In an ambitious drive to increase access to higher education, China’s college and university enrolment increased from around six million in 1998 to 21 million in 2005. But with the flood of new graduates, individuals are having a tough time finding jobs in an increasingly competitive labour market. Li Mu (李沐) reports on government interventions designed to alleviate graduate unemployment by encouraging young job seekers to "Go west, go down to where motherland and people are in greatest need."

Senior Chinese officials vowed to act on an international NGO and trade union report alleging abusive practices in four Pearl Delta factories contracted to produce goods for the 2008 Olympics, even as the report was overshadowed by shocking revelations of forced child labour in brick kilns in the provinces of Henan and Shanxi.

Rural migrants to Chinese cities are having a very tough time, according to a report issued in March by Amnesty International. True enough. But hardly news to anyone at all familiar with the subject. Any well-informed broadsheet newspaper reader in the West knows this already, and so of course do all Chinese people who have been out of their village. So what was the point?

A non-profit Workers’ Health Centre, established in 1984 by Hong Kong medical, rehabilitation and occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, is scaling up efforts to prevent occupational illnesses on China’s mainland through workplace assessments and trainings for factory workers and management staff.

A non-government Legal Aid Station for Migrant Workers (农民工法律援助工作站) in Beijing will help 15 provinces establish similar “stations” in a USD 500,000 programme funded by the government of Belgium and brokered by UNDP and its Chinese government counterpart agencies, it was announced last week.

The International Labour Organisation and China’s Ministry of Labour and Social Security have launched a USD 3.5 million HIV/AIDS Workplace Education Project funded by the United States Department of Labor as part of a global initiative, it was announced last week.

Businesses, government departments, NGOs and multilateral agencies have signed up to a China Health Alliance that will “educate, test, treat and support Chinese company employees, especially migrant workers, at risk of TB and AIDS,” according to the World Economic Forum, which launched the Alliance on September 11 during the second day of a Forum summit in Beijing.

A spate of sexual assaults in Chinese cities are among the “social consequences caused by the suppressed needs of migrant workers” according to a report in the China Daily, whose pages have of late shown a marked increase in stories about human sexuality and changing social mores.

China’s National Textile and Apparel Council, a government-led industry association, is piloting a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standard among ten member enterprises and is likely to extend this to the whole industry, a Council leader revealed at a EU-China symposium on CSR held in Beijing in July.

Formulated last year, the China Social Compliance standard for the industry (CSC9000T) is one outcome of a five-year EU-China Trade Programme that, since June 2004, has worked to support China’s integration into the world trading system. The European Commission has committed EUR 20.6 million (USD 26.4 million) to the programme, making it the EU’s largest ever trade-related technical assistance project.

Not just the so-called “three problems of agriculture” (三农) but as many as seven rural conundrums are explored candidly by a senior government researcher in a report that summarises the findings of recent fieldwork and is published in a new, English language magazine, China Economist.

Seven Issues Directly Affecting Farmers’ Interests is written by the Director of the State Council Development Research Centre’s Rural Economy Department, Han Jun (韩俊), who pulls few punches during a frank discussion of education and health financing, land requisition, rural infrastructure, migration, farm credit, and farmers’ lack of bargaining power.