring innovative and sustainable approaches on agriculture is a way to decrease the use of fertilizers on the existing arable land. China is engaged in a scientific research called 'Second Green Revolution'. The “First Green Revolution” increased the response of plants to high soil fertility, while the “Second Green Revolution” aims to increase plant yields in the soil by reducing fertilization.
This research field is labelled 'plant nutrition', which is a new frontier field of plant biology, attracting more and more attention from scientists all over the world. Furthermore, the state‐ and place‐specific institutions should maintain the responsibility of regulating the treatment of workers on plantations. Many countries have taken steps to guarantee a minimum wage for agriculture, including plantations. A growing number of pay systems combine minimum hourly wages, which vary by the hour, week or even month of the job, with compensation based on output. From the article of CLB (China Labour Bulletin), China already has adequate laws prohibiting child labor, but the law must be accompanied by proper execution mechanism and effective action. There is an urgent need for uniform and specific enforcement of existing laws prohibiting child labour in any industry. For instance, this will include the need to increase penalties for employers who violate national legislation.
