Driven by poverty, China's coal miners risk all
By Candy Zeng
SHENZHEN - China's rate of fatalities per ton of coal mined in 2005 was 70
times as bad as in the United States and seven times as high as in Russia or
India. The Chinese government renews its efforts to curb fatal coal-mine
accidents every year, but in vain. So why do Chinese keep going down in the
mines?
In March 2005, 10 undergraduate students of Hunan Normal University began a
survey on the coal miners in Hunan, a coal-producing province in central China,
to find out why. They were
motivated by ceaseless reports of coal-mine accidents, which drove them to know
more about that special group: coal miners who risk their lives every day deep
underground.
Coal-mine accidents killed 4,746 people in China in 2006. Already this year,
from March 1 to April 19, 204 people were killed or missing in mine accidents,
Li Yizhong, minister in charge of the State Administration of Work Safety, said
at a recent national meeting on coal-mine and gas management in Chongqing
municipality in southwestern China.
Quite a few of the interviewees, who earn only 1,000-2,000 yuan (US$130-260)
monthly with barely any other benefits, said they were content with their
current position. As to possible fatal accidents underground, many just
shrugged off questions from the students, saying they were used to accidents.
"Injury or death is inevitable to us miners. It is just a matter of luck and
whose turn it is. As time passes by, I have nothing on my mind but digging out
more coal to get more money," coal miner Xiao Zhihai, 47, told the student
investigators, China Youth Daily reported.
Cao Yu, one of the survey initiators, wrote in his blog: "Life or money? It
seems a dilemma to people who have to work at the risk of life, but the answers
given out by those miners are too simple to believe."
For two years, his team interviewed 545 workers in privately owned mines across
Hunan province. "As coal mines are quite similar in China, I think the workers'
conditions in Hunan reflect the whole picture of China," Cao wrote in an
introduction to the survey on his blog.
"With the help of local miners, we visited more than 30 mines in four cities or
counties. We have been expelled, threatened and even detained by mine owners
and had out cameras confiscated. But we didn't give up, holding the belief that
the country and the society are on our side," he wrote.
The 20,000-character report, "On Factors Affecting Psychological Safety of
Human Miners and Strategies for Improvement", caught the attention of a
political adviser to the government and was finally sent to the desk of Li
Yizhong, the country's top work-safety official, in March.
The research indicates that most miners have a family of four or more members.
They have to work underground for six, seven or even more than 10 hours every
day. Some of them also have to farm while working for the mines.
The miners are content with the risky work because of the relatively high
payment of 2,000 yuan each month, which is equivalent to the earnings of six
months or even a whole year for a typical farmer.
They are upset with accidents not only because they take the lives of their
co-workers but also because they halt production and reduce income.
The financial burden, or rather the instinct of survival, is not the only
reason driving them underground. The survey shows that most of the workers are
poorly educated and low-skilled. They have no other choices to make a better
living.
According to the survey, 82% of the miners interviewed have less than a
high-school education, 62% have no occupational skills, and 48% cannot find
other jobs.
Some of them are illiterate, who can't write their names and have to press a
fingerprint on to the payroll. The world outside the coal fields seems unknown
to many of them. Some have no idea of what a cinema or car is. When asked for a
comment on his current job, a 22-year-old worker said everything is fine as
long as the country is still ruled by Chairman Mao, referring to the Communist
Party leader Mao Zedong who died in 1976.
What disturbs the workers more may be the compensation-distribution system,
which 52.6% of the workers regard as "unfair". Most frequently, the mine owners
cash in tens of thousands or even millions of yuan annually, while the
less-at-risk management staff earn double the monthly income of the workers.
The higher class is not at ease with the situation, either. A mine manager said
he always fears that a simple-minded worker will do something stupid at the
expense of his life. "The new Audi bought by our boss was scratched by somebody
a couple of days ago, and other managers here were in fear," said the manager,
surnamed Yang.
Strained labor relations were a result of abuse of workers' rights by owners
and evasion of obligations in the colliery industry. Among the interviewed
workers, 72% didn't sign an employment contract, 53% were not paid for
overtime, and 47% were not covered by social insurance and work-injury
insurance.
For historical reasons, the workers are divided into "formal" workers and
farmers-turned-workers, with the latter allowed lower pay and benefits. As many
as 89% of the farmer-workers are not included in any social-insurance or
work-injury-insurance schemes.
Li Chengyu, governor of Henan, China's most populous province, openly
criticized county and township officials who failed to supervise the mines for
fear that the closures would dent local GDP (gross domestic product) growth and
government revenue.
In China, there were 23 million farmers earning less than the poverty-line
standard of 683 yuan per head annually and 41 million earning an annual income
ranged from 686-944 yuan in 2005. If calculated by the United Nations poverty
standard of $1 per day, the impoverished population in China amounted to 212
million in 2001, accounting for 16.6% of the total population. The poverty rate
was reduced to 10% in 2004, with the total ranking second-largest in the world
after India, according to the UN standard.
Despite China's obvious achievements in countering poverty in general, a bitter
fact emerges that the earning growth of the low-income group lagged behind the
high-income group in recent years, according to Professor Zheng Bingwen of
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a researcher on Latin America.
"In Latin America, the poverty rates were rising, while the GDP per capita
climbed to $3,000. It sets an alarm for China to prevent enlarged poverty
during economic growth," said Zheng. Poverty and inequality in different
regions and different groups of people will have negative impact on China's
social development, he said.
Candy Zeng is a freelance journalist based in Shenzhen.
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