At a Fudan University Medical School class about AIDs and Infectious Diseases, a volunteer Doctor shows up with a former female sex worker (hereafter fFSW) to do a presentation on NGO type work going on in Dalian to support the sex worker community, helping them with instruction for HIV prevention and access medical care / some legal recourse if they are, say, beaten by their employer. There are double standards with regards to gender everywhere but they seem more pronounced, for whatever reasons, here in China. [I once swore never to write about titillating topics but there are serious issues here.] At the end of the class, the two presenters split up, the Doctor offers to show the med students what sort of workshops they run for FSWs, which includes instruction for how to use a condom. The fFSW moves off to the side to field questions from the med students.

What happens next is a microcosm of the curious sort of schizophrenia that seems to dictate attitudes towards sex on the mainland. The seven or so people that engage the fFSW proceed to calmly explainproselytize how she can ‘change her life by going to school, and she doesn’t need to feel guilty or ashamed.’ The 40 some other students rush up to the demonstration table, and giggle away with condoms and eggplants (remind, these are 25-30 year old med students. See here for more on this topic).

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Sort of related topics: every few days one of the local papers will carry a story about a child drowning to death or being hit by a car while crossing the street. Each time, the article will say “the child’s parents were working nearby…” Even this NYT article profiling child abduction in Shenzhen carries the same line:

Peng Gaofeng was busy with customers when a man snatched his 4-year-old son from the plaza in front of his shop as throngs of factory workers enjoyed a spring evening. “I turned away for a minute, and when I called out for him he was gone,” Mr. Peng said.

Evidence from interviews conducted here suggests that these cases are almost always migrant children – primarily because their parents are too busy working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week; and they have not been [brainwashed] with basic safety knowledge. Thinking back to how many times my parents drilled “look both ways, memorize your phone number, you will begin practicing swimming when you are six months old” I begin to see how ubiquitous this is in Western culture. Urban Chinese are not dissimilar, though probably take more risks with their children than would your average American.

It’s not that migrants don’t care about their children – they certainly do – but rural lifestyle perhaps doesn’t inculcate these same values. As one person explained: “In the countryside, we know everyone. They watch out for our kids. There’s no traffic there. There’s nowhere to swim. A lot of people just don’t think it’s going to be different in the city.”

Another interesting phenomenon relating to youth culture is the extent to which concerns about internet addiction are present in common discourse. Tricia Wang, a PhD student at UCSD, hypothesizes that internet cafes can serve as a form of child care for the aforementioned migrant parents with too little free time:

I suspect that internet cafes are a form of an after-school program for the kids – the parents feel comfortable knowing that they are in one place. I also suspect that the youth do not know how to use the internet for educational purposes – or more so are their educational resources in China for students? Must find that out.

This makes sense. So why are the other half of urban parents deathly afraid of internet addiction that they will send their children to ‘recovery camps’ that utilize electro-therapy? (“I just want to check my email *buzz* no wait I need to level a little in WoW *buzz* please I just want to update my status!” *buzz buzz buzz* – actually the electrotherapy was recently banned. Still. Seriously.) So why don’t people in the U.S. talk about internet addiction? I’m pretty sure that if you took away the laptop, in about six hours flat, I’d be writhing on the floor clutching at phantom keys in a desperate attempt to imagine my way back into connectivity. If that doesn’t count as addiction, not sure what does.

Jin Ge, a videographer from Shanghai who profiled WoW goldfarming explained to me that: “For parents with the time and money, they are worried about every sort of behavioral ‘defect’ their child might have. The common conception here is that these things can be ‘cured’ with things like electrotherapy. There might be internet addiction in the U.S., but parents think differently about it / deal with it differently.”

Additionally, many Chinese internet users will spent a lot of time in public internet cafes, whereas the majority of Americans, I would assume, are comfortably “addicted” on a personal computer in their parent’s basement. University students will often just sleep in the internet cafe, since most dormitories have curfews of around 11:00 / 12:00. As a result, a lot of these behaviors are more observable, especially the all-nighters and subsequent zombie flash mob-esque walks of shame back into campus.

There also seems to be some credibility to the notion that escapism is more attractive here due to greater amounts of alienation. Again, to use a tired U.S. / China comparison, I found myself being beginning to live independent of my parents at 17/18, whereas your average Chinese student will be wholly dependent until they are 22/23 – this seemed fine until a classmate (this guy is 21 years old) said that he still “sleeps with his parents when I go home on vacation because it makes me feel safe.” Your average upwardly mobile Chinese youngster also goes from being an only child, and then thrust into a university setting where s/he has 7 roommates. The feeling of being alone – even surrounded by others in an internet cafe – is probably a very powerful draw for these students.

Regardless, these issues warrant more exploration and attention – especially the promotion of basic safety knowledge among migrant children (that seems like a very low cost high return type activity), and providing constructive (or at least non-destructive?) extra-curricular activities for migrant children.

After conducting a lot of interviews in late December, Jan, February, and early March, I became despondent when I didn’t really find anything new or juicy. A lot of the information I was finding seemed like it could have come from research books on the topic of migrant workers. A lot of the stories were the same – ‘been here for 8 years, life sucks, but I do it because I can earn more money… Things are getting better over time…’

Recently, I’ve started doing these interviews in earnest again. Previously, I had been giving out bottles of water, and / or small payments to compensate people for their time. Instead I now use: cigarettes. Though always aware of the ubiquitous nature cigarettes play in social interactions (among men), I had avoided using them due to some ingrained yuppie aversion to the negative health effects of smoking. I should have been using them all along – they open people up very quickly – or rather, put people at ease, and make the conversation seem much more natural. So, if you’re doing any sort of social research in China, always carry cigarettes around, and give them out liberally.

Thinking more generally about China, recently, the longer I stay here the more I realize how inaccessible ‘China’ as an entity is purely due to its size. China’s floating population is larger than most national populations. Heck, China’s total population’s margin of error is larger than most national populations. China’s recent experience, in the last several decades, is so unique that it’s impossible to find any simplifying historical analogies that do justice to the complexity of reality.

So, how to address it, from either a professional or academic perspective? Limit your question(s), either in terms of scope or geography. Even the most insignificant issue will rapidly balloon into something inaccessible. This was a mistake I made at the beginning, and have only recently begun to refine.

Hangzhou’s migrant workers differ markedly from those in Wuhan both in terms of salaries, and industries that they are employed in. This is unsurprising – Hangzhou’s GDP / capita is approximately ~70,000RMB, almost twice as much as Wuhan’s (~40,000RMB). In Hangzhou, migrants are employed in jobs slightly higher in the wage chain (notably, tourism – taxi and bus drivers, masseuses, cooks…) Locals tend to occupy higher wage positions – the same pattern is true in Wuhan, but much less pronounced, due to a fewer relative number of high wage opportunities.

One of the biggest problem that faces migrants everywhere in China is that of delayed or unpaid wages. Either as a result rapacious bosses, or problems with payment systems (for example, it is common for construction projects to begin before complete financing has been secured), many migrants have at one time or another been faced with illegally garnished or held wages.  This has been as much a problem of enforceable contracts (often employees simply weren’t given any – I’m told the situation has improved) and with the knowledge of, and means to proper legal recourse.

Hangzhou is notable among mid/small cities in China in being fairly proactive towards issues of migrant labor. Here’s an unsurprisingly glowing report about Hangzhou’s naturalization policies towards migrants, from 2005. Hangzhou also has a fairly well developed ‘account prepayment’ regulatory system, whereby firms employing migrants must pre-furnish a bank account to automatically pay out to migrants in the event of financial difficulties for the firm.

Such wage payment schemes were first introduced in the Pearl River Delta. Mandating ‘reserve salary accounts’ for firms may discourage investment that might otherwise take place, since operating costs are higher (commensurate with however secure local officials want workers to be). This argument, however, ignores whatever path dependency the migrants themselves might be engaged in. To the extent that migrants count on having a particular job, there are certain sunk costs in travel and arranging their households while they are away, which most commonly means renting out whatever agricultural land they have. These sorts of commitments would seem to make short term transitions more difficult – if you’re pay is getting garnished, you could return home (and do nothing on your rented farm), or remain in the city hoping your garnished wages will come to you. If you’re laid off, better to find almost any job than return home to idle.

These costs are likely more significant when migrants come from a greater distance, as is the case in wealthier cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai, where labor needs are greater than the local populace can support. In Wuhan, the vast majority (87%) of migrant laborers come from within Hubei province, and many are seasonal rather than year round, and as such do not rent out their land, or if they do, do it for shorter terms (3-6 months) rather than a full year.*

Conjecture: it makes sense that more prosperous cities have more rigorous rules on wage prepayment schemes – the firms that are entering these areas are more likely to be able to afford it, and labor tends to be much less fluid insofar as it is more difficult for these migrants to find profitable means to return home.

The effectiveness of wage prepayment laws for firms employing migrants therefore would seem highly dependent upon the particular context, with special consideration for labor mobility in that area. To the extent they help, they provide a context wherein workers can be assured of wages, and thus better form long-term plans; but also introduce a barrier in the form of higher costs to firms seeking to employ them.

Whether these systems can be easily exported from 1st tier cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou to poorer, developing areas is a very relevant question, and one that (so far as I’m aware) there is sufficient, available data to address. More inquiry required.

* From 民权与民生：中国农民权益实证调查，一西安 ：西北大学出版社，2008.5 （中国农村调查书系）

So I’m going to a conference. Here’s my ‘excerpt.’ Probably need more content. Someone give me some conclusions, fast:

My field research consists of recorded verbal interviews with migrant workers in Wuhan, and focuses on the relationship between national level policy reform with actual on-the-ground enforcement of these rules. So far results are inconclusive. Of particular interest are China’s recently implemented Rural Land Reforms and Labor Contract Law Reforms. The former, implemented at the beginning of the financial crisis, seeks to formalize de-facto land right usage arrangements that migrants use when moving into cities. My understanding is that the policy is little more than tacit acknowledgment of urbanization trends already well underway within China. The Labor Contract Reform Law, implemented at the beginning of 2008, seeks to provide numerous classes of workers with additional rights in the event of a labor dispute. Amid a worsening job situation, there is considerable anecdotal evidence that authorities are being told to look the other way during these disputes. 

The original research proposal sought to document case studies of employee-employer disputes, although thus far I have not had the opportunity to explore this issue given the sensitivity of such topics. Any advice for how / whom to approach would be appreciated. By the end of the grant, my hope is to be able to elucidate some of the interactions of these complex forces as they relate to China’s urbanization and demographic shifts. 

ChinaSMACK has a post about charities giving train tickets to migrants to head home for the Spring Festival (this year starting January 26, but people here have already started leaving). Not quite sure what I’ll do for those two weeks – probably background reading. Here are some migrants, in Hankou:

Does crisis provide an opportunity and impetus for reform, or instead encourage reactionary tendencies to preserve security and the status quo? This obviously depends on the particulars – but there’s growing evidence that the financial crisis is stifling efforts to implement land and labor contract reform in China.

With regards to the latter, this Southern Weekly article (劳动合同法期待完善 ”Hopes for Perfecting Labor Contract Law”) describes how loopholes in China’s Labor Contract Law (implemented  Jan 1, 2008) are being exploited by “dispatch companies” (派遣公司 – essentially a large temp agency). These institutions can skirt many of the provisions of the new law, since (by the terms of the law) there exists no direct relationship between dispatch company employees and the main employer. If the problems get out of hand, the dispatch company can simply shut-down, and the original employer seek another such entity to provide labor.

The Labor Contract Law allows workers to seek legal redress for grievances against their employers, which had previously been much more difficult. This is most commonly pursued for delay or non-payment of salary, but also addresses numerous other worker rights issues. Chinalawblog has an excellent overview here and here. 

Prior to implementation, it was widely regarded that the new laws would increase labor costs, potentially making low-skill industries more expensive than other export dependent countries. This fit well with China’s long-term strategy: move up the value chain, a la Singapore. There was at the time, however, no acknowledgment of the financial crisis, and (especially in China) its potential effects on the “real” economy. From the Southern Weekly article: 

As of October 2008, upon being impacted by the international financial crisis, the woes of domestic enterprises continued to increase. Cases of employers delaying salary payments were even higher, as well as an increase in cases where employers failed to meet their contributions to social security payments. In some areas, there have even been instances of enterprises shutting down, and their bosses [illegally] fleeing elsewhere. Instances of labor disputes have increased rapidly.

Perfection of [the problematic] legal clauses is imminent, but this economic winter has caused policy makers to be filled with misgivings [about further reforms].

2008年10月份以来，受国际金融危机影响，国内企业经营困难加剧，企业欠薪情况增多，企业足额缴纳社会保险费的难度加大，有的地方还发生企业主欠薪逃匿事件，劳动争议案件大幅上升。

法律条款的完善迫在眉睫，但这个经济冬天的现实却让决策者畏首畏尾。

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