China's Slave Laborors (the muscle of China's economic "miracle")

Abused and neglected, migrants are the muscle of China's economic miracle. They build the skyscrapers and expressways, they make the cheap export goods, they drive the trucks and lug the steel and cement that has lifted China into its boom years. They do the toughest and dirtiest jobs that nobody else will do. It is their labour that allowed China to become the factory to the world.

They have no social or medical insurance, no unemployment or housing benefits, no trade unions, no education rights for their children, and no written contracts with employers. They live in monitored and controlled compounds...must beg permission to go outside. They sleep in crude dormitory rooms of 20 square metres, usually shared with 15 to 20 workers. They earn as little as $1 for a 12-hour day, far below the supposed minimum wage. They work for six or seven days a week, sometimes for days and nights without a break...More than 70 per cent of migrant workers are owed money by their employers who hire thugs to assault those who demand their wages.

Low wages, cruel bosses, no rights By GEOFFREY YORK, Globe and Mail, Oct 22, 2004

Beijing — It's a steamy evening in the cramped dormitory room where Huang Benlin spends his nights, and violence is on his mind. He is a small wiry man in a grease-stained shirt, a migrant worker from a small village in Sichuan province who has suffered 24 years of low wages, exploitation, long hours and cruel bosses. Now, he is plotting his revenge. One of his bosses, the owner of a trucking company, has refused to pay him 4800 yuan (about $720 Canadian) in owed wages. For a migrant, it is a huge sum of money — almost as much as Mr. Huang normally sends home from a year of hard labour in Beijing's construction zones.

He went to the courts, struggled through a year of legal procedures, and lost at every level. His former boss had bribed the judges, and the prosecutors were indifferent. So now he is ready for a more brutal response. "I'll go to my ex-boss for one last talk," he muses. "I know he won't give me my money, but I'll use the chance to scout out his place. Then I'll come back at night to destroy the trucks. I'll smash them with heavy tools, or I'll ambush the trucks on the road." Mr. Huang, a weather-beaten 39-year-old with a wife and two children back home in Sichuan province, has persuaded himself that an act of vengeance will force the authorities to pay attention to him. "The police will arrest me, but they'll ask me why I did it. And finally they will have to listen to the injustices that I suffered."

In the desperate world of China's migrant workers, it almost makes sense. Violence often erupts between the labourers and their employers. Usually, of course, it is the bosses who win. On at least five occasions, Mr. Huang's bosses have hired thugs to assault those who demanded their wages. Of the 10 workers who never got their wages from the trucking boss last year, Mr. Huang was the only one who took action. His workmates gave up and went home. They were unwilling to file a lawsuit, which costs a month's wages or more. Mr. Huang is a rarity: a migrant who fights back. "We feel like slaves," he says. "We have to obey our bosses or we won't get our money. We're always under their control. There's always a feeling of insecurity. It's like being a prisoner."

Though often abused and neglected, migrants are the muscle of China's economic miracle. They build the skyscrapers and expressways, they make the cheap export goods, they drive the trucks and lug the steel and cement that has lifted China into its boom years. They do the toughest and dirtiest jobs that nobody else will do. It is their labour that allowed China to become the factory to the world.

The flood of peasants into China's cities is the biggest migration in human history. Already, some 200 million have abandoned their impoverished villages to move to the booming centres. Another 500 million could be on the move in the next half century. Yet their working conditions are often horrendous. Under the Communist system of residence registration, migrant workers are controlled by an apartheid-like system that discriminates against those who lack a city residence permit. A complex web of discriminatory laws and policies has made it almost impossible for peasants to obtain an urban residence permit, so most migrants have a semi-legal or illegal status. Lacking legal rights, they are easily exploited by ruthless employers. They have no social or medical insurance, no unemployment or housing benefits, no trade unions, no education rights for their children, and no written contracts with employers — even though Chinese law supposedly guarantees these rights. They live in monitored and controlled compounds, where they must beg for permission to go outside. They sleep in crude dormitory rooms of 20 square metres, usually shared with 15 to 20 workers. Many earn as little as $1 for a 12-hour day, far below the supposed minimum wage. They often work for six or seven days a week, sometimes for days and nights without a break. Most are paid only $60 to $125 a month — much of which goes to pay for their food and bed and the stacks of permits they need in order to work. Their wages have barely increased over the past decade, even as the cost of living rises. Without any unions, they must resort to violence or expensive lawsuits if a boss refuses to pay their wages.

Employers are legally required to pay the migrants every month, but they routinely delay their wages until the end of the year, when the migrants return home for the Spring Festival — and even then they find excuses to avoid paying. More than 70 per cent of migrant workers are owed money by their employers, according to national surveys. An astounding $15-billion in unpaid wages is owed, primarily in the construction sector. One sociologist notes that the unpaid migrants can be accurately described as slaves, since they toil at their jobs for nothing more than a dormitory room and a couple of meals a day. If so, China has at least 10 million slaves.

The unpaid wages are a mounting concern for Beijing, which worries they will become a source of social unrest. A growing number of unpaid workers have held dramatic protests. Dozens have climbed onto buildings or construction cranes, alone or in groups, and threatened to jump. Hundreds have blockaded or picketed their employers. At least one worker protested by setting himself on fire. At a factory in Guangdong province, about 6,000 workers rioted for 36 hours this spring when they didn't get the pay they were promised. Gao Mingyu, a migrant from Henan province, led a group of 50 migrants to work on a construction site in Beijing in 2002. Five months later, the project was finished, but their wages were never paid. "At the beginning, I went to the company offices every day, inviting them for meals and sending them cigarettes, but none of them gave us our wages," Mr. Gao recalls. "They were so bad-hearted. So I went to various government agencies, but they all said I had to go to court. A court case would cost 2500 yuan and that's impossible for us to afford. "Finally, a judge was sent to hear our case. But the bosses actually denied they had hired us — and the judge seemed to believe it. They must have bribed him. Now I'm living with friends and I can't even afford a meal, but I don't dare to go back home without getting our wages."

Migrants such as Mr. Gao and Mr. Huang are crucial to the Chinese economy. Every year, they send about $55-billion back to their home villages, where the average income is only a few hundred dollars a month. More than 40 per cent of peasant income is now derived from migrant labour. Yet there is widespread discrimination against migrants in the cities. They are harassed by police who arrest them or demand bribes because they lack residence permits. Millions of migrants are arrested and sent back to their home villages every year. Most cannot send their children to urban schools because of heavy fees and other restrictions. Feng Shouli, a migrant from Jilin province, wanted to send his son to one of the three schools near his Beijing workplace. "But one of them charges an annual fee of more than 20,000 yuan, which I can't afford," he says. "The second school is only for Beijing-registered children. And the third claimed they had no room for my son, although they were obviously lying. So we went to a special school for migrant workers, but I was astonished by the conditions. The classrooms were dirty, the equipment seemed to be salvaged from a dump, and the children were wild and filthy. It was more like a shelter than a school. So I sent my son back to his home town for school."

Yet despite the blatant discrimination and hardship, the flow of migrants to the major cities is expanding. Even now, only 37 per cent of China's population lives in the cities, whereas in most developed countries the population is 75 per cent urban. China hopes to catch up to the developed world by 2050, which would require more than 500 million peasants to move to the cities. As China becomes integrated into the World Trade Organization, an estimated 8 million peasants will become surplus every year.

In an effort to defuse the tensions, the Chinese government has issued new regulations to punish employers who fail to pay migrants. It has eased the traditional restrictions on travel by peasants, making it easier for them to work in the cities, and abolished a decree that allowed the police to detain migrants at random. But the new decrees have been ineffective, and it is unclear whether they are enough to placate the growing army of restless and alienated migrants. Beneath the legal disputes, the migrants feel a deeper anger at their exploitation and low status. They know they are despised by the big-city middle classes. And they are often desperately lonely, far from their families, usually returning home just once a year. Mr. Huang badly misses his wife and two teenage children, back home in the small farming village of Xinhua (New China) in rural Sichuan. He hasn't seen them for almost two years as he devoted all his energies to his legal fight in Beijing.

He was stunned by the first ruling in his case. The judge, in a brief visit to investigate the dispute, disappeared into a private room with the trucking-company boss for several minutes, apparently to receive a bribe. A few weeks later, the judge dismissed the lawsuit. "I felt terrible, I was almost crying," Mr. Huang recalls. Each of his legal appeals since then has failed. "Let him sue," his ex-boss sneered when The Globe and Mail phoned him. "Look at how he loses. I will win for sure." Mr. Huang had assumed that Chinese laws would be better respected in Beijing, since it is the national capital. Instead, he found the laws ignored.

"I don't trust the law any more," he says. "It's so time-consuming and the result is always bad. It's obviously a very unfair system. They just defend their own. Even here in the capital of China, the law is never enforced." Giving up on the legal route, Mr. Huang is obsessed with violence and vengeance. He has been deterred from action by a friend, who persuaded him that his life would be ruined if he was arrested. But he keeps brooding on the idea. "Some day I will do it," he says ominously. "I'm just waiting for the moment. I have to get my money back. My ex-boss is still refusing, but one day he will pay, and he will pay a heavier price than me." With his court hearings effectively over, Mr. Huang decides to return home for a brief visit to his family. He puts on his best outfit: brown loafers, faded jeans, and a cheap grey suit jacket. A jar of tea is stuffed in the jacket pocket, and in his battered suitcase is a set of school books for his children. He can't afford a gift for his wife. "It's pathetic, I know, but she realizes we have financial hardships now," he says.

His home in the village is a two-storey mud-and-cement house, built with the proceeds of his migrant labour. There is no running water, no heating, no telephone, and only a few naked bulbs for light, but it's the best home they've ever had. His wife tends their cotton and wheat crops, raises the children, and works at a noodle factory for $2 a day in her spare time. This is largely a village of women and old men. Most of the younger men, including all three of his brothers, have gone away as migrant labourers. His wife, Tian Xiaohua, is shocked when she sees her husband. Always a skinny man, he has lost another five kilograms because of the stress of his legal battles. "My heart choked," she confesses later, but she says nothing to him. His silver-haired mother is not so reluctant to speak her mind. "Look how thin you are," she frets as soon as she spots him. "You must not have eaten well." He mumbles a reassurance. "I'm not thinner. Anyway it's fashionable now to be slim." But she is having none of it. "You should stay at home, don't go away again."

His wife, too, is hoping he will drop the legal action. "I want him to let it go," she says. "That boss is like a gangster. If he keeps asking for his wages, he could be in physical danger." Mr. Huang disagrees. He is determined to keep fighting. He believes that an explosion is coming — and it might engulf more than just his former boss. "There's an injustice in this society," he says at dinner in their darkened house that night. "We common people, the labourers, have done a lot to improve China's economy. We've done a lot more than the officials. If the injustices continue, we common people will be very disappointed. And our tactics could change."

While this piece was written from a Canadian point of view, we American's will pay a heavy price for sacrificing our principles on the alter of cheap, slave-made goods. For those interested in learning more, please check out the following links:

Flexing its Military Muscle

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041023.wxchinamil23/BNStory/specialChina/

Get Ready for China's Century

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041022.wxchi-empire1023/BNStory/Front/

CHINADA'S SOVIETIZATION

http://www.orwelltoday.com/chinada.shtml

"Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and all of Hollywood.....There are slave owners right over there...go get em...whattaya mean you gotta go to WallMart"

lol...could it be because they are race-baiting socialists--but socialists nonetheless!!!

What a great article - really puts it out for all to see -

From the article: "He believes that an explosion is coming — and it might engulf more than just his former boss."

Isn't that usually the case - it's human nature and can not be denied -

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What a great article - really puts it out for all to see -
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I don't believe a word of this article.

Why not?

Because the author didn't get permission to publish from a Chinese court. Period, end of argument! ;-))

This article HIDES the FACT that ALL socialism is SLAVERY...
And is being practiced in ALL URPean countrys and Canada...
Also; it HIDES the fact that DEMOCRACY is the DISEASE that harbors socialism..
China is in fact a democracy (MOB RULE) and the biggest MOB rules as in ALL democracys....
America is NO democracy.. but we have democrats trying to make it one.

Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

They are, for the most part, not slaves. They come from a very poor base and work for wages that are extremely low by werstern standards but high and rising by their own. The corruption is endemic and is the nature of the Cimmunist system. There is still real slave labor in some of the government enterprises and it will not decrease by boycotting Chinese goods.

As the freemarket gains a greater share in the economy of China the difference in efficiency of the government enterprises and the private ones becomes more and more apparent, the government businesses begin to fail or be "divested" off into the real market or, alternatively, that failure becomes the excuse for government strangulation of the free market in China which will cause China to go backwards and wane as a threat to the West. Cheap labor in China does not translate into higher productivity than America has. It does allow our less efficient industries to move to China or buy from China, thus reallocating capitol to more efficient uses that create more jobs and wealth in America.

Here's a couple of pictures of Migrant worker housing. It was being built during my February trip and they had just started tearing it down middle of August. The buildings nearby were done.

This cannot be true. If it was Oprah and her husband Regis would tell us all about it on their shows and they would tell us to boycott China. Remember what happened to Regis ex wife Kathy Lee? They found out she was running a sweatshop and they kicked her off the show.

No sir this must be untrue or americas fabulous media would expose china and we would boycott all goods made by slave labor.

"Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.~Winston Churchill (1874-1965)"

Hosepipe, you are right in many respects. But there is a difference between Communism and Socialism. Communists kill socialists once they assume power.

True, socialism can so weaken a society that it becomes more susceptible to Communism. But they are not the same thing. Both need to be resisted...but Communism is a far deadlier strain of disease.

"What was the condition of these people before China industrialized and opened up its economy?"

The same or worse. The point is we should not be doing business with Communist slave-labor societies. Moreover, the Red Chinese are using the "capital" they earn from the West to build the very war machine they plan to challenge us with in the future. It will begin with the Asian-Pacific countries (such as Taiwan, Philippines, etc). But for the first time ever, they are also sending troops to the Western Hemisphere (such as Haiti). They are also busily buying up our national debt, which they can one day dump, thus wreaking havoc on our treasury and bond markets.

In short, we are feeding a very dangerous monster who is making common cause with our enemies in a bid to devour us. I say we should cut off all trade with Red China on moral grounds. But we have plenty of reasons to be wary of China on geo-strategic grounds as well.

[ Hosepipe, you are right in many respects. But there is a difference between Communism and Socialism. Communists kill socialists once they assume power. ]

Your Barny Fifeness...
Communism "IS" socialism... Duuuh!..
Communists kill everybody when they assume power..
I.E. Stalins purges, Maos purges, Titos purges..

Even being in the communist party is no safe spot to be..

Democracy, socialism and communism are ALL MOB RULE..
Depends the MOB in power which determines the political type...
All three offer privledges to the masses but NO RIGHTS....
Like the primitive governments of URP and Canada their gov'ts offer privledges but NO rights.. Only in America do we have RIGHTS granted by "GOD" NOT by our government.. Our Constitution in the U.S. limits only the federal government NOT the people.. The only reason we even have a Constitution is to limit the federal government.. not state governments or the people. ALL American Democrats want democracy thats why they are ALL enemies to the Constitution.. and at large are enemies to freedom.. ALL OF THEM...

and its not just the slave labor now, which is mostly concentrated in manufacturing. now we are sending the entire semiconductor industry their too, networking equipment, etc. china is sucking all of the growth out of the western economies.

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