China's unpaid migrant workers vent anger as New Year approaches

BEIJING (AFP) - Pressure to return home bearing gifts has seen rare protests by migrant workers in the run-up to the Chinese New Year as labourers demand unpaid wages.

The Spring Festival is traditionally a time spent with families and with the country's migrant workforce rapidly growing there are more people on the move this year than ever before.

And as China's largest annual movement of people reaches feverish proportions, the desire to return home with cash in the pocket has also gained momentum.

This has prompted an unusual number of protests across the world's most populous country, including in Beijing, Shenzhen, Jinan, Nanjing and Guangzhou.

One of the biggest was held in the capital where hundreds of workers recently blocked the entrance of a luxury residential compound housing diplomats and foreigners, demanding wages which they said had not been paid for a year.

The protesters, all migrants from poorer parts of China, piled wooden planks at the front gate making it impossible for residents to leave or enter in their cars.

"We want money so we can go home for the Spring Festival," said Dong Lihui, one of the protesters, referring to the biggest holiday of the year in China, which this time falls on February 1.

According to the state Xinhua news agency, construction contractors owed migrant workers 2.2 billion yuan (242 million dollars) at the end of last year in Beijing alone.

In a sign that the communist government acknowledges the issue, state-run newspapers recently broke ranks to publish pictures and stories about workers demonstrating against unpaid wages.

"Give me my pay, I must go home," said the placards in a China Daily photo of a demonstration at a construction site in eastern Nanjing.

In Shenzhen, more than a dozen disgruntled workers threatened to leap from an unfinished skyscraper, reports said.

Rather than indicating a more relaxed attitude to dissent by the government, Human Rights in China says the fact they are coming to light was a deliberate ploy to haul in corrupt local officials.

"They are a very vulnerable class of society with few rights," said HRC research director Nicolas Becquelin.

"But the protests are taking place in a very restrained political climate. There is a threshold that the government will tolerate.

"We see it as a tactical move to pressure local officials who tolerate unscrupulous property developers."

Adding to the strain over the Spring Festival period is that returning workers are traditionally expected to come bearing gifts and cash.

China remains a cash-based economy and few migrant workers can get a loan from a bank or use a credit card.

One migrant worker quoted in state media said he had spent five months toiling on a building site in Beijing and had been paid nothing.

"I feel frustrated, baffled and humiliated," he said. "What can I tell my wife and son now?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that protests like these are becoming more frequent in China as economic growth creates greater disparity in society.

Since most migrant workers do not have legal status, they have little leverage over their employers, and often live in abject conditions, susceptible to exploitation and poor treatment.

Unlike urbanites who can access unemployment and pension benefits, rural workers who come to cities seeking their fortunes have no such safety net.

Without a permanent residence permit issued by a city authority they are excluded from social security benefits.

Rural workers began gravitating to the cities in search of work in the late 1980s. Their ranks swelled to 94 million last year, up 4.7 million on 2001 figures, according to official statistics.

While China this year announced new measures to improve conditions for workers by banning discrimination against rural migrant laborers, as the Year of the Goat prepares to be ushered in, observers fear that it could also usher in a year of unprecedented labor unrest.

Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.

I think it is a very difficult situation to deal with. Believe it or not, I think this problem is the elephant in the room.

My take on things is this: China is not 'turning capitalist', as though the West had a patent on the idea. Communism was the expiriment, not "capitalism". China is going back to the way things were, not doing something new. Its kind of like buying, then moving back to your old house after being gone to a new city for a few years.

Of course things are modernizing, but the general idea is the same.

As for unrest, before China opened up to the current extent, everyone just about was feeling the same way these guys do. It put major strains on Marxist ideals so you end up with Communism with Chinese characteristics, and mixed ideologies, and some absolute contradictioins. Some people there have been able to get in on the boat of opening up.

Labor pressure is what guides Beijing in all that it does. It is the case now, and will be for a while longer.

In the sense of the national economy, they have far too many people willing and wanting to work, and not enough who spend money on goods. If they employed all of these workers in factories they would overproduce goods like no tommorrow and drive prices down to nothing. It already is creating hyper competition, it will just make it worse, and consequently things end up overseas.

The problem here is that when everything goes to China for production, how does that help our markets? They are trying to basically help China overcome its own problems. To me, production is more than cost reduction etc. It is an investment in a market. Its the "I give your country a job, in turn you buy our stuff". It doesn't work when people aren't paid enough to buy anything though. I am for the Henry Ford model of international business. Open to FTAs, but put a floor on the import price so to make a level field with no cheaters. They should also punish companies that use slave labor. The race to the bottom of the price pool is not good. Plus in China it doesn't work the way we want anyway.

The Chinese economy is very dysfunctional. If though these guys worked, they should be paid. That is a patch on a gaping wound though. Its only a temporary fix. People are getting anxious for work, but many have no skills to speak of.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.