Country workers flood urban job markets

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, February 23, 2004

Country workers flood urban job markets

Historical changes have taken place in the structure of the labor in China in which peasant workers make up the majority of industrial workers now. But their quality and living and working conditions needs improving.

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Rural workforce becomes mainstay of industrial workers

Up to 98.2m rural labor-forces have transferred to non-agricultural sectors as a result of the progress in industrialization and acceleration of urbanization. This is shown in the Research Report on Corporate Governance of 1000 Businesses in China 2003. It is issued by China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) at the National Conference for Corporate Governance Innovation held in Beijing on Feb.21.

It concluded that historical changes have taken place in the structure of the labor in China in which peasant workers make up the majority of industrial workers now.

Statistics record that peasant workers account for 57.6 percent of employees in the second industry. 68 percent of workers in processing manufacturing and nearly 80 percent in construction sectors are peasant workers. For the tertiary industry, over 52 percent of employees in wholesale, retailing and catering businesses are from rural areas.

However, according to Jiang Qiangui, vice chairman of CEC, staff in enterprises in China is still poor in quality. Most peasant workers have only received junior high school or even primary school education. The exodus of rural population to non-agricultural productions has brought about new challenges to the industrial upgrading and improvement of corporate governance, though it helps Chinese businesses keep their edge in cheap labor cost.

Make life easier for migrant workers

The federation called for more measures to make these migrant workers live and work with ease in cities. Some officials and researchers suggested calling off barriers such as household registration systems and offering schooling for children of these workers, ensuring that migrant citizens can integrate into city life.

Lin Yueqin, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said more efforts should be put into reforming China's household registration system, enabling migrant workers to reside in cities and become local residents.

Lin said that migrants should have the right to decide where to live.

"If they think the cost of living in cities is too high, they will move back to the villages," he said.

Chen Hao, a Ministry of Public Security official, said the central government is considering stepping up packages of measures to help China's huge number of migrant workers settle down in urban areas. Chen said there is a possibility that migrants will soon be able to freely register to reside in 80 per cent of 660 cities nationwide, and those with too large of a population won't adopt the measure.

Chen said the effort is aimed at reforming the country's rigid household registration system.

Lin said that since the country started transforming to a market economy in the late 1970s, more and more people have left their hometowns for cities to work or do business.

Problems then emerged as outsiders, who totalled some 98 million as of the end of last year, were denied equal access to work, education, housing and other social rights enjoyed by locals.

Lin was more concerned about the education of their children, as millions of rural labourers move to cities for work.

Despite the contributions of migrant families to urban construction, however, schooling for their children in cities receives little attention, largely because of the lingering residency registration system, said Lin.

Source:China Daily & People's Daily Online

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