Millions of migrants, who helped transform China from an agrarian economy into a manufacturing giant, are living pitiable lives. While lucrative work opportunities start dwindling fast after the workers turn 35 years of age, at the same time, most end up working well past the statutory retirement age to make ends meet.
China’s economic transformation could well be considered the widest expansion of its kind in modern history. In 1979, former leader Deng Xiaoping opened up the country to foreign investors and set up four special economic zones – Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong province, and Xiamen in Fujian.
Hundreds of millions of workers then flocked to coastal factories in search of a good life. Low-cost Chinese products flooded the world, thanks to the labour of these masses of workers. In the following decades, China became “the world’s factory”, and the country witnessed an unprecedented meteoric rise in its fortunes. Its workers, however, are still waiting for corresponding changes in their own lives.
It is not that none saw the benefits of this breakneck-speed growth in China. A record number of people were lifted out of poverty. In 2009, as the rest of the world was grappling with the aftermath of a global financial crisis, thanks to the Chinese workers, the country was shielded from the worst effects of the meltdown. Also, many migrant workers in China became entrepreneurs or lawmakers themselves, returning to their villages and making public services and welfare accessible to their people.
No country for old people
But such tales are rare. Most Chinese migrant workers, in fact, live in a near-permanent state of poverty. Today, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, China has around 290 million migrant workers. Nearly 86.33 million of them are aged over 50 years.
The covid-19 pandemic hit this segment particularly hard. Many elderly migrant workers have now passed their retirement age but are still working in labour-intensive and pollution-causing industries such as construction, and industrial and service sectors. Their health is generally poor and injuries are common.
According to a study done by an associate professor at the Anhui Normal University, nearly 60.7% of the older workers said they will “work until their physical health fails them”, mainly because they have no pensions.
The difference in pays for different segments is also worrisome. According to the Qiu’s survey, from 1993 to 2005, the monthly salary of urban workers in China increased by 1,260 yuan ($172), but the increase for migrant workers was only 68 yuan ($9.3).
The study further showed that many first-generation migrant workers, after working for over 30 years, had less than 50,000 yuan ($6,835) of savings. They were mostly urban wanderers without stable jobs, labour contracts or fixed pension accounts.
Payment delays
Beijing has repeatedly vowed to achieve common prosperity. Yet, as per the Qiu’s survey, one-fifth of the employed elderly migrant workers do not actually receive the promised salary. Also, after numerous businesses shut down amid the pandemic and the strict zero-Covid policy, many first-generation migrant workers are back to square one.
Earlier in January this year, local governments cracked down on Chinese migrant workers demanding their overdue wages, calling their protests “malicious” labour activism. More than a dozen cities across China threatened to punish workers for taking “extremist” measures, aka protests, to get their own money.
Widespread reports of payment delays by employers, particularly the debt-laden real estate developers and Covid-19 testing providers who didn’t receive their own payments from cash-strapped local governments, came to the fore. Poor enforcement of labour laws in the country made it even more difficult for workers to take legal recourse.
The pay disputes broke out ahead of the lunar new year holiday, when most urban migrants return to their families in villages, often for the only time all year. Many of these workers had not visited their homes for the last three years, owing to Beijing’s strict Covid controls. Protests by desperate workers erupted across the country, stoking the Chinese Communist party’s perennial fear of social turmoil spiralling out of control.
The local governments clearly supported the employers instead of the workers, as the former are the biggest sources of fiscal revenues For instance, in Huidong county of the Guangdong province, the local government’s human resources and social security bureau stated that workers could face criminal charges for criticising government officials or even threatening self-harm when seeking overdue payments.
In the Linyi County, police detained five workers just for reporting payment delays to government departments. “Filing complaints to the upper-level government agencies is absolutely unacceptable. It will disrupt social order,” Linyi police stated.
The flawed Hukou system
Established in 1958, the hukou system in China determines where residents can access credit, government jobs, education, subsidised housing, welfare and other social services. Traditionally, the system categorised workers as urban or rural. Most of China’s almost 400 million migrant workers in larger cities do not have local hukou. And because hukou status is often inherited, the children of itinerant workers typically lack access to public education where they live.
Across July and August, the Chinese government announced changes to hukou system but according to analysts, Beijing is not at all serious about undertaking these reforms.
For instance, in Zhejiang, Shandong, Jiangxi and Hainan, residents can now apply for hukou status where they habitually reside. Unfortunately, it has been seen that residents of larger cities are reluctant to share their relative prosperity and local officials generally favour only wealthy and/or skilled migrants.
Not surprising since a model prepared in 2014 suggested that it would cost 1.5% of China’s GDP each year, over 15 years, to grant urban hukou status to all migrant workers. This figure would be even higher now. Also, despite collecting only 50% of revenue, local governments pay the bills for about 85% of public services, putting a huge financial burden on them.
The curse of 35
Most employers in China do not hire workers beyond 35 years of age. Some job listings even declare it officially while looking for employees. According to employers, workers in this age group are more expensive than fresh graduates and not as willing to work overtime. This has come to be known as the curse of 35.
Age discrimination is not against the law in China, and in a post-pandemic economy, the curse of 35 has become the talk of the internet. That is a double whammy for workers in their mid-30s, who also have to make big decisions about marriage and children.
Consequently, a significant part of the young Chinese population is taking the decision to not get married or have children. In 2022, the number of marriage registrations in the country fell 10.5% from a year earlier. The birthrate also fell to a low point last year and China’s population shrank for the first time since 1961.
In the first three months of this year, tech giants Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, counted among the country’s best-paying employers, hired about 9% fewer workers than they did during their hiring peak in the pandemic. Some of China’s biggest real estate developers also cut their head counts by 30, 50 or even 70% in 2022. According to Wang Mingyuan, an economist in Beijing, around 50 million people aged 16 to 40 in China could be unemployed by 2028, “which could trigger a series of deeper crises.” May be the following post, which recently went viral, sums up the situation of workers in China the best: “Too old to work at 35 and too young to retire at 60”. The post continued: “Stay away from homeownership, marriage, children, car ownership, traffic and drugs, and you’ll own happiness, freedom and time.”