China's migrant workers need greater public empathy

Wang Yu Ying, 32, came to Beijing about five years ago from the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang. But before she migrated to the capital city to earn a better living, Wang left her daughter of 10 months in her mother's care in Anhui province. also in the east where her mother lives.

Wang, a Chinese acquaintance and a waitress at a foreign-themed restaurant in eastern Beijing, has missed being with her daughter like thousands of other migrant workers who move to the country's big cities from small ones or the countryside for money.

She and her husband, who works as a chef somewhere in the city, live in a dormitory for migrant workers, and get to see their daughter once a year or so, during national holidays. The couple can't afford independent housing or other costs associated with raising a child in Beijing, Wang says.

Zhang Xitang, 40, a construction worker in Beijing tells a similar story. He came to the city from eastern China in 2004, and life's been rough ever since.

"You wake up at 5 am every day, often work without fixed hours and get low wages," Zhang tells me. His wife and children live in Shandong province, where he had left them.

Other such accounts are available in the media across China's major cities, not just in Beijing and Shanghai that draw the bulk of the 245 million internal migrant workers. At the end of 2013, they made up for more than one sixth of the country's total population of nearly 1.4 billion.

The average monthly income of migrant workers was 3,287.8 yuan (roughly $535) in April 2013, up 4.9 percent from the previous year, a recent government report said.

Their struggles remind me of India, my home country, where multitudes of migrant workers live in urban squalor with much less money than Chinese.

A Chinese colleague recently baffled me by saying he'd heard Indian migrant workers, many of whom go to cities from poor rural areas, blame karma for their plight.

While poverty and superstition may co-exist in some parts of India, as sociologists have noted, the "fate" theory, I told him, was simply ridiculous. My earlier interactions with Indian migrant workers have suggested they are toiling hard to improve their lot, not sitting idle cursing "bad luck!"

The Indian situation is complex.

Welfare policies for the poor and relocation plans for slum dwellers aren't always well implemented. At times, migrant slums in major metropolises also tend to get used as "vote banks" by some local politicians, who stall government efforts to demolish such sites. In addition, police suspect a section of migrants to be illegal settlers, largely from bordering Bangladesh and Nepal.

In the past decade, analysts have also blamed the sluggish pace of economic reforms for India's inability to curb poverty faster.

But China, the world's second-largest economy and a country that's long enjoyed the reputation of getting things done and fast, should be better placed to fix the problems of its migrant workers.

Government researchers point to improvements, as wages rise and general living conditions get better. They cite family, rather than individual migration as a new trend among younger Chinese migrants.

"Most of them can't bring major family members together at once, but it's fairly common for 70 percent of them to have their spouse move in first, then their children," according to a report released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission on Nov 18.

The commission urges the need to do more to integrate migrant workers into cities.

But changes in policies alone wouldn't help. In the face of rising labor shortage, greater public empathy toward migrant workers would likely benefit all sides.

Wang and Zhang say they've seen uncertain times in Beijing, but neither is looking to leave the city in a hurry.

Contact the writer at satarupa@chinadaily.com.cn