Shoe Struggle Part 2 - Migrant Workers in China
Graphic by Ana Bilokin
Text by Chloe Lalonde for a university class in Human Rights
Migrant workers make up the majority of the population in China, making them one of the largest groups in the world suffering from human rights violations ranging from poor living and working conditions to the lack of accessibility to healthcare and extreme income inequality. Research will show that not only does the Chinese economy depend on migrant workers, but most of the western capitalist world as well. This paper will begin by summarising China’s socio-economic history before exploring the current conditions impacted by the market expansion of 1979, China’s transformation into the ‘world’s factory’ and the harsh reality of living as a migrant worker. We will consider the Chinese government’s policies of non-intervention and opposition to the western officiated, ‘responsibility to protect’, on national and international issues. We will then proceed to consider local, bottom-up intervention of behalf of community-based organisations and other non-governmental organisations such as the Chinese Working Women Network (CWWN). We will conclude by reflecting on how the study of migrant workers in China expands on the understanding and discussion of human rights as a complex, culturally-relative paradox dedicated to liberty, equality and dignity.
Established in 1949 by Communist leader Mao Zedong, the People’s Republic of China underwent many revolutions and policy changes (Li, 2012; and Chan, 2009). But the declaration of the hukou system in 1955 marks the beginning of our chapter. This new system served to register urban and rural households and provide them with the basic necessities of life. However there existed a strong urban/rural divide. Urban households were privileged to more state benefits, while the rural households were essentially left to fend for themselves as the state believed that rural households could sustain themselves on their own, in addition to providing food for urban consumption (Li, 2012). The hukou system was never officially overthrown, although it has changed over the years with ‘macro-socio-economic/political’ reforms and the market expansion of 1979 (Li, 2012; and Chan, 2010). Rural households were not making enough money farming to sustain themselves, allowing rural ‘surplus workers’ to migrate to the city in search for better employment (Li, 2012; and Chan, 2010). The market expansion of 1979 created many jobs but did not improve the urban/rural divide. “Rural migrant labourers are urban labourers carrying rural hukou but who are forced to subsist on wages that are barely enough for workers to make a very minimal living in an urban environment and that certainly fall far below the average urban industrial wage” (Chan, 2010). These workers were labeled ‘temporary’ and did not have the same status as urban citizens and consequently, no benefits (Chan, 2010). No access to affordable healthcare, housing, fair wages, union support and solidarity. Migrant workers are more likely to be injured on the job, employed without contract, paid low wages or by wage arrears and are subject to unpaid or unfairly paid overtime labour (Chan, 2012). Two studies on income related health statuses of migrant workers conclude that the Chinese government should make more of an effort to increase income and health care affordability/accessibility in order to reduce the rural/urban class divide.
“Poor living conditions and inattention to health may make migrants vulnerable to poor long-term health [...] health insurance schemes will remain limited for the foreseeable future, attention should focus on providing affordable health care to both uninsured migrants and the urban poor” (Hesketh, 2008),
“the government should make a substantial effort to strengthen policy implementation in improving the income distribution for vulnerable groups” (Shao, 2016).
However the state appears to make no effort to prevent the locally-induced human rights violations of migrant workers. China holds a relatively conservative approach to foreign policy, committing deeply to non-intervention in international affairs presumably to avoid foreign intervention in its own domestic affairs (Tiewa, 2012).
The “Responsibility to Protect” is one concept adopted by the United Nations and Member States that China refuses to endorse. The concept, as referred to by Liu Tiewa in an article titled China and Responsibility to Protect: Maintenance and Change of Its Policy for Intervention, deems the state responsible to protect its citizens from “catastrophe and starvation” but doesn’t specify to what extent, although according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect,
“The responsibility to protect embodies a political commitment to end the worst forms of violence and persecution. It seeks to narrow the gap between Member States’ pre-existing obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law and the reality faced by populations at risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
Tiewa does not mention the protection of migrant workers rights, but emphasises China’s cautious international presence. Agreeably, in an article titled China’s Non-Intervention Question, Zhongying Pang claims that the Republic, now considered a powerhouse, must “balance its traditional commitments to ‘non-intervention’ with its responsibilities as a great power” and subsequently “uses the principle of ‘non-intervention’ to resist the western intervention into its own domestic politics” (Pang, 2009).
Situations that call for international intervention are those which directly violate International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and pose a threat to national security. The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) allows Member States to question and make recommendations for other Member States, who remain free to accept or reject said advice (Clapham, 2015). The most recent review on Tuesday, October 22 2013, includes questions submitted in advance from several countries, none of which directly question China’s treatment of migrant workers but many Member States ask for updates from “the process and timeframe of the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China signed 15 years ago” (Czech Republic, first amendment). However also in the first amendment, Canada asks what steps China is planning to take to “ensure universal access to health for rural communities (as China accepted this recommendation in 2009 and has made no recorded efforts to achieve this). In response, China has accepted and denied a fair portion of all 252 recommendations but most notably, article 186.39 states the acceptance and prior implementation of human rights education in all levels of training programs for civil servants, while article 186.90 and 186.92 records how China views everyone (women, men, disabled, elderly etc) as equal and “the Labour Law of China stipulates that workers shall not be discriminated on grounds of ethnicity, race, sex and religious beliefs”, this still does not mention the rural-urban class income/wage inequality. Finally articles 186.62 and 186.149 record the acceptance and prior implementation of legal community-based and non-governmental organisations that ‘safeguard others rights and interests in China’ as well as the citizen’s right to freely express themselves in accordance with the law. All in all, these recommendations prove no directly or universally obvious violation of any IHRL and therefore prove no need for international intervention.
Nonetheless, several community-based and non-governmental organisations have been established in hopes to empower workers and create a space for them within urban community divisions (Chan, 2012). Working from the bottom-up, these groups face many challenges, from political pressure and government concern with foreign funding to employer manipulation (Chan, 2012). Different organisations came up with different ‘survival strategies’. The Chinese Working Women Network (funded locally and foreignly) was able to establish the Women Workers Services Center in 1996, “which is generally considered the first labour NGO in the [Pearl River Delta]” (Chan, 2012). The CWWN chose to collaborate with organisations with a clear lawful status, which allowed them to “carry out labour projects under their affiliates’ names, but remain largely independent in terms of actual operations” (Chan, 2012). The second survival strategy is “to register as self-employed, as an independent enterprise or as a limited company, meaning that the organization is no different from a commercial organization in the legal sense, but it is actually a non-profit organization. The third model is to not register at all and keep a low profile” (Chan, 2012). While organisations like CWWN exist, it is usually difficult to mobilise migrant workers. Their living conditions, whether in dormitories or in urban migrant communities are usually manipulated and micro-managed by their employers (Chan, 2009).
In The Making of a New Working Class? A Study of Collective Actions of Migrant Workers in South China, Chris King-Chi Chan and Pun Ngai study multiple strikes and protests which proved to be “a dilemma for the local state”. The workers demands went beyond legal individual/collective migrant workers’ struggle, to which the local government responded by pressuring the factory management to abide by the law and increase the legal minimum wage rate. The independence of the factory management from the state seems to be what causes these human rights violations. Although the factory management is responding to market demands set by the manufacturing companies, who choose to manufacture in China because the wages are much lower there than elsewhere (Morgan, The True Cost, 2015 and Fan, Last Train Home, 2009).
Creating fair wages, while appearing simple, would be one of the biggest systematic challenges the contemporary world has witnessed to date, because it asks for the Western capitalist world to give up fast fashion and it’s steady consumption habits. If factory managers in China were to raise their wages to a ‘fair’ rate, the Western world would probably seek other cheap options, and the Chinese economy would crumble (Li, 2012; and Chan, 2010). The study of migrant workers rights illustrates but a part of the human rights paradox. While the issue is not a question of universality or relativity at its core, we have only briefly mentioned the workers’ freedom of expression in community organisations and factory dormitories and nowhere did we discuss their freedom (or restriction) of religious and cultural practice. We have summarised the issue into its most simple existence - the right to fair wages and accessible healthcare, and even then we do our best to refrain from spiraling into anti-capitalist rants. Steve J. Stern writes,
“when human rights exist, they are always simultaneously global and local [...] human rights are both always and never universal and global. [...] This paradox, we claim, structures human rights. In every human rights situation and in every human rights activist, there will necessarily be mutually constitutive global and local dimensions, and those dimensions will often be in tension.” (2014)
The conflict between Chinese migrant workers, the Chinese government and general socio-economy, factory managers, and Western capitalist demands is a prime example of this universal/global/local paradox surrounding human rights. Violations of human rights is a ‘slippery slope’ when put in context with socio-economic-cultural-historical perspectives. There may seem to be a clear solution, but it is never so absolute. The Western perspective and involvement in IHRL is a looming burden, colonial history and genocide bound to be brought up to disregard human rights as a Western promoted initiative. The nature of human rights is quite possibly everything and nothing and in constant flux and flow with the current state/progression of the world.
Documentaries
True Cost, 2015. Documentary directed by Andrew Morgan
Last Train Home, 2009. Documentary directed by Lixin Fan
United Nations / Human Rights / Office of the High Commissioner
Commitee on Migrant Workers - Monitoring the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CMW/Pages/CMWIndex.aspx
Migration and Human Rights https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Migration/Pages/MigrationAndHumanRightsIndex.aspx
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Migration/SRMigrants/Pages/SRMigrantsIndex.aspx
The United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery- What the Fund is
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Slavery/UNVTFCFS/Pages/WhattheFundis.aspx
Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Slavery/WGSlavery/Pages/WGSlaveryIndex.aspx
Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Slavery/SRSlavery/Pages/SRSlaveryIndex.aspx
Universal Periodic Review - China
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/CNIndex.aspx
Academic References
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Chan, C. K. C. (2012). Community-based organizations for migrant workers' rights: the emergence of labour NGOs in China. Community Development Journal, 48(1), 6-22.
Chan, C. K. C., & Ngai, P. (2009). The making of a new working class? A study of collective actions of migrant workers in South China. The China Quarterly, 198, 287-303.
Chan, K. W. (2010). The global financial crisis and migrant workers in China: ‘There is no future as a labourer; returning to the village has no meaning’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(3), 659-677.
Clapham, A. (2015). Human rights: a very short introduction. OUP Oxford.
Dembour, M. What Are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought. Human Rights Quarterly, 32(1), 1-20. 2010.
Doyle, M. W. (2009). A Few Words on Mill, Walzer, and Nonintervention. Ethics & International Affairs, 23(4), 349-369. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7093.2009.00228.x
Fagan, A. (2017). Human rights and Cultural Diversity: Core Issues and Cases, Edinburgh University Press.
Hesketh, T., Jun, Y. X., Lu, L., & Mei, W. H. (2008). Health status and access to health care of migrant workers in China. Public health reports, 123(2), 189-197.
Li, P., & Li, X. (2012). Migrant workers in China. International perspectives: Integration and inclusion, 111-125.
Michael, L. Defining Dignity and Its Place in Human Rights, The New Bioethics, 20:1, 12-34. 2014.
Mill, J. S. (1859). A Few Words on Non-Intervention. Fraser's magazine, 60(360), 766-776.
Morgan, R; Turner, BS. Interpreting Human Rights: Social Science Perspectives. New York, NT: Routledge; 2009.
Pang, Z. (2009). China's non-intervention question. Global responsibility to protect, 1(2), 237-252.
Parekh, S. A meaningful place in the world: Hannah Arendt on the nature of human rights, Journal of Human Rights, 3:1, 41-52. 2004.
Shao, C., Meng, X., Cui, S., Wang, J., & Li, C. (2016). Original Article: Income-related health inequality of migrant workers in China and its decomposition: An analysis based on the 2012 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey data. Journal Of The Chinese Medical Association, 79531-537.
Stern, SJ; Strauss, S. The Human Rights Paradox. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press; 2014.
Tiewa, L. (2012). China and responsibility to protect: maintenance and change of its policy for intervention. The Pacific Review, 25(1), 153-173.
