Isn't the average wage in China around $3,000?
No. Top wages in the glitter cities on the east coast (Shanghai, Shenzen, HK) maybe. Beijing is much less and the giant mainland is still very poor. That's where the sweatshops are. Every 2 years or so, they move west about 200km to keep up with the receding low wage line.
The typical wage in India (Chennai) or the Philippines is about 0.70$/hr, 0.25$/hr if you provide food and a (crap) place to sleep. The call-center industry pays 1.1$/hr in the developed areas, 0.5$/hr in the rural areas. If you are a foreigner operating these, you need to double the price for the obligatory bribes or you will drown in red tape, mysterious power and net outages.
The main problem for photographers there is that they totally lack cultural empathy with the western market and lifestyle. The Chinese will have great autumn leaves shots but as to concepts involving models, they are totally in the dark. Filipinos for instance have a totally different perception of female beauty than the west. One striking difference: girls need to be
fat to be attractive there. When they're about 18 they all start to eat 6 times per day till they look like their mom at 22. The west still has this "slim" preference, what Filipinos call "skinny" and "poor".
A very conspicuous exception on all this is Singapore with some great and productive model photographers (Phildate). But it's a totally westernized city. South Korea has very western tastes too. I wonder why there aren't more of them on stock.
