International Solidarity (ICFTU, Union Statements)

ICFTU Observations to the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations on Convention No.182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour

Mr Juan Somavia
Director-General
International Labour Office (ILO)

                                                                                  31 August 2006

Dear Mr Director-General,

ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations

As per previous practice, I have the honour of sending you observations concerning compliance by The People’s Republic of China with the following convention:

Convention No.182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999
(ratified in 2002)

1. Background

1.1 The continued existence of Child Labour

Child labour continues to be a seriousproblem in China and according to recent reports the problem is increasing rather than decreasing. The Chinese authorities have recognized the need for the elimination of child labour and have implemented several measures designed to meliorate the problem which continues to be found throughout Chinese industry, but in particular in the private sector. In 1999 China ratified Convention No. 138 and in 2002 it ratified Convention No. 182. In terms of domestic legislation, new laws were implemented in December 2002 explicitly banning the employment of children under the age of 16 years. These new regulations impose fines for employers and put the onus on the employing companies to check the workers identification cards. Other legislation includes the relevant provisions in the Chinese Labour Law, the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests, the Law on the Protection of Minors, Regulations on the Prohibition of Child Labour, and the Notice on the Prohibition of Child Labour.

In China’s second report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child of China’s in September 2005, there was official recognition that there were children in need of special protection measures, including street children, children of migrants and those vulnerable to trafficking. Since 2002, the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) has been working in Yunnan Province as part of the Mekong sub regional project to combat trafficking in children and women and in 2004 launched a new project to prevent trafficking in girls and young women for labour exploitation within China. The ILO also reported that China was also represented at the first regional capacity building training course on child labour data collection organized by the ILO, together with the inter-agency research project Understanding Children’s Work (UCW), held in Bangkok in November 2004 which “reflects a growing willingness by China to learn from experience in other countries”.[NOTE 1]

Despite these initiatives the existence of child labour, including the worst forms of child labour, remains high due to the lack of proper enforcement of legislation, a lack of resources targeted at the problem (both in terms of financial resources and manpower) and the failure of the government to address underlying causes of child labour, such as access to free education and equal employment opportunities for the rural poor and migrant communities.

1. Education

China has recognized in its Constitution the right to education for every citizen and introduced a nine-year compulsory education system, stipulating that the state should provide nine-year compulsory education for all primary and junior middle school students. Since 1949 the numbers of children attending school has risen and risen. According to most reports the vast majority of children (official figures give 95 -98 percent) now attend and complete five years of primary school.  However, according to statistics from the China Education and Research Network, the number of primary schools has decreased and enrolment of both primary school and second level school has also decreased. Most crucially the law fails to guarantee the funding of compulsory education, thus forcing or allowing many schools, particularly those in the impoverished rural regions, to either go on collecting tuition fees or charge various “miscellaneous fees” on their students in the name of “voluntary donations”, “fund-raising for school construction” or “after-school tutoring fees”.
In January 2006, Ministry of Education released statistics saying that in 2004, school dropout rates at primary schools and junior high schools were at 0.59 percent to 2 percent and 2.49 percent to 7 percent respectively. However in 2004, Northeast Normal University interviewed junior high school students in six provinces and found that the school dropout rate was higher than 40 percent. Girls in particular have high drop out rates. One study by the British Department of International Development reported of a county in Gansu province had a graduation rate of only 25 percent of the children who enrolled in primary school. All were boys. In 2002, research by the Beijing-based Internal Migrants Legal Aid and Research Centre found that many child flower sellers, so-called “flower children” working the Beijing bars came from You county in central Hunan province. You county was found to have a school drop out rate of 40 percent amongchildren over 10 years old. Increasing school fees were found to be the primary reason for the increase in drop outs and corresponding increase in child workers.”[NOTE 2]

2. Worst Forms of Child Labour

2.1 Forced Labour - Education through labour and the justice System
The People’s Republic of China has several procedures in place which deal with minors inside the criminal justice system. Some take place within the community while others allow for children to be sent to special “Work Study” schools for children aged between 12 and 17 years, or to Custody and Education schemes usually inside an adult re-education through labour camp.

This use of Work Study schools is in direct contravention of Convention 182 as well as the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Although the number of such schools is being reduced throughout China the exact number of children being assigned to such Work Study programs is unclear. The administrative nature of the punishment means that the children are detained without due process of law, through the decisions of administrative bureaus and local ministries of education. There appears to be no specific regulations which guide the exact procedures under which minors are sent to these schools.

In May 2005, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reported that; “The Committee urges the State party, as a matter of priority, to strengthen its efforts to effectively enforce its legislation prohibiting unlawful employment of children. The Committee also urges the State party to make every effort, including adopting preventive measures, to ensure that those children who engage in labour do not work under conditions that are harmful to them. The Committee further encourages the State party to consider withdrawing the programme of “Diligent Work and Economical Study (qingong jianxue)” from its school curriculum.”[NOTE 4]
CORRECTIONAL WORK STUDY SCHOOLS (GONGDE XUEXIAO)

Custody and Education
Children between the ages of 13 and 16 can be sent to custody and re-education programs by the local public security bureaus with recourse to the criminal justice system. Generally placed in re-education through labour camps, there is little avenue for appeals except to the public security bureau itself.  According to reports, although Chinese criminal law calls for separate places for minors, in practice, due to limited spaces available many minors are incarcerated with the adult population.

Wile undertaking re-education through labour children have little safeguards against over work and poor conditions. Education for minors is also lacking. There is a lack of due process involved in the system of custody and education - the Law on the Protection of Minors states that it is a non-criminal penalty, but it is included in the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency and the Criminal Law. It is difficult to assess why this system is used and not the criminal juvenile justice system. There is also very little data available. “The data available on only a few custody and education facilities indicate that at least 3,895 minors were held in four of these facilities as of May 2000, and while youth should be afforded additional protections, custody and education is in essence RTL for children. The protections guaranteed in Chinese law are neither sufficient nor implemented.”[NOTE 5] The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2005 stated that although China classifies Re-education Through Labour and custody and education as an administrative deprivation of liberty as opposed to judicial deprivation this does not mean that China does not have an obligation to ensure judicial control over the system; “The result of removing them from the criminal system is ultimately that they are stripped of the guarantees surrounding criminal procedure.”[NOTE 6]

In May 2005, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stated that “The Committee is gravely concerned about the use of forced labour as a corrective measure, without charge, trial or review, under the “Re-education through Labour (laodong jiaoyang)” programme.”[NOTE 7]

In March 2006 a new law came into effect - The Law on penalties for Offences against Public Order which relates to minor public order offences and updates previous legislation on the issue. One of the areas covered surrounds detention of minors. Offenders under age 18 can now be freed from detention in cases pertaining to their first offence against public order. However the new law relies on the discretion of the public security and other bureaus and it remains to be seen if it will make a difference to the numbers of children in detention and undergoing education through labour or “work study”. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Public Security in March 2005 some 44.7 percent of public order offenders caught by police authorities during the first six months of 2005 were those aged from 10 to 25. And over 70 percent of robbery crimes occurred in China during the first half year were committed by youths aged 10 to 25.[NOTE 8]

2.2 Forced Labour through school related or contracted work programmes

Because of rising costs and the lack of central investment, many schools force children to work in order to make up school budgets. The case of a fireworks workshop attached to the Fanglin village school in Wanzai County, Jiangxi Province is well known. The workshop exploded killing some 60 primary school children and three teachers and was then covered up – albeit unsuccessfully – by the local government. This is just one example of the ways schools are being forced to earn money usually by their students work or the sale of buildings, to pay for basic equipment and teaching. In many other regions, children perform tasks ranging from producing crafts and handiwork to farming. Reports since 2001 documenting the use of contracted labour in schools and “summer” work programs suggest that despite the publicity surrounding the Jiangxi explosion little has changed on the ground. [NOTE 9]

Large numbers of rural schools have contracted out classes of students to work in factories or in the fields to help pay for some of the costs of their education. Under the guise of work study programs, pupils are obliged to work to “learn a skill” but often they are put to perform regular work in labour intensive unskilled positions for longer periods of time, where they do not learn any skill and earn only pocket money.  In other parts of the country children are found to be working from home after school or sometimes during school hours - assembling fireworks, beadwork or other cottage industry type production. 

A report by Radio Free Asia in September 2005 reported on school children in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China (XUAR) who are forced to work harvesting the yearly cotton harvest.  According to officials the work is an official “work study program, but sources interviewed reported that students must meet specified targets or face fines. One teacher at the Shihenzi Higher Middle School in Shihenzi City told Radio Free Asia that school children were forced every year into “work-study” programs on behalf of the army’s Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, known in Chinese as the bingtuan. The teacher reported that; “If it is the city, then third-graders and up must take part. If it is the countryside, from first-graders upwards, all of them have to go to the cotton harvest. The schools stop teaching and take the kids to the cotton harvest.” [NOTE 10]

A report in the Urumqi official media also covered the program but reported that children below third grade do not participate; “The Work-Study Office of the Education Department also requested the schools to refrain from collecting fees recklessly in name of the work-study program. Extremely heavy labor was also strictly forbidden.” Parents and students were reportedly concerned that the extremely heavy nature of the work and the fees charged for “participation” in the scheme but the Metropolitan Consumer News quoted staff at the Work-Study Program Office of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Education Department as saying work-study programs were an essential labor practicum course, “Some schools in inner China spread the course out into weeks and months and carry it out at training facilities. However, the situation in Xinjiang is unique. Apart from the lack of training facilities, the picking-period of various cotton districts in Xinjiang is concentrated in September and October, thus the work-study program has to be carried out mainly during this time,” the paper quoted officials as saying.

A teacher interviewed said that the children were vulnerable to accidents and the young girls to sexual assault. “Every year, there are incidents like this and someone dies in an accident. Sometimes the tractors let kids get on and then crash with cars and the kids get badly hurt or die…Also when it is harvest season there are many migrants Han Chinese workers or farmers from other Chinese cities and those people rape the female students. These kinds of cases take place often every year.” One student who had previously worked in such a program told Radio Free Asia; “According to what they said, if we could not finish our duty, we would have to pay money. If we picked more than the required amount, we could earn money. But actually, no one ever earned any money, even if he or she picked more than the required amount. The eight of us students fell behind and had to pay money. We had no money to pay”.

2.3 Trafficking and Prostitution
In addition to the increasing opportunities and availability of work for young women and girls in the labour intensive factories in the south and eastern parts of the countries, girl children face additional problems.  Recent statistics from the past few censuses of China show that the gender disparity among newborns has been rising steadily. The last national census in 2000 showed about 12.77 million fewer girls than a natural sex ratio would generate. The third national census in 1981 revealed a ratio of newborn boys to girls of 108.47 to 100; in 1989 it was 111.92 to 100; and in 2000 it was 116 to 100. A recent report in August 2006 stated that the male to female ratio has risen to 1.23 in 1996-2001 and some areas the figure is almost 130 males per 100 females.  According to Human Rights in China some 60 million women and girls are “missing” from the world today as a result of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide.

While many negative consequences of the one child policy cannot be included in a discussion on child labour[NOTE 11] some long lasting effects are relevant – the trend of sex selective abortions, female infanticide, the abandonment of female infants and concealment of female children. The Chinese government does acknowledges its need to deal with the growing disparity in the male to female birth rate as well as some of the indirect results such as the   growth in human trafficking. According to one official interviewed, “family planning limits encourage selling off girls and after the unwanted girl is sold, parents can try again for a boy.[NOTE 12]

In June 2006 the Chinese police uncovered a total of 4,911 child kidnapping cases in the past five years rescuing some 10,000 children. [NOTE 13] The shortage of females has increased the trafficking of girls, who are sold as servants or brides or are forced into prostitution. The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women said in her 1997 report that in some Chinese counties and villages, 30 to 90 percent of marriages were the result of trafficking. A UNICEF report estimated that China now has 200,000 to 500,000 child sex workers.

Article 36 of the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests prohibits the kidnapping and abduction of women and the purchase of abducted females, but fails to provide any measure of penalties and remedies. China is a source, transit, and destination country for international human trafficking in women and children for sex exploitation and the entertainment industry. It has been widely reported that there are increasing numbers of young women and girl children being trafficked out of China to work as sex workers in Australia, Burma, Canada, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.[NOTE 14] The one child policy is again considered to be of considerable influence on this growth in child trafficking for prostitution.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING KEY FACTS
The lack of national statistics and analysis of data on child prostitution and trafficking remains a serious problem and limits placed on transparency – due to state secrets laws – place considerable concern over the government’s willingness to resolve the issue. One report questions the official data; for example, in May 2004 the Yunnan provincial government (on the border with Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar) Cambodia and announced that 571 children were abducted there between 2001 and 2003, but also stated that police had managed to locate 537 children and return them to their parents. Parents, however, gave a different accounting, stating that out of 182 children abducted from the capital Kunming in the last three years, only four had been found. [NOTE 15]

One Radio Free Asia report focused on the trafficking of under aged women and juveniles from Tibet into Nepal to work as prostitutes and in night clubs.  According to the report Chinese police and local authorities in Tibet near the Nepal border are colluding with local Tibetan and Chinese entrepreneurs in recruiting Tibetan girls and women to work as escorts, barmaids, and prostitutes. [NOTE 16] It has been estimated that up to 10,000 commercial sex workers are employed in Lhasa alone. "Once you get into the system, it is very difficult to get out of it," one 18-year-old Tibetan woman in Nyalam said in an interview. "All the Tibetan girls who are working in nightclubs want to escape to Nepal and India, but they cannot do so. If we run away, we will be put in jail and life in jail is not easy," said the woman, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity. "Therefore we had to sign a contract. A few have tried to escape, but they were caught and severely beaten. Two of us managed to escape," the woman said. Both are now in Nepal.

The girls are usually aged between 17 and 18 to 28 and many are tricked into the trade. One businessman interviewed said that the Tibetan girls attract fewer customers, while the Chinese girls attract more. Therefore the Tibetan girls earn less and the Chinese girls earn more and some Tibetan girls will accept meals in exchange for their services. The Chinese girls are paid a fixed amount while Tibetan girls can be paid 20 to 50 Yuan. Some will even accept clothes. The women said they were often lured into working in the clubs by promises of an escape route to India.[NOTE 17]  Women and girls interviewed said they believed Chinese worked with entrepreneurs to procure young women for the local nightclub industry. “The local Chinese authorities are very permissive about this illegal human trafficking. In fact, the local Chinese authorities, police, and owners of bars and nightclubs collude with each other in recruiting these Tibetan sex workers," one person interviewed by Radio Free Asia said.

In the past many traffickers in children and girls “bought” the children from very poor parents but it now appears that because of a growing demand for the children and a growing awareness of the dangers of selling ones child for alleged employment” or a better life, more and more criminal gangs are having to kidnap the children.  A report by IPEC stated that previously most trafficked women were between 20 and 50 years old. Now, traffickers are mostly targeting women and girls under 20, some as young as 12 years old.[NOTE 18]

The report found that despite strong efforts by the Chinese authorities to stem the problem in areas severely affected by trafficking in women and children, grassroots authorities have generally failed to take effective action or to establish adequate prevention mechanisms. There have even been reported cases of village leaders aiding and abetting the traffickers. The problem is compounded by insufficient punishment for the buyers of abducted or trafficked children and women. Under Chinese law the buyer can be penalised for up to three years detention if they purchase a trafficking victim but the vast majority are not prosecuted and if the child is unharmed and the buyer co-operated with the police then they are generally unpunished. In practice if children are reported missing, many police will register the case as an incident and not as an investigation of kidnapping – especially if the child is from a poor area or family.

The Department of Public Security and other agencies are also hampered by under funding and lack of specialist staff.  Migrant families in the south of China have also reported that they have received very little help from the police after reporting their child abducted. Local reporters trying to cover such cases have also reported being obstructed. `Some 400 children – mainly from poor migrants – are reportedly missing, believed kidnapped (for adoption or sex work) in Dongguan alone.[NOTE 19]

As in much of Chinese legislation the problem lies primarily in the implementation of laws and not the legislation itself.  An NGO report on the Convention of the Rights of the Child states that in the Second periodic report of the People’s Republic of China on the Implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (1996 -2000) there is fewer than two pages of information on legislation and implementation of law addressing the issue of child trafficking. The report indicates that public security personnel have processed a total of 21,000 cases of abduction of women and children, and have rescued about 5,000 children. “It provides no data on age, gender, geographical location, nationality or ethnicity, nor does it provide any analysis of the causes of these abductions. The PRC’s efforts in entering into an agreement with neighbouring countries to combat trafficking is a positive step; relevant laws have also been amended to make the trafficking and abduction of children a crime. However, the Standing Committee of the NPC became aware of the growing incidence of trafficking of children and women as early as 1984, but took another 13 years to make the amendments, and another three years to finalize implementation.” [NOTE 20]

In order to effectively resolve the issues, and work with neighbouring countries, there must be a proper review of current policies, proper implementation of safeguards, increased transparency and remedial action. Law enforcement organs must have sufficient resources and support to combat trafficking, and more details of the data and issues must be made available both within China and to neighbouring countries who receive (and send) girls for sex exploitation.

The use of broad state secrets laws makes the true picture of sex selective abortions and trafficking difficult to asses. Statistics regarding female infanticide and abandonment of female children are classified as state secrets and while the government occasionally releases figures on the number of victims rescued and the number of people prosecuted for trafficking of female infants and children, there is no national picture available.According to the Human Rights Shadow report to CEDAW; “The fact is that China’s leaders have failed to incorporate gender perspectives into their policies by taking into account the consequences of official decisions on both women and men. If the government conducted gender analysis in order to understand the relationships between women and men and their comparative activities, constraints and access to resources, it would become aware of the systemic inequities that China’s population policy imposes on women and girls”.

“As a means of addressing the trafficking of girls and women, China should consider ratifying the international conventions on trafficking in persons and on slavery. In addition, it should take appropriate measures to address the root causes of trafficking, namely the one-child policy and discriminatory attitudes toward girls and women, and should strengthen existing legislation and enforcement mechanisms.”[NOTE 21]

2.4 Hazardous Work
Examples of industries employing children are the firework industry, piece work at home (anything from car seats to plastic flowers), entertainment (informal), begging – organized groups of beggars and street sellers such as flower sellers, singers, etc, brick kilns, and prostitution (trafficked and other). A People's Daily Report cites an investigation into labour conditions in Shandong province's Jinan City. According to the report, the use of juvenile labour is most prevalent in the following industries: toy production, textiles, construction, food production, and light mechanical work.[NOTE 22]

“Many children turn to work after the death of one or both parents and migrant child workers are often the children of migrant workers themselves. Children found in the worst forms of labour often have mothers working in the sex industry or parents with an alcohol or drug problem. In the worst cases we have seen children simply sold to intermediaries who in turn sell them on into the sex industry, domestic service or bonded labour.” [NOTE 23]

Fireworks Industry
The Firework Industry in China is a long established industry, employing tens of thousands of people, many from the poorest provinces. Production generally takes place in small factories or village based workshops. In some cases firework production is undertaken in several homes located in one village with a central warehouse for storage. Most factories are small and most are privately owned. Children have long been used in firework production because of their small and nimble fingers and because of the informal setting of production.  It is both the nature of the work – explosives used – and the nature of production – unsafe buildings, clusters of workshops and low fire safety measures – that make firework production an extremely dangerous occupation. In addition the widespread disregard of safety standards and lack of monitoring has increased the risk o explosions and other accidents.

In a survey of 120 fireworks manufacturing workshops in seven provinces by the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine found that almost half of all fireworks fail to meet basic quality and safety standards. According to Zhang Guanghua, director of the Chemical Safety Supervision and Management Department under the State Administration of Work Safety, "The production and standards of many small and medium-sized fireworks producers in townships and villages do not meet state requirements." The investigation found that of the120 brands of fireworks monitored 36.7 per cent were found to have defective blasting fuses, creating a high risk of premature explosion and injury while there was a widespread use of banned inflammable or explosive chemicals in production.  19 brands were found to have defective packaging which could lead to accidents during transportation or storage. .[NOTE 24]

The most recent incident involving child labour and firework production took place on 10 July 2006 when an explosion at an illegal fireworks workshop in Hunan province killed seven workers and injured three others. The average age of those who were killed and injured in the accident is more than 40 years old. The oldest was 76, while the youngest one was a 14-year-old girl, according to Gu Xiangwang, head of Yizhang County Work Safety Bureau. Gu said the bureau issued an order in late June requiring all fireworks factories in the county to halt operation for three months starting from July for safety inspection.[NOTE 25]

On 28 July 2003, a series of three or four explosions, which some residents likened to an earthquake, demolished most of the Guoxi Fireworks Factory killing 29 workers and injuring at least 100. According to interviews, there were some 169 workers in the factory at the time of the explosion, the youngest being a 15 year old girl who had been working at the factory for two years. On 19 October 2003 a 14-year-old child worker was killed and 11 other workers badly injured at an explosion in Dapingling village in Hunan province. Nine of the eleven injured were under the age of 15 and employed illegally.

The Government has pledged to phase out the use of these small firework workshops but their use remains much in evidence. In general the government reaction to accidents is similar to its reaction to coal mine accident - a knee jerk shutting of factories nearby, punishment of officials involved and condemnation of the incident. Issuing a temporary ban on production, as the authorities did in Jiangxi province following a fireworks tragedy in 2002, is reaction that plunges employees into further poverty and often drives production underground. 

Brick Kilns and glass makers
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting that children are widely found at brick kilns and glass making factories. A report from September 2005 focused on the killing of a 15 year old boy by a pair of iron pincers thrown at him by his supervisor, following a verbal dispute in the Baocheng Glass Vessel Factory in Qi County, Puzhong City, Shanxi Province. A few hundred meters from Baocheng was another glass factory hiring more than a dozen other children. The incident was alleged to show the extent of the problem of child labour in the glass industry in Shanxi Province which has the largest volume of glass production in China. Over  one fifth of the  of the 160 glass factories in the province have used child labour while some were found to have used the torture, verbal and physical abuse of these children. Most have poor working and safety conditions.[NOTE 26]
 
Begging
According to Xinhua from August 2003 through the end of June 2004 police picked up 80,000 child beggars nationwide. However the number of child beggars in existence is likely to be much higher because of regular statistics.  Investigations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have revealed that each year thousands of trafficked children belonging to Muslim families are being cared for while authorities try to track down their parents. The task is difficult, sometimes impossible, because many of the children were trafficked to inland Chinese cities at a very young age and have little memory of the homes they left behind. Many were forced to become thieves.[NOTE 27]  The source of the problem stems from the poverty in the area and the discrimination faced by Uyghur families and children in education, employment and society. One source interviewed, Uyghur businesswoman and rights activist Rebiya Kadeer stated that "Chinese human-traffickers come to the Uyghur region from inner China and tell the girls that they will find them paying jobs. Then they sell these girls by transferring them from owner to owner. The human-trafficking of young Uyghur children is becoming a profession in Xinjiang. They are children of poor families. They were deceived and sold by the Chinese and forced to become thieves, heroin sellers and prostitutes.” One report by the Asian Development Bank highlighted the additional problems faced by Uyghur street children as a result of racial discrimination.[NOTE 28]

Another media report which received great attention was the coverage of the life of a child beggar who had been sold into begging by her impoverished father. [NOTE 29] Xu Qian Qian was born in Henan Province with spina bifida was given away by her father, a poor farmer struggling to pay medical bills, after her mother committed suicide, in 2001 return for some money and a promise that she would be cared for. She was then taken to Gongxiao, a nearby village that has reportedly become a breeding ground for professional begging rings and child begging. Some locals said more than half of the village's 1,500 residents have begged to build houses or pay school tuition. The village regularly procured disabled children to help beg. Her new guardian gave her a razor blade and told her to cut her feet and legs to appear more destitute. Sometimes he gouged them himself; she was then left to beg all day and picked up at night.  Xu Qian Qian was eventually rescued by a passer-by and her guardian arrested and sentenced to eight years imprisonment. Police found four children -- three of them disabled in his house.

According to sources, the village of Gongxiao has had professional beggars for decades but then began using disabled children as a means of producing more returns. Locals then searched neighbouring villages for children, concentrating on areas near the Xu family's house, following rumours that polluted river water there caused an inordinate number of birth defects. Locals estimate that 60 percent of Gongxiao's residents beg with the help of disabled children. One local police official states that even the village chief participated. Police started a formal investigation into the chief's family but didn't bring charges. Farmers are often tricked into renting their children for 300 to 500 Yuan a month while a professional beggar’s income may be as much as 10 times that of a farmer, especially one who mainly deals in barter.

Hazardous work in other sectors:

Overwork, working conditions and occupational health and safety
Children in the workplace are especially vulnerable to occupational hazards and abuse. Not least because of their lack of awareness but also because of the illegal nature of their employment which leaves them unable to find avenues of redress should an accident occur. Many put up with extreme conditions that others would not tolerate simply because of their youth and the pressing need to earn money to send home. Many parents are unaware of the working conditions faced by their children in the factories in the south. In late 2003, a reporter from Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis Newspaper   investigating child labour visited a local textile factory and found 12 year old workers working as much as sixteen hours per day, more during peak season. The children slept on or under their worktables in the 200-square meter workshop - similar conditions were found in other nearby factories.[NOTE 30]

Increasingly there is a serious issue of a shortage of labour for the unskilled jobs in the south of China. In part this is due to the ageing population but it is also due to increasing demands for better wages and conditions. Some employers are shifting to inland provinces in China to find cheaper labour while others are resorting to the use of child labour. Child Labour has been increasingly reported in the footwear industry and in the smaller workshops producing textiles, shoes and related products.  In 2000, media reports said that 84 children had been kidnapped from southern China's Guizhou province to work in coastal cities assembling Christmas lights. The youngest was 10. Many of the under age workers in the south are young girls ranging from 12 – 16 who are employed for their youth and agility in the textile, garment and shoe making factories. According to a Chinese Women News’s report in 1996, 73.5 percent of the child labour it had interviewed in six provinces were girls.[NOTE 31]

For many labour intensive factories child labour is worth while. A recent investigation into child labour fund, which interviewed 45 workers (mostly children), 8 parents and teenage school dropouts, 12 teachers and headmasters from primary and junior high schools and 12 government officials, showed that the average wage of children is around 400 -600 Yuan[NOTE 32] while the official monthly wages of many migrant workers is around 500 -800. [NOTE 33]   Children, being illegally employed do not need medical or social security payments and neither do they complain of long hours or underpayment. Most are too scared to complain and most feel the need to remain at work to help support their families.

Field studies show that the majority of child workers also very long hours. Most work overtime till midnight and usually only get paid at the end of the (half) year or half year. Female children interviewed in May 2006 revealed that they usually worked from 8am to 9pm (with two hours meal breaks) during the low season and worked from 8am to 2am the following day during high season.[NOTE 34]  

3. Lack of Enforcement

Although China does possesses national legislation banning child labour and the worst forms of it, as well as related regulations, there remains a serious gap between legislation and implementation and monitoring. 

The fines for child labour employing factories remain low in practice. The 2002 Regulations state that employers who use child labour shall be fined at the rate of 5000 Yuan per month for each child labourer used; if child labour is used at work sites using toxic material, the fine shall be based on the provisions of Regulations for Labour Protection at Work Sites Using Toxic Material, or severe punishment shall be considered with fines at the rate of 5000 Yuan per month for each child labourer used.   However in reality many firms found using child labour are fined around 10,000 Yuan in total. At the beginning of June 2006, a report by the Yangtze Evening Post reported that a local court in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, fined four companies 10,000 Yuan (US$1,250) to 40,000 Yuan (US$5,000) for hiring juvenile workers.

In addition, the chances of discovery are slim given the shortage of labour inspectors and the extensive collusion between private business and local officials. In many case tip offs of upcoming inspections – either from Chinese officials or sometimes form compliance officers for brand names buying the goods – mean that children are kept well hidden during an inspection or given the day off. The numerous anecdotal evidence of such practices and the disappearance of children out of the factory doors in the face of an inspector reveal how most cases are simply not discovered and therefore the employer cannot be punished. The practice is bolstered by double and triple book keeping (on wages, hours, overtime and employees) by many private firms.

“There is a pressing need for uniform and concrete enforcement of existing legislation banning child labour under 16 and the use of young adults in heavy or dangerous industries. This will include the need for increased punishments for employers who break national legislation. China already has adequate laws forbidding child labour but these laws must be “accompanied by adequate enforcement mechanisms and by effective action to improve the availability of relevant and affordable education and to provide poor families with alternative means of survival. Complex reporting procedures and inter-provincial red tape often prevent employers being punished for employing children from outside their own province." [NOTE 35]

For example, during the course of the survey in You county mentioned above, the Civil Affairs Bureau stated that the child dropout problem fell under the jurisdiction of the education authorities while that of child labour falls under that of the Labour Bureau. “The Civil Affairs Bureau, meanwhile, is tasked only with bringing child flower sellers back home in the event of their detention by authorities in the cities to which they've migrated, and to notify the village officials of their return. When asked whether the local government had considered a fundamental solution to the problem, the bureau director admitted that this social phenomenon was nearly impossible to eliminate, and that the best hope was that it could be reduced. The director at Civil Affairs was quite clear that the overriding concern for his department is to "consider at all times the overall situation, and to remain focused on economic development and the building of the party organization." [NOTE 36] Meanwhile the“ Labour Bureau official we spoke to admitted that many of China's urban child flower sellers were being recruited locally, yet stated that it was impossible for local authorities to punish those employing child flower sellers as the employment happens elsewhere. (As the children are not selling flowers in You County, neither the activities of the employers of the children themselves fall under local labour jurisdiction.) According to this official, in cases in which migration of the child flower sellers is involved, the local labour authorities have authority to ask that public security authorities in the cities to which the children have migrated to enforce anti-child labor laws, but they themselves cannot take the initiative to search for the children themselves.”

In addition, adequate regulations and practice needs to be enforced to ensure that children who are rescued or otherwise discovered working have a proper follow up care and education to ensure that they do not simply get sent back to their impoverished families with no further action by the authorities.  At the moment this is lacking and in one case monitored by the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee it was found that a sub contractor not only employed children but actively sought child labour from poor rural areas to work in a toy factory in Guangdong province. “Once the situation was discovered the multinational company subcontracting the Chinese factory allegedly first denied the allegations, however it later accepted that there were ‘irregularities’. Following this admission they then cancelled their contract with the company concerned without any further action. This in turn led to the company laying off many of its adult staff as well as leaving the children stranded in Guangdong with no means of support or transport home.”[NOTE 37]

4. Lack of Transparency: Reporting and State Secrets

State secrets in China cover a wide range of issues and areas of control. The scope of what is defined as a state secret covers not only issues concerning national security (such as military or political secrets) but also issues which have not been approved of by the authorities as public. The range even covers previously published material.

Statistics are one of the areas most tightly controlled under the legislation and those regarding labour-related topics are very much included in the regulations. Child Labour including the Worst Forms of Child Labour (along with other labour related areas such as protests, strikes and structural reform[NOTE 38] ) is the subject of two main regulations issued jointly by the State Secrets Protection Bureau. The first was issued in 2000 by the State Secrets Bureau and the Ministry of Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MOLSS), and the other by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the State Secrets Bureau in 1996.[NOTE 39] This material was made public in October 2004.[NOTE 40]

“Undisclosed information and statistical data on the handling of child labour cases nationwide” is considered highly secret. There are no officially published national data on the extent of child labour or on the numbers of children working in the worst forms of child labour. The number of cases prosecuted is also not published. Data must be collected from unofficial newspaper reports which are often sketchy and many cases are covered up by the local authorities. According to one report, in early 2004 provincial newspapers in early 2004 reported a total of 156 cases in Anhui Province and 464 in Yunnan Province over a period of three years. Such figures are inconsistent with anecdotal local press reports. One random investigation of 620 work units in Tongchuan, a city in Jiangxi Province with a population of about 300,000, resulted in the discovery of more than 40 cases of underage employment, or approximately 80 percent of the number of officially acknowledged cases in all of Anhui, a province with a population of over 60 million.

In addition, general policymaking is also governed by state secrets legislation when it concerns matters deemed “sensitive.” And relations with the International Labour Organization are also covered by the legislation – making it difficult for the ILO itself to receive and transmit uncensored any transparent information:  “plans and countermeasures for participating in meetings of the International Labour Organization and other important international meetings” are classified as “highly secret” by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, while “work plans and countermeasures concerning participation in the International Labour Organization and bilateral and multilateral communications with trade union organizations of other nations” are ranked as “secret” by the ACFTU.

Reliable and open data are essential for governments and other agencies to tackle the worst forms of child labour effectively. China does have legislation but unless legislation is backed up by implementation on the ground it will be ineffective. China has the additional problem of a lack of civil society overseeing the problem and this , coupled with the lack of freedom of association and independent trade unions means that there is little monitoring of the problem except by the few government resources put into effect.  There are increasing press reports on child labour but the data collected are not systematic and there is little serious efforts designed to survey the extent and nature of the problem and follow up on specific cases.

The state secrets laws add to the pervasive paradigm of secrecy within the central, provincial and local authorities and the fact that many authorities are used to under- or over-reporting to fulfil quotas or to ensure praise and not reprisals and make it almost impossible to fully collate relevant information and monitor progress or compliance with Convention 182.

Independent trade unions are seen as one of the more effective ways of combating abuses of labour rights within the workplace and the role of trade unions in combating worst forms of child labour is no exception. The role of ACFTU as a protector and promoter of labour rights remains limited. The ACFTU, as co-drafter of one of the relevant state secrets labour related laws - as noted earlier - works with the government to ensure that details of child labour cases, including cases of forced and hazardous child labour, and other related matters are treated as state secrets and remain hidden.

5. Conclusions                                                                                           

Although the Chinese government has addressed some of the issues under Convention 182 and has made legislative progress, much remains to be done. The ICFTU is particularly concerned about the lack of implementation of the laws relevant for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour.  Therefore the ICFTU suggests that the Committee of Experts may consider recommending to the government to put in place measures to detect children employed in the worst forms of child labour and to implement effective measures for the rehabilitation and the social integration of these children.

Statistics concerning children employed in the worst forms of child labour and data concerning related issues such as trafficking should be made available in a transparent manner. These data should be made gender specific in order to be able to effectively address the employment of girl children in the worst forms of child labour, prostitution being one of them. Data on the worst forms of child labour and information on policies and time bound programmes for the prevention and elimination of the worst forms of child labour should not fall under any secrecy law or regulation.

As emphasized in Convention 182, underpinning all attempts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour there must be adequate rehabilitation and educational provisions and opportunities, for the most vulnerable children – children in rural areas, children from ethnic minorities and girl children - in particular. Therefore the ICFTU suggests that the Committee of Experts may consider recommending the government to introduce educational opportunities for the children of migrant workers and to improve rural education facilities to prevent children from being employed in any of the worst forms of child labour and to rehabilitate the victims of such employment.

Kindly forward this document to the Committee of Experts for examination during its forthcoming session.

Thank you.

                                                                                           Yours sincerely,

                                                                                         General Secretary

ICFTU