China Development Brief - Labour and Migration

‘Rustification’ revival to create jobs, reverse brain drain

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:19:06 +0100

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."

Brick kiln ‘slavery’ exposé follows Olympic child labour report

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 03:10:34 +0100

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.

Editorial: Show some respect, Amnesty

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:53:42 +0100

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?

Hong Kong group extends safety, rehabilitation training for factory workers

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:17:54 +0100

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.

Belgian grant spreads legal support services for migrant workers

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 04:39:43 +0000

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.

ILO, Labour Ministry, plan AIDS education for migrant workers

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:20:14 +0000

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.

‘Public-private partnership’ to quell TB, AIDS, among migrant workers

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:27:12 +0100

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.

Sexually awakened China Daily highlights migrants’ frustrations

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:30:29 +0100

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.

‘Responsibility’ standard for China textile industry emerges from EU project

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 07:06:06 +0100

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.

Leading state adviser offers frank assessment of rural challenges

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:32:11 +0100

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.

Feature: Resettled Tibetans “can’t live on charity forever”

Fri, 05 May 2006 13:53:09 +0100

Growing degradation of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau grasslands is threatening the traditional lifestyle of Tibetan pastoralists, who are thought to make up around half of China’s total ethnic Tibetan population of 5.5 million people, spread across the Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province and parts of Gansu, Yunnan and Sichuan. Some have spontaneously migrated far from their native places in search of better pasture. Others are now being relocated by the government to new, permanent settlements where, as Matt Perrement reports from Qinghai, they face an uncertain future.

Feature: Miao people struggle to get a foot on the migration ladder

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 04:49:44 +0100

An estimated 150 million people have now migrated from China’s villages in search of work. During the recent Spring Festival holiday, Matt Perrement met some of the least succesful, back home in the mountains of eastern Guizhou.

Household incomes in Shiqing village (石青村), an ethnic Miao community in the east of Guizhou Province, average just CNY 800 (USD 100) per year. “Some earn as little as 300 yuan,” according to village leader, Yang Linan (杨利南): just USD 10 cents per day for an entire family. “But things are better now in the reform era,” he adds.

First Person: "I felt too embarrassed to ask for my wages"

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 12:28:12 +0100

An unexplained growth disorder meant that Zhang Xuanbao, 23, never reached four feet tall, but that didn’t stop him from leaving his village in search of fortune. Tina Qian listened to his story.

Editorial: Not everyone will leave the land—but those who stay will need the right to organise

Tue, 02 May 2006 11:05:31 +0100

China’s 150 million-strong ‘floating population’ of rural migrants will swell, over the next 15 years, to “well over 200 million” according to the 2005 China Human Development Report. The influx of migrants, the report tells us, has already caused the urban population to grow from 17.9% of China’s total in 1978 to 41.8% of the total in 2004—even though most migrants remain largely marginalised, officially designated as ‘farmers’ whatever their actual occupation.

Migrants typically work long hours for low pay in dirty, difficult or dangerous jobs, endure dingy accommodation without essential services, and suffer separation from loved ones. (Recent research by international child welfare NGO, PLAN, shows that up to half of all children in rural areas have one or more parents working away from home.) Nevertheless, there is a widespread assumption that migration and urbanisation are inevitable processes that represent China’s future, as droves of people leave behind what Marx and Engels memorably called “the idiocy of rural life.”

Fund gives migrant workers access to legal aid

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 21:40:03 +0000

A ‘Legal Aid Station for Migrant Workers’ in Beijing is the first beneficiary of a new Fund established in by the China Legal Aid Foundation and the China Bar Association.