Each eyelash was assembled from 464 inch-long strands of human hair, delicately placed in a crisscross pattern on a thin strip of transparent glue. Completing a pair often took an hour. Even with 14-hour shifts most girls could not produce enough for a modest bonus.

''When we started to work, we realized there was no way to make money,'' said Ma Pinghui, 16. ''They were trying to cheat us.''

She and her friend Wei Qi, also 16 and also a Chinese farm girl barely out of junior high school, had been lured here by a South Korean boss who said he was prepared to pay $120 a month, a princely sum for unskilled peasants, to make false eyelashes.

Their local government labor bureau lent its support, recruiting workers and arranging a bus to take them to the big city of Anshan in northeastern China.

Two months later, bitter that the pay turned out to be much lower, exhausted by eye-straining and wrist-wrenching work, and too poor to pay the exit fee the boss demanded of anyone who wanted out, they decided to escape. But that was not easy. The metal doors of their third-floor factory were kept locked and its windows -- all but one -- were enclosed in iron cages.

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These girls' ill-fated foray to work at Daxu Cosmetics and their attempt to flee one moonless night in May illustrate how even rudimentary workers' rights lag far behind job creation and profits in China's surging economy.

While multinational corporations like Motorola and Intel pay employees middle-class wages to work in world-class factories in this country, the sizzling export sector still relies heavily on smaller operations, both locally and foreign-owned, that assemble toys, clothes, shoes, tools, electronics, decorative items and cosmetic goods. Many measure profits in pennies on the dollar and squeeze workers to make their margins.

Lee Yo Han, the South Korean entrepreneur who runs Daxu, says he came to China about a decade ago mainly because Korean companies could no longer compete in the market for false eyelashes, which sell for as little as 50 cents a set in Asia and the United States.

Mr. Lee, who is 39 years old and speaks only Korean, keeps costs down by finding cheap rental space for his 12 production lines. The plant where Ms. Wei and Ms. Ma worked, along with 100 other young workers from rural Liaoning and Inner Mongolia, occupied the third floor of an old mental hospital.

While he acknowledged the cost pressures, Mr. Lee said he provided a good work environment. In faxed replies to questions about Ms. Ma and Ms. Wei, Mr. Lee described them as callow girls who tried to slip out of a work contract they had signed voluntarily.

''I treat my workers like I treat my own brothers and sisters,'' Mr. Lee said. ''My company is a small one, and the welfare can't compare to a big company's, but I tried my very best.''

That is not the view of Ms. Wei, who has since returned penniless to her home village in rural Liaoning Province. ''What they called a company was really a prison.''

She is a stringy girl with a nervous giggle. Ms. Ma is corn-fed and prone to tears. But they grew up in nearly identical circumstances. Their families live in neighboring villages near China's border with North Korea, where green mountains, crisp fall air and scattered dairy farms are reminiscent of the New England countryside, though far poorer.

They first heard about the job offer in Anshan from an advertisement on local television. Salaries of $120 a month seemed high for farm girls, but the ad was sponsored by the Labor Bureau of Huairen County. The bureau contracted with Mr. Lee to find rural workers and charged a $6 application fee.

''If this had not been arranged through official channels, we would not have let such a young girl go,'' said Wei Zhixing, Ms. Wei's father.

As soon as they arrived in Anshan, however, the problems began. They were asked to sign a contract that offered monthly pay far below the advertised level, initially just $24, minus a $13 charge for room and board. Bonuses were promised, but only for those who produced eyelashes above quotas.

The contract also demanded that workers pay the boss $58 if they left before the end of the yearlong contract, and $2,400 if they ''stole intellectual property'' by defecting to a rival eyelash maker.

Such terms are not unusual. Court cases involving unpaid wages, illegal contracts and life-threatening working conditions are common even as China becomes richer, suggesting that cut-throat capitalism and sweatshop factories are as much a part of China's economic revolution today as they were in the early days of industrialization in the West.

Beijing often looks the other way. Despite a long streak of fast growth, generating jobs for the country's 350 million peasants remains urgent. At least 150 million rural laborers have no steady income, according to government estimates. They are viewed as a source of unrest that could threaten the Communist Party's power.

Making sure the jobs created meet China's own standards for safety and fairness is a lower priority. Officials rarely punish factory owners for labor abuses, and workers, restricted by laws against forming unions, rarely press for better conditions.

Ms. Wei and Ms. Ma, eager to prove themselves in their first jobs, accepted the contract terms. They said they hoped they could still earn good money if they could make enough eyelashes to earn bonuses. That was what they thought until they finished their first full day on the assembly line.

Using tweezers to lay hairs in an intricate pattern was exacting enough, but the boss also fussily threw away eyelashes that did not meet his standard. Bonuses kicked in only after the girls made enough to cover their base salaries. In the first month, that meant producing at least 400 eyelashes. Everyone fell short.

Off-work hours provided little relief. The girls were occasionally allowed supervised play time on the mental hospital's grounds. Otherwise, the factory doors stayed bolted and the windows were barred, ostensibly to protect the workers from mental patients.

The workers were permitted one shower a week, on Tuesday mornings. Ms. Ma and Ms. Wei said the factory canteen served the same porridge of cabbage and potatoes at every meal.

Mr. Lee denied that the girls were locked inside the factory, saying such treatment would have been illegal. He also said living conditions, including the food, ''were better than what they were used to at home.''

Whatever the truth, Ms. Wei and Ms. Ma said they told the Chinese boss at the site, Lu Shijun, that they were resigning. But Mr. Lu reminded them that they would have to pay the $58 fee to end the contract. After room and board were subtracted, they would need to work three more months to afford to quit.

Ms. Ma and Ms. Wei said they called the county labor bureau that arranged their jobs to ask for help. They said they were told someone would be sent to deal with the problem. Weeks went by and no one came.

As they approached the end of their second month, they said a furtive escape seemed like the only option.

Late at night, Ms. Ma, Ms. Wei and four other girls who shared their dorm room plotted the details. They would bind their sheets into a long braid, climb out a hallway window, the only one without bars, then rappel three stories to freedom.

On the chosen evening, the girls slipped off the production line early. They frantically tied bedding together, playing tug-of-war to tighten the knots. They secured one end inside and hurled the rest to the yard below.

Ms. Ma climbed out first. But she had not considered what it would be like to hang in the air, feet flailing, hands straining to keep a grip. First she slid, fireman style. Then she lost control and crashed to the ground.

The other girls had no idea what happened until Ms. Wei followed suit. When she lost her grip and plunged, she shrieked. Both she and Ms. Ma sat on the ground crying until the others panicked and called Mr. Lu.

The boss sent them to the hospital, where Ms. Ma and Ms. Wei were found to have broken legs and displaced vertebrae. Even then, they described Mr. Lu as bitter.

When he left them that night in their hospital beds, they recalled him saying: ''We're on the seventh floor. I suggest that you use the stairs, not the window, when you leave.''

Mr. Lu could not be reached for comment. But Mr. Lee said his company provided good medical care for Ms. Ma and Ms. Wei. The two girls described the company as stingy and said their families borrowed money to pay their medical expenses.

Their case generated local publicity and prompted some official scrutiny. The assembly line at the mental hospital eventually shut down, with production consolidated in Mr. Lee's other plants. Mr. Lee declined to give a reason for closing the factory.

One Anshan labor department official, who spoke on condition his name would not be used, said the factory violated child labor laws. While the official did not elaborate, China's labor law bars minors between the ages of 16 and 18 from doing jobs ''that require them to keep their heads down or to maintain unnatural postures.''

Relatives of Ms. Wei and Ms. Ma said they were never contacted by authorities and were rebuffed when they asked Anshan government and police officials to investigate the case.

''My view is that Daxu was a black society set up to cheat people,'' said Ms. Ma, who now walks with a heavy limp as she helps care for the ducks and pigs that live in her front yard. ''It would still be going on today if we hadn't jumped.''

The World's Sweatshop


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