The reform and opening-up policies that started in 1979 have
helped coin many new phrases in contemporary Chinese
vocabulary.
One phrase, now appearing in major news media almost daily, is
mingong, which means rural workers.
Until the early 1980s, few Chinese would think of venturing away
from their homes in search of work.
Rural folks had land to till in the "people's communes" and later,
rural factories to join.
In the cities, the food and clothing were rationed, housing was
limited and jobs were assigned.
Urban resources - from kindergartens, primary and middle schools to
stores for grocery, grain and clothing - were allocated according
to the number of urban residents registered in the cities.
But under the planned economy, urban centers exercised extreme
caution in urban population expansion.
This meant it was hard for anyone to live in a city without
registering there.
As a result, few would shake off their urban roots to settle
anywhere else, except for the best and brightest young rural and
urban college graduates, who found other opportunities to
move.
Once the new policies had been operating for a few years, the
economy in eastern regions and large cities developed so quickly
that there was a shortage of laborers in the middle, especially in
the late 1980s.
Businesses in cities began to recruit new workers from the
countryside.
But as the idea of the market economy gained momentum, businesses
got around the conventional norms of the planned economy, even
though urban centers were still managed with the idea of
controlling its population.
Because there was a surplus of workers in the limited Chinese
countryside, farmers began to flow into the cities, firstly to
small towns and then to big cities.
Since their employment had not been "planned" and "registered," the
cities were simply not ready to allocate their resources to rural
laborers who got jobs in cities. The mingong could not share the
benefits of the urbanites either.
Migrant workers were regarded as transients in cities.
A photo of Beijing Railway Station crowded with migrant workers
appeared in the People's Daily, criticizing the phenomenon
of the mangliu (unplanned flow of rural population to an urban
area), another term used for migrant workers at that time.
Wang Lingyi, deputy editor-in-chief of the Scientific Phenomena
magazine, believes the recognition of migrant workers has gone
through four phases. The first is the phase of "mangliu," when the
urban governments and residents considered migrant workers were a
negative influence.
Until the 1990s, they were known in the cities as the "Three
Have-nots" (lacking ID cards, temporary residence cards and work
approval cards).
At the same time, the cities were starting to realize that they
needed them.
The third phase happened at the turn of the century, when "migrant
workers" became a formal title, and some of them had become
partially accepted in the cities.
Now there is talk of the fourth phase, as to whether they should
have the same pay and social welfare as urban residents.
Many believe that the mingong have been vital to China's economic
development over the past two decades. They not only help build
skyscrapers in cities, but also speed up the development of their
hometowns.
Statistics indicate that farm workers send home about 100 billion
yuan (US$12.1 billion) each year.
Beijing, where the number of migrant workers and other people
without residency registration reaching some 3 million, has asked
local enterprises that employ migrant workers to provide pensions,
unemployment insurance and industrial injury insurance.
Zhou Haiwang, deputy director of the Institute of Population and
Development at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, had a
transient population of about 1 million in the early 1990s. The
population has been increasing all along.
In 1997, the number of rural migrants working in Shanghai was 2.76
million. The number grew to 3.87 million in 2000. Spot checks last
year showed Shanghai's floating population was around 4.98 million,
about 80 percent of whom were migrant workers.
In the Dabie Mountain area in Anhui
Province, almost all young people in the countryside there have
left their rural homes to work in the cities, according to Wang
Zhen, director of the Research Centre of Human Resources at the
Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Most of them are now working in the Yangtze River Delta area. Of
their family income, 55 to 60 percent comes from their work in the
cities.
Wang Lingyi believes it will probably take five to six years for
migrant workers to transfer from a rural lifestyle to an urban
lifestyle.
Non-material requests like children's education and medical care
usually follow a change for the better in lifestyle.
But Wang Zhen cited one survey, which shows that only about 10
percent of these workers finally settle in the cities.
"After women migrant workers get married, or men migrant workers
reach 40, they usually go back to the countryside, because they
can't do more heavy physical work and employment becomes hard in
the cities," says Wang.
"There aren't many really urbanized farmer workers."
Wang Lingyi contends that the central problem has always been the
social assurance or fair distribution of urban resources, which is
the real essence of the urban residency registration system.
"In fact, there have always been two labor markets, an official
one, and an unofficial one, which is mainly made of migrant
workers."
Li Hongbing, a reporter with the People's Daily, has
pointed out that the social assurance of farmer workers is actually
taken care of in the countryside.
Most farmer workers eventually go back to their homes and rely on
their land for endowment.
But Li sees progress in Shanghai's inclusion of migrant workers in
its calculation of per-capita GDP. In the past only permanent
residents counted.
"Migrant workers accelerate the modernization of the cities," says
Zhou. "Without migrant workers, the cities' construction would not
have been so quick."
Zhou specifically notes the four advantages brought by migrant
workers: they make direct money for the cities; they provide
abundant and low-cost labor; they increase consumption; and they
spur competition in the labor market.
But conditions for migrant workers are not wholly
satisfactory.
Since the late 1980s, their pay has not really gone up because of
the huge labor supply. Some urban residents see the flow of workers
as a potentially unstable factor, and crimes in the cities are
often linked with the influx of farmers.
Zhou objects to these views on crime. "Migrant workers are mostly
young people. The crime rate for urban residents of this age is
also high," says Zhou. "The flow of migrant workers is generally a
stable factor, because they advance the cities' social and economic
development, which is the ultimate stability."
According to Wen Wei Po of Hong Kong, the floating population on
the Chinese mainland was about 30 million in 1982. The number
exceeded 100 million in 1997.
It is estimated that the floating population will increase at a
speed of 5 million a year in the coming five to 10 years, reaching
130 million in 2005 and 160 million in 2010.
(China Daily October 2, 2004)