Samantha Hoffman - China’s migrant worker crisis and the children who are left behind
China was recently rocked by the suicides
of four siblings, aged five to 13, in Cizhu Village, Bijie city, Guizhou
province. The “left-behind” siblings lived alone in a run-down house, and aside
from occasional wire transfers of money from their father and a minimum living
allowance from the local government, the children were left without care.
State media said the
mother, Ren Xifen, left in 2014 following a “long and bitter dispute” with the
father, Zhang Fangqi, who abandoned the children for work in March 2015. Their deaths sparked public outrage across China over the
government’s failure to address the problems of rural poverty and inadequate
provision of social services. The incident highlighted not only the plight of
China’s “left-behind” children, but also the obstacles the government faces in
addressing migrant workers’ issues – and the risks of failing to do so.
According to government data released in May, there are 61m left-behind
children in China, or about 37.7% of
the children in rural China and 21.9% of children in the country. While their
parents have migrated to cities to find work, they are usually left under the
care of their grandparents or other relatives but an estimated 3.4% live
alone.
The situation arises from perhaps the most glaring social
contradiction in modern China: migrant workers are the fabric of the country’s
rapid economic growth, yet national hukou (household
registration) laws designed to manage migration mean they have unequal access
to social services, including education, which are much better in urban areas
than rural ones.
No choice: Migration to cities is one of the only
ways China’s rural families can hope to make a living, since farming can no
longer provide most of them with sustainable resources and incomes. That means
migrant workers have little economic choice but to leave both their homes and
their children far behind.
The social impact is enormous. A recent NGO survey of
more than 2,000 left-behind children found that many suffer from depression and
anxiety, particularly the 15% who are left without parents for a year or more.
And without adequate guardianship, many fail
to attend school and fall into crime, while a great many become human
trafficking victims.
Following the siblings’ suicides Chinese premier, Li
Keqiang, ordered officials to improve social security efforts. There are many
dedicated NGOs and government welfare programmes targeting the problem, but
it’s simply not enough. Social welfare still does not reach the most vulnerable
of China’s rural poor population.
Beyond addressing inadequate provision of social services,
the government knows it must change hukou laws to allow
children to migrate with their parents and enjoy equal access to public
services. But it also knows that doing so could trigger open class conflict,
since urban residents worry that giving migrants full rights will overload
their own social services.
In 2014, the government announced it would remove
the urban-rural hukou distinction. A welcome development no doubt –
but the reform is all but unenforceable – and it appears more rhetorical than
substantial.
Young guns: The stability issues migrants pose are
not in themselves a political crisis, because despite ongoing hardships, rural
lives have generally improved in the post-Deng reform era. But many are still
extremely deprived; while poverty levels have declined, the government reports
that as of 2013, 82m people,
about 15% of the population, live below the World Bank-defined poverty line of
US$1.25 per day.
Meanwhile, new problems are emerging. As China’s economic
growth slows,
many factories have been forced to close or relocate, putting migrants under
even more pressure. The migrant population is ageing, pushing the country’s
broken pension system to the edge. In my own regular monitoring of social
unrest in China, I have seen that the majority of China’s labour disputes are
no longer over pay increase demands, but rather over unpaid wages and pension
benefits.
The anger over unpaid wages signals a major generational
shift. Where older workers were once accepting of wages being delayed, for
example until a construction project was complete, younger workers are
demanding timely payment regardless of the circumstances. Meanwhile, older
generations are protesting over social insurance because they now face a
retirement with little or no pension, despite years of hardship and sacrifice.
Timebomb: All this highlights the difficult choices
facing a party-state whose primary objective is to maintain power, with
economic growth being its crucial source of legitimacy.
As long as the root causes of migrant workers’ issues go
unaddressed, it could be simply a matter of time before migrant workers stop
putting up with the status quo. Sooner or later, the government will be forced
to manage their demands. These are very much long-term questions, but as
reaction to the siblings’ suicides indicated, this quiet crisis situation has
the potential to be a game-changer. Despite the government’s increasingly sophisticated
censorship efforts, netizens have
proved quick to criticise the government’s response to a crisis.
In the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, which killed nearly
70,000 people, left-behind children were among the biggest
victims. Many perished in sub-standard school buildings, while a great many
others were left to face the disaster alone. If a disaster of a similar or
greater scale were to strike again, the government’s failure to address the
plight of impoverished citizens will be made appallingly clear.
