| |
China's Achilles' heel: The 'floating
population'
By Francesco Sisci and Lu
Xiang
BEIJING - China's severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) epidemic has taken Chinese leaders by
surprise by revealing many inadequacies of government
organs, primarily the inability to make quick
evaluations and responses to health emergencies. It has
also exposed a ticking social time bomb - the countless
peasants who have immigrated to cities during the 25
years of China's economic reforms. They have fled from
hospitals, attacked medical staff and, whether
intentionally or not, have facilitated the spread of the
virus. The government has responded clearly the concern
this difficult-to-control group poses, threatening with
capital punishment all of those who intentionally spread
the disease.
These people, called mingong
("popular workers", to mark the difference from proper
city-dwelling "workers", gongren) or liudong
renkou (floating population, meaning they are no
longer residents in the countryside but not city
residents either), are the main cause of the spread of
SARS in the countryside. They have thus introduced the
next step of this health emergency.
This flight
is a result of Beijing coming clean in late April about
the extent of the SARS infection in the capital, which
had previously been covered up in hopes of averting
panic and economic loss. The workers panicked
immediately, dropped everything and left the city to
return to their villages scattered throughout the
country. They did this before the municipal authorities
could implement control measures to stem the flow of
workers from the cities to rural areas.
It is
apparent that authorities were taken by surprise by
their flight and had not anticipated it. In a news
conference on Thursday, spokesman Liu Jian said the
national government estimates China's mingong
population to be about 36 million to 40 million, and
that 8 million have already left cities for their home
villages.
The mingong left the
construction sites of skyscrapers where they would
possibly never live. They fled the middle-class houses
where they were working as nannies. Most significant,
they ran away from potentially SARS-infected hospitals
where they served as janitorial staff. The hospitals
suffered the most, as they needed to implement upgraded
hygienic standards to prevent the contagious disease,
but had no employees to perform these duties. Hospitals
tried to lure workers back with higher salaries, even
tenfold increases, but few mingong took the bait.
Fear of SARS proved to be stronger than the lure of a
higher salary.
Mingong's jobs in any
Chinese city come without any guarantees. They make on
average from 500-1,000 yuan (US$60-$120) per month, a
small fortune in the economically bleak countryside but
a pittance in a metropolis. On top of their low salaries
they do not get any of the benefits that are provided
for registered city residents. They have no health
insurance, they are lucky if their children can attend
school and their housing, if they have it, is quite
poor, as most of them live in dormitories or other
precarious accommodations on the city outskirts.
Mingong provide necessary cheap and
flexible labor that is ready to return to the
countryside if there is no longer anything to do. They
thus provide an essential filler role in the development
of the country. They are there when they are needed,
they return home when they are no longer necessary, and
they do not constitute a burden for the city's
unemployment department. They are an enormous resource
for cities. Socially they are virtually non-existent and
can be forcibly expelled from the cities at any time.
They can then be kept continuously at bay and their
grievances carry no weight compared with those of the
"proper workers", the gongren. In fact the
mingong are used instead of the city
gongren (not doing exactly the same job, but
roughly the same), but only the gongren are
allowed enough leeway to become restless and protest if
they lose a job, as they are legal city residents.
The mingong know their work in the city
is temporary but still hope for an opportunity to obtain
legal permanent residence. At home the mingong
invest their city earnings in home improvements. They
typically already have a small plot of land allotted to
them by their village, which provides a
subsistence-level income. Their land is tilled by their
elders, or sublet to other farmers, while the
mingong are in the city.
In other words,
the mingong have nothing to hold them in the city
besides their salaries. Except for those who managed to
make the leap from workers to small artisans or traders,
and thus have set up a shop in the city, for the vast
majority all their strings are still attached to their
home village, where they have houses, land, family and
investments. Therefore SARS represented for them a
direct threat to their livelihood: if they stayed in
Beijing they could be infected and could lose their job
anyway, as many economic activities in the capital could
come to a stop, as indeed many did. Then they had better
move back home, where there was less possibility of
infection and better life guarantees.
SARS has
changed the social dynamic for the mingong.
Before SARS they had nothing to gain in fleeing the city
and the promise of a salary and possible legal urban
integration was enough to hold them in the city. Now
with SARS, it is clear that this isn't enough to hold
those people where they are most needed. In case of any
calamity, which could strike a city any time, without
any proper bond, an insurance, a house, etc, the
mingong will be always drawn to move back to the
countryside, furthering the city troubles and possibly
also the troubles of the whole country.
Since
the last week of April more than a million
mingong have left Beijing, thus facilitating the
potential spread of the disease almost everywhere in
China, and increasing the workload for the
already-overworked Beijing medical staff.
Thousands of short-term solutions have been
applied to overcome these problems. In the countryside
all kinds of checks have been enforced to spot infected
people. The Jiangsu government is offering a reward to
anybody exposing a hidden case of fever, the Zhejiang
government sells all anti-fever drugs exclusively in
clinics instead of in pharmacies in order to check on
anybody who may be trying to treat SARS on their own. In
the cities, soldiers have been ordered to sweep
hospitals' floors, replacing the mingong.
These are short-term measures that won't solve
the problems of how to prevent the possible future
desertion of the mingong and how to retain the
economic flexibility provided so far by these workers.
The mingong's desertion could be
immediately resolved by providing for their integration
in the city. Giving them houses and schooling for their
children would keep the mingong in the cities,
but this would affect the economic flexibility they
provided. This would make the Chinese social machinery
more cumbersome. It would reduce what so far has been
one of its greatest advantages: the capability of quick
response to opportunity and crisis, by using China's
huge countryside as an unexhausted supply line of
workers to factories when needed.
This system
has so far guaranteed social stability. Workers'
protests have mostly involved gongren who have
lost their jobs, who were typically at least partly
compensated with other opportunities and the possession
of their homes, which were previously rented to them.
The full integration of the mingong could
escalate social problems, as integrated mingong
could join hands with those gongren who already
feel dissatisfied with the growing social costs of
ongoing reforms.
Caught between a rock and a
hard place, China needs to hold steady. While the full
integration of mingong is impossible both
economically and socially, the perpetuation of the
present system of almost total marginalization of the
mingong is also untenable. It would subject
cities to a repeat of the present SARS disaster. A
middle ground must be found, guaranteeing some insurance
benefits that could be cashed in case the mingong
move to their villages or to other towns. As the latest
plenary session of the Chinese National People's
Congress stated, integration of the mingong in
the cities is necessary for the overall economic
growth.
This process will be slow and full of
problems, as possibly the largest social issue of modern
China is looming: a potential conflict between China's
urban population and the rural residents would like to
become city residents. Furthermore, there is the issue
of the cultural integration of these peasants who have
lived in a world largely similar to that of their
ancestors 200-300 years ago, and now are moving to the
cities, a world in many ways closer to New York than to
their villages. It is a leap in space and time, from
feudal times to modernity, from ancient beliefs to a
globalized value system and mindset.
(©2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
