Last Train Home

Last Train Home The documentary Last Train Home filmed by Lixin Fan shows us what Chinese’s families’ faces when they migrate from farms to work in factories in the larger cities. With the life of Mr. Zhan as an example, we can understand the conflict and suffering that these families have. They lose theirs so called “Hokou” which is “a household registration system that is designed to aid the distribution of welfare and resources, and keep watch on criminal activity”, and also they leave their children in the farms to be taken care of the grandmother which leads to broken homes. However they leave all theirs precious thing behind only because they are seeking to give a better chance of life to their loved ones. To better understand this analysis of the documentary some terms like capitalism, outsourcing, globalization, inequality and poverty need to be explained. Capitalism is an economic system that the means of its production is private owned to create goods and services for profit, competitive markets and wage labor. Outsourcing is when a business is contracting out some business function, previously performed in-house, to an external provider. Globalization is a phenomenon generated by the dynamics of capitalism needs to forma a global village that allows the largest markets for the developed countries whose domestic markets are already saturated. Inequality is the unequal distribution of income of a country, but there are also other factors such as poor education background inefficient investments in a country in social areas. Poverty is the material deprivation, typically involving the needs of everyday life such as food, clothing, and housing and health care, it can be understood as the lack of essential goods and services. China’s government is trying to take the country out of poverty by taking advantage of the globalization by outsourcing their services, especially cheap labor. The government is using some Utilitarian way of thinking

Cited: Last Train Home. Dir Lixin Fan. Perf. Changhua Zhan, Suqin Chen, Qin Zhang, Yang Zhang, and Tingsui Tang. Zeitgest Video, 2010. Documentary. Boatright, John Raymond. Ethics and the conduct of business. 6th ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2009.