China, land of 1.3 billion, is short of
labor
By Yao Yuan
HONG KONG - It's hard
to imagine a labor shortage in China, but there is. With
120 million "farmer workers" having migrated to the
cities, and at least 300 million more expected to follow
them by 2020, many rural areas are desperately short of
labor. Ironically, the unskilled migrants find
themselves unemployed in the cities, where there is an
unsatisfied demand for skilled workers.
China used to bask in its abundant and
cheap labor, a key factor making it the "world's
factory" with 1.3 billion people. No longer. For the first
time in 20 years, China is experiencing an
acute shortage of floating former farm workers, "farmer workers",
who become urban migrants, many unemployed. Life in the
cities isn't much better than life in the countryside
for most.
The reasons: rising and
unrealistic expectations of a better life, lack of opportunities
in the countryside, lack of factory skills and
resentment of exploitation, especially in the cities.
And that leaves some rural areas without adequate labor,
as workers migrate to overcrowded cities in search of
opportunities. So there's a huge pool of floating labor,
unemployed and disgruntled.
On the face of it,
the booming national economy would seem to be demanding
more labor than the country can provide. But the reason
is that an increasing number of farmer workers, at the
bottom rung of the employment ladder, have had enough
exploitation by employers. Therefore, efforts should be
redoubled to ensure the welfare of those workers so as
to sustain the labor supply and the economic boom, human
resources experts and economists point out.
Agriculture has been a lagging for many years in
the countryˇŻs modernization process, which in effect
attaches the utmost priority to industrial and
commercial development. After the first influx of
foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, redundant
farmers and rural workers moved into towns or cities to
sell their labor for a pittance and became what people
now call farmer workers - after they found there was not
enough cropland to enable them to subsist. So they are
neither farmers, nor are they workers.
According to China
Daily, there are currently about 120 million migrant laborers
in China. It is estimated that another 300 million
to 350 million migrant workers will have relocated
to urban areas by 2020. That's more than the population
of the entire United States, and about one-quarter of the
population of China.
For the past few years,
seeking to control the chaotic swarm of job-seekers from
dull rural areas into boom towns during and after
ChinaˇŻs traditional Spring Festival, Chinese authorities
warned against the blind optimism of job hunting. These
warnings fell on deaf ears because disgruntled ex-farm
workers were determined to try their luck in developed
cities. Thus the migrant worker population has been
snowballing.
Reports: World's factory short
of workers
However, numerous reports this year
allege that China, often called "the world's factory",
is suffering a massive scarcity of farmer workers,
especially in the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian,
Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan. In the Pearl River Delta, a
main venue of FDI in Guangdong province, the huge influx
of farmer workers commonly seen in the previous years
has disappeared, while manufacturers are complaining
about their urgent need for skilled workers. Statistics
show that the processing and manufacturing industry in
the Pearl River Delta is short of two million workers,
and Dongguan city alone (in Guangdong province) in the
delta accounts for half of that figure.
Over the
past few years, Dongguan has developed as a gargantuan
carrier of workshop clusters. The local Labor Bureau
released a survey in February, indicating the manpower
shortfall at 230,000 employees. The official figure was
then diminished in March to somewhere between 60,000 and
70,000. Yet some news media made further investigations
and shrugged off the understated statistics, claiming
that the factories around Dongguan are still in want of
more than one million workers, and two million at least
for the whole Pearl River Delta.
On the
other hand, the authorities insist on their own
calculation. On July 8, Dongguan Labor Bureau chief Mo Haiming, in
a symposium with foreign investors, rebutted
the "exaggeration" by the media, fixing the shortall
number at 20,000 only. It can be presumed that the 20,000
is still acceptable to such a labor-intensive
enterprise center as Dongguan, while the 1 million figure would
likely sound a danger alarm.
Leaving the numbers
controversy aside, what discourages the massive exodus
of rural labor from city work comes into the
spotlight.The press ascribe it to execrable working
conditions, unfavorable salaries, unprotected legal
rights, etc. The farmer workers have learned to say "no"
to unfair treatment, according to media reports, even if
that means no work or the underground economy.
That explanation has finally gained widespread
recognition in China. Admittedly, farmer workers - the
floating or migrant workers - have long been the poorest
laborers who eke out a living in labor-intensive,
high-overtime and ill-paying jobs in vile working
conditions. But they are not given the respect or care
that they deserve; they often have to wait long after
their scheduled pay day to get their belated salaries.
Now, the burgeoning labor shortage has reminded
the country - which powers its economy through the
efforts of the working class, be they peasants, factory
workers or farmer workers - of the interests and
well-being of the migrant workers who have been
neglected for two decades. In fact, some enterprises in
pressing need of labor have adopted measures to retain
the workers, such as raising salaries, improving working
conditions, promising to protect their legal rights, and
so on.
The
Dongguan Labor Bureau is planning to raise the minimum
salary standard above 450 yuan (US$54) per month and to
set up complaint hotlines to supervise the enforcement
of labor laws. In Zhejiang province's Suzhou city, the
salary threshold has been lifted from 540 yuan to 620
yuan since July.
It takes more that a meager
pay raise
But these measures will not herald the
dawn of a better life for the floating workers. First,
it is difficult to ensure that government policies - to
raise salaries, for example - are strictly implemented,
because submitting false reports is a common practice
among non-government-funded enterprises. For instance,
employers often understate the staff total in order to
dodge full payment of taxes.
Second,
the manpower shortage mainly breaks out in
labor-intensive enterprises along the country's coastline. In
Dongguan city, the majority of enterprises are highly
demanding and less profitable investments shifted from
Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan because wages in China
are much lower, in some cases one-tenth the wages in other
countries. With a view to the low profit margin, the
investors would rather relocate their factories or
workshops to regions offering cheaper labor costs than
hike the salaries and trim the profits.
"There
will be some factories trying to retain skilled workers,
but the seeming manpower undersupply will not bring
about fundamental changes to workers' welfare
situation," concludes Dr Liu Kaiming, executive director
of the Institute of Contemporary Observation.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
