China wakes up to plight of migrant workers
BEIJING, : Tian Deyou, a 36-year-old farmer from central China, spends 13 hours a day at a Beijing construction site, calls his two children once a week, and makes 500 yuan (60 dollars) a month.
He considers himself lucky and is ready to go back to the Chinese capital any time in the future if a new job opportunity comes up.
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"It's good money," he says during a brief lunch break. "Right now back home at the farm, there's nothing to do."
In China, 2003 was the year when the government woke up to the plight of 120 million farmers who are treated as strangers in their own country, exploited and despised as they take on poorly-paid work in the cities.
"Greater efforts should be made to help surplus rural laborers find jobs in cities, while removing discriminatory regulations and unreasonable charges for migrant workers," President Hu Jintao said last week.
Despite the growing official recognition of the rights of the migrant army -- equivalent to the populations of Britain and France combined -- little real improvement has taken place, according to analysts.
"All the measures are symbolic," said Chloe Froissart, a specialist on Chinese migrants at the Hong Kong-based French Center for Research on Contemporary China. "They don't really change the situation of the migrants."
One episode -- a murder case -- did more than anything else this year to alert the public to the abject conditions of China's migrant population.
Sun Zhigang, a 27-year-old designer who had traveled to southern Guangzhou city in search of work, was beaten to death while in the custody of the local police in March.
The minor offense for which he had been detained -- failing to carry a temporary residence certificate -- highlighted the brutal treatment that migrant workers often suffer at the hands of the authorities.
Soon reports emerged in the state-controlled media about how police in parts of China would routinely pull migrant workers off the trains in regular kidnappings aimed at extorting ransoms from the families.
Nationwide outrage resulted, and for the new Chinese government installed in spring it became an opportunity to introduce reforms, such as transforming detention centers for migrants into aid stations for people in need.
Other changes include a beginning willingness to allow migrant workers to join trade unions.
The problem is, Chinese trade unions are the government's tools for controlling the blue-collar population, and do precious little to represent workers' interests.
Just as seriously, unions are often powerless against the foreign companies, which employ an estimated 80 percent of all migrant workers, according to Pun Ngai, a scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
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