Globalisation

A brief overview of labour export from China: A growth industry under WTO rules?(1)

While capital has been flowing both in and out of China at an extraordinary rate, external migration of labour has been increasing at a more pedestrian but nevertheless significant rate - WTO rules will further facilitate this trend.

History and Development

In the context of China, migrant labour is almost always taken to refer to the colossal and ongoing labour migration within the country's borders. China's economic reforms have led to the largest rural-urban migration in history as “surplus” labour from the countryside moves to off-farm jobs in towns and cities. While millions travel thousands of miles to the rich east-coast cities – covering distances easily as far as many migrants who go abroad to work – the majority travel no further than a bordering province. Figures vary, but government statistics put the number of internal migrants at anywhere between 100 million and 120 million. Unofficial figures go as high as 150 million.

The movement and conditions of China's nong mingong or rural workers is well-documented. Much less is known about the rising numbers of Chinese who are taking advantage of the recent “depoliticisation” (see below) of external migration and leaving China to look for work. Until quite recently, China's borders were not subject to regular passport control and to all intents and purposes closed to anyone wishing to leave, either for work or to seek political asylum. Equally, migration into China was almost non-existent until the early 1980s. Between 1949 and 1990, most of the people coming into China were fleeing political persecution in the central Asian areas of the former USSR or were refugees from the Korean and Vietnam wars.

But the last ten years has seen a substantial increase in cross-border migration between Yunnan province in southwest China, Burma, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, in an area known as the Mekong region. Not all of this movement is voluntary and a substantial number of the migrants leaving and arriving in Yunnan are victims of human trafficking – up to 10,000 a year, according to some estimates. In the north of China, the signing of the Shanghai Co-operation Agreement (SCO) in 2000 between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and China is ostensibly aimed at countering US influence in the region. There are no publicly available statistics as yet, but the SCO is likely to increase migration between the former Soviet states and China. There has also been a steady migration from the coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong in south China to Europe and America since the early 1980s.

The term “depoliticisation” employed above is meant to explain the effect that the profound shifts in the organisation of the Chinese economy have had on migration out of the country. Since “opening up”, the Chinese government no longer regards leaving China in search of work as an act of traitorous betrayal ( pantao ). Unemployment has been recognised as a problem and the exporting of labour abroad is seen as one of the solutions. People still leave China for rights-related reasons, but the overwhelming majority now leave for the “neutral” reasons of education and work. Many are deeply disappointed:

I came to work in Hong Kong illegally, back in 1995. Then I got married to a local guy and now I work as a teacher. But it's freelance work because the Hong Kong government doesn't recognise my qualifications so I can't work in a school. When I phone my old classmates back home, they are all better off than me now. I regret coming here. (2)

The legal framework regulating external migration in China is based on the already out-of date 1985 Emigration Law. With four different types of passport it could also be described as overly bureaucratic. Exit control is the responsibility of customs, but the channels for gaining a passport are complex and varied and there are still 57 institutes in China that have the right to issue a passport. Even so, most people don't have one.

Reforms agreed as part of China's entry into the WTO mean that the government is now c ommitted to international practice and by 2005 all citizens in cities and larger urban towns will be able to apply for a passport simply by presenting their ID Cards and residence papers to the Public Security Bureau. A pilot project was introduced in Guangdong in 2002 with this simplification in mind. Up to 20 administrative procedures were cut and in theory a resident of Guangdong province can obtain a passport within three working days. The lack of integration has facilitated migration out of China in search of work.

Important to the political and legal framework for migration out of China is the fact that this activity is sometimes regarded as an integral part of overall economic development at the provincial level and as such the central government's regulations and policies may be ignored. If central government policies are deemed unsuitable to local conditions in a border province, then ways will be found of “getting around” them. The overall weakening of government authority in general, along with the rise of organised crime and corrupt practices by officials, has facilitated both undocumented migration and trafficking. There are villages in Yunnan province, where a culture of migration and goods smuggling has established itself and the “smuggling of goods and irregular emigration are sometimes regarded as a local development strategy and are, therefore, accorded a certain degree of legitimacy”. (3) While agricultural reform has helped to raise the overall living standards in the Chinese countryside, a lack of infrastructure such as roads and markets means that farmers in more remote areas have few outlets through which they can sell their produce. For this reason, large numbers of men and women farmers in the southern regions of Yunnan head for work on Thailand's construction sites, in factories and brothels.

Statistics

There are no reliable, publicly available, overall figures and the following figures have been culled from various government papers and media. Students, traders and workers head out of China to over 180 different regions and countries. The major sources of migrants are the provinces of Guangdong and Yunnan in the south, Zhejiang and Fujian in the east, which have a long history of migration, and the three northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. In 2001 Yunnan province issued the highest number of passports after Guangdong, Shanghai, Fujian and Zhejiang. The chief destinations were the US, Europe and the Middle East. In 2002, the number of legal migrant workers was statistically less than one percent of the total working population. Obviously this figure does not include the large numbers of undocumented workers. According to the National Bureau of Statistics there were 380,000 contracted overseas workers in 2000. This figure only includes those working on set projects.

Chinese migration to Europe attracts a deal of media attention even though the numbers involved are relatively small compared to other ethnic groups. The number of Chinese mainland migrants legally living in Europe in 2000/2001 was only 200,000 compared to over 40,000 Chinese migrants who left for Canada in 2001 alone. In 2001 the Chinese and Russian government signed the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship, Neighbourliness and Co-operation, which further increased fears of some Russian citizens in the far east of the country concerning Chinese migration from the three aforementioned northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. However, in October 2001, the Russian Foreign Minister – in an attempt to address Russian concerns of being “swamped” by Chinese migrants – noted there were just 200,000 Chinese living in Russia compared to six million in the US. Migration from China's northeast – which borders Russia – is driven by the restructuring of state-owned industries that has put millions out of work. Adding to the livelihood crisis there has been a fall in crop prices, especially soya beans, resulting from the increased access to agricultural markets by foreign producers. Many workers and farmers head north to work in Russia's Siberian cities, although some also go on through illegal channels to Europe.

Turnover of overseas contract projects and workers involved (US$ billions)

Source: National Bureau of Statistics quoted in
Xiang Biao, “Emigration from China: A sending country perspective”.

Exporting Workers

The export of labour out of China is proving to be a growth industry. In 2002 there were at least 48 companies licensed to export workers. These included factory workers in Saipan, computer technicians usually to Europe and the US, cooks and service workers to Germany and construction workers to Israel. The figures of the number of workers being exported seriously underestimate the reality. For example, in 2002 there were at least 25,000 Chinese migrant workers in Israel but only 8,000 were registered with the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv, (4) despite the fact that there are 28 Chinese labour agencies operating in Israel. Throughout 2002, a plane left Beijing International Airport every Wednesday night carrying construction workers and their Israeli minders to Israel. Employers across the Middle East often refer to their “diligent and hard-working Chinese workers”. For Chinese migrants who land the jobs they are promised, the trip to Jordan or Israel can pay off. Most contracts are for two years and the minimum going rate is US$740 per month for the 6,200 Chinese migrants in Jordan and up to US$1,000 in Israel. Most workers in Jordan are employed in garment factories owned by Hong Kong or Taiwan companies, while in Israel construction work is the main source of work for the 30,000 illegal and legal migrant workers from China. Even for the 8,000 registered workers, accommodation usually comes in the form of a corrugated shed with limited running water and intermittent electricity. Language problems rule out any but the bare minimum of contact with local people and disputes with bosses often end with dismissal. For the many undocumented and therefore illegal migrants, there is a constant fear of discovery. Even when Chinese migrant builders where hurt in a bomb attack in Tel Aviv, the majority of those injured did not seek treatment in hospital despite assurances from the police of a temporary amnesty.

There are two legal avenues of labour export from China. The first is project based, a hangover from aid projects in the 1970s when state-owned companies would send workers to other developing countries such as Bangladesh and Tanzania. These projects have become profit-orientated since the reforms and had generated revenue of over US$11 billion by 1998. The second channel is via companies specialising in exporting migrants overseas to work, usually in construction, but also in sewing, agriculture, cooking, medical services and as mechanics and seamen. The chief destinations are East Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, North America, the Gulf and Europe. The experience of many of these workers is often – but by no means always – negative.

South Korean textile factory workers demonstrate - demanding the legal minimum wage.

The 280 workers were receiving as little as their counterpart workers in the company's subsidiary factory in China, where the cost of living is considerably lower than in South Korea. The workers had transferred from the company's factory in Qingdao city, Shandong province. In that factory there are approximately 1,000 Chinese workers who receive around US$42 per month, the Shandong provincial minimum wage. Many believed they could earn ten times that amount if they transferred to the factory in Korea and therefore agreed to put down 29 months' salary as a deposit for the transferral. On arriving in Korea, the 280 workers found themselves classed as “trainees”, which gives the boss the right to pay less than the minimum wage. Bosses frequently make use of a legal loophole in Korean law that allows them to ratchet up the rate of exploitation of migrant labour by classing them as “trainees” and saving up to 90 percent on wage payments.

Adapted from Asian Labour Update , “Legal exploitation of migrants in South Korea”, Issue 42, 2002.

Non-payment of wages is a common tactic by employers of migrant workers and can lead to extreme situations. For example, 200 women workers from Shandong province in China who were working in a clothes factory in the Pacific Islands barricaded themselves in a nearby restaurant. They took a hostage as part of an attempt to get the back pay owed to them after the manager of their factory declared bankruptcy and fled. They were owed a total of US$600,000 in wages, as well as a return ticket home stipulated in their contract. Police stormed the restaurant and then locked them up in the factory itself as the local prison was full. (5)

Although infrequently reported, cases of women being lured abroad into jobs as waitresses and then forced into prostitution are common. An official at the Public Services and Complaints department in Malaysia claimed he had personally lent money for airfares to 23 women in the month of December 2002 alone. (6) The women had escaped from a brothel in Kuala Lumpur after signing up as waitresses or dancers to human traffickers posing as labour export agents.

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Footnotes:

(1) This report taken from the 2004 IHLO report produced for the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions; CHINESE LABOUR AND THE WTO

(2) Interview with a migrant worker 2002

(3) Xiang Biao, “Emigration from China: A sending country perspective”, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Published by Blackwell, 2003.

(4) “Zhongguo laogong haiwai shengcun zhuangtai The condition of China's overseas workers”, Fengfeng Weekly, Issue 15, 2003, p48.

(5) See: Asian Migrant Yearbook 2002 – 2003. Paper on China by Tim Pringle on Chinese migrants for publication by Hong Kong-based Asian Migrant Centre in spring 2004.

(6) The Star , (Malaysia) “Girls now under embassy care”, January 7, 2003.