SUN
WUKONG Working-class heroes get their
day By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG –China's official media gave
full coverage to the just-closed 17th National
Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But
ordinary Chinese on the mainland were more
concerned with the ups and downs of the stock
market during the period. It seems that with more
and more opportunities to make money, mainland
Chinese nowadays become increasingly like their
overseas compatriots in their political apathy.
By comparison, some tidbits from the
sidelines of the week-long 17th Party Congress
appeared to attract wider public attention
than
the official political agenda itself.
One
was the announcement by the Chongqing municipal
government that it would establish a Migrant
Workers' Day in Chongqing, which with 32 million
people is the nation's highest populated
municipality. (Officially, due to China's rigid
hukou, or residency registration system
which makes a discriminatory distinction between
rural and urban residents, there are 13 million
urban residents.)
At the end of September,
the Standing Committee of the Chongqing Municipal
People's Congress passed legislation to designate
November 4 as Migrant Workers' Day to mark the
contribution of rural migrant workers to the
area's social and economic development.
Why November 4? Chongqing's explanation is
that there is no statutory public holiday in
November. Also it is near the end of the year
before the migrant workers normally prepare to
travel home for family reunions.
He
Shizhong, chief of the propaganda department under
the CCP's Chongqing Municipal Committee, was one
of the 2,200-plus deputies attending the 17th
Party Congress and following a panel discussion of
President Hu Jintao's keynote address on October
15. He was immediately grilled by the media about
Migrant Workers' Day.
"The purpose of
setting up the Migrant Workers' Day is to let
society show its solicitude for rural migrant
workers and enable them to gain self-esteem and
self-confidence," he said.
An estimated
4.5 million rural workers now work in Chongqing.
"Although their working conditions and living
standards have improved a lot in recent years,
rural migrant workers have yet to truly merge into
the city and the mainstream of metropolitan
society," he said, according to a report by Xinhua
News Agency.
He said on the first Migrant
Workers' Day Chongqing would commend 10 model
rural migrant workers. It would also provide free
physical examination for migrant workers and free
consultation on their children's schooling.
Surprisingly, Chongqing's seemingly
altruistic move has aroused a public controversy.
Some people expressed their support, but critics
maintain that a special day for rural migrant
workers itself manifests the fact that they are
discriminated against, largely due to the unfair
hukou system which makes it especially
difficult for someone whose rural hukou is
registered in their hometown to obtain medical,
housing, educational and social security benefits
and gainful employment if they move to an urban
area to work.
Depending on one's
connections and the vagaries of whatever regional
government is administering it, transferring and
changing a hukou is a lengthy, bureaucratic
and very expensive process. Establishing a Migrant
Workers' Day simply reminds people of the fact
there is a different social group in society and
not much else, critics say.
A follow-up
report by Workers' Daily, a state owned national
newspaper based in Beijing, found that most rural
migrant workers were lukewarm about Chongqing's
move.
"I heard that Chongqing will
establish such a holiday," said Li Dongshun, a
migrant worker from Shandong province working in
Beijing. "It seems the social status of us rural
migrant workers will be elevated. But frankly, I
hope our government would do something concrete
for us instead. For instance, you urban guys have
social security and medical insurance. It would be
great if we could enjoy the same treatment,
whether is a Migrant Workers' Day or not."
"I am not happy about it," said another
migrant worker in Beijing, Li Dongmei. "Why should
there be a special holiday for us? We are the same
as you city residents. Yes, there is Teachers'
Day, Nurses' Day, which are set to respect certain
professions. We migrant workers are working in
various industries, there is no need to have a
special holiday for us."
And indeed, as
some skeptics suspected, Chongqing may have had an
ulterior motive for its proclamation.
Chongqing, historically and traditionally,
was part of China's western province of Sichuan
but was separated from Sichuan to become a
municipality directly under the central government
in 1997, mainly to facilitate the construction of
the Three Gorges Dam.
For this purpose,
many of the poor rural areas along the Yangtze
River on the upper stream of the Three Gorges Dam
which formerly belonged to Sichuan, now are under
the jurisdiction of Chongqing and the municipality
now has a huge rural population.
Hence
although Chongqing is the largest of the four
central government controlled municipalities in
terms of population and land area, it is also the
poorest compared with the other three –Beijing,
Shanghai and Tianjin. In fact, Chongqing is more
like a small province than a big city.
Its
unbalanced nature, with a large number farmers and
scarce farmland, has also made the greater Sichuan
area (Chongqing included) a source of migrant
labor for eastern costal cities where workers from
Sichuan and Congqing flock for work.
For
example, Chongqing boasts of having 4.5 million
migrant workers in its urban districts (many if
not most are from its own rural areas and
neighboring Sichuan), but conditions are such that
about the same number of workers leave to find
employment elsewhere.
Therefore, by
launching the Migrant Workers' Day to draw
attention to the problem of discrimination of
rural migrant workers, the Chongqing government
may also hope that its own migrant workers in
other cities would be less discriminated against.
With all its seemingly good intentions,
Chongqing's move also seems like a token gesture.
(For all the discrimination rural migrant workers
suffer due to the hukou system see How the hukou system distorts
reality, April 11, 2007). If Chongqing
really wanted to solve the problem, it could
simply scrap the distinction between urban and
rural residents and give all the citizens under
its jurisdiction equal treatment - after all, it
is now a municipality.
And to do so is
entirely within its power. Two years ago, the
Ministry of Public Security made it clear that it
is up to regional governments to decide on how to
abolish the classification between urban and rural
residents.
By not changing the system and
instead giving the migrant workers a special
holiday, it's a bit like showing starving people
menus instead of feeding them.
He
Shizhong, the Chongqing municipality's propaganda
tsar, was apparently aware of this dark irony and
added - without any elaboration or specifics -
that "by launching the Migrant Workers' Day, we
will also help them solve some practical problems,
such as how they can obtain an urban hukou
and housing as well as the schooling for their
children. After studying and considering various
possibilities, we will draft a policy for the
long-term benefits of migrant workers."
His words imply that Chongqing is
considering hukou reform to solve the
absurd issue of rural migrant workers forever.
Analysts say if Chongqing's experiment is
succeeds, other regions may follow. For in China,
all reform has always begun in one region and then
progressed to the rest of the country.
After three decades of reforms, the
hukou system, a product of Stalinist
socialism, is an anachronism in today's Chinese
society and a major source of social injustice. It
should be abolished - the sooner the better. Until
then, one hopes that Chongqing's Migrant Workers'
Day won't just remain a great sound signifying
nothing.
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