Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (39 page)

In trying to find a footing in Shanghai, the Anhui migrants have had to compete against migrants from other provinces, especially those from Wenzhou. The Anhui migrants are hard-working, resilient, and resourceful, often starting out with very little capital in the hairdressing, tailoring, repair, or fast-food business. If they have no capital, they work in construction, or walk up and down back streets and alleys salvaging reusable trash to sell for a small profit. From such humble beginnings, some of the Anhui migrants have succeeded in forming large companies. About fifty Shanghai companies capitalized at over 10 million yuan have been formed by migrants from Anhui.

In Beijing, some of the earliest among the migrants were a group of peasant women from rural Anhui who made their way to Beijing to work as household help. And then there were men who joined the workforce in Zhong Guan Cun, Beijing’s “Silicon Valley.” Although barely literate when they arrived, they have ended up processing computers; from being sales clerks, they end up being high-level sales representatives. They first dealt in low-priced computer parts, and now take up 60 percent of the market in CPUs in Zhong Guan Cun. Thousands of people from the rural suburbs of Hefei also migrated to Beijing to seek work in the construction business; twelve construction companies owned by such migrants are registered in Beijing. Furthermore, there are more people scattered over twenty-two different provinces, and some have joined fourteen construction companies working abroad.

Anhui migrants also have become a formidable presence in

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Guangdong, China’s southernmost province. In a small district of the manufacturing town of Dongwan alone, almost 11,500 migrants from Anhui are officially registered with the local security. Add to that number those that have not bothered to register, and there are at least 50,000 Anhui migrants working in that small district of that small town.

Supposing each one of the 7 million–plus migrants from Anhui create on average 50,000 yuan GDP annually, that would be 300 billion yuan per annum, which is almost equal to the annual GDP for the whole province of Anhui. This means that the totality of the value created by these migrants is equal to another Anhui outside Anhui. Then if we add up the total earnings that these migrants send home every year—at least 300 billion, more than the income generated within the whole of Anhui province—you have another Anhui outside of Anhui. Which means to say that these migrants, whether working at hard labor or at skilled jobs, are creating two other Anhuis outside Anhui.

Thus it can be said that rural migrants have promoted the economic development not only of the region they migrated to but also of the region they left. Those who leave the country are usually the brightest in the rural population; after their expo-sure to life in the city, they return with experience and new skills and ideas. Thus not only do they contribute to changes in the cities but they also bring positive changes back home. Take for example the Anhui prefecture of Fuyang: Right now there are seven hundred enterprises set up by migrants who returned home from the cities. They employ over 17,000 people, represent capital of over 100 million yuan; and return annual profits of over 50 million yuan. In the poor, remote villages where we visited, we often came across a high-rise building rearing up among the cottages, like a swan among chickens. Such build—

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ings were either dwellings of the privileged local officials or the homes of those who have returned home after working as migrants in the city.

Anhui is in the process of transforming itself from a purely populous province into an affluent province, and recognizes the influence that migration can exert in realizing this goal. In Anhui, the tide of rural migration started early and the provincial government tried to promote the movement outward. The provincial departments overseeing insurance, civil affairs, pub-lic security, transportation, and construction are all involved. The provincial Party secretary, Wang Taihua, issued directives establishing that within the next five to ten years, the outsourc-ing of labor would be an important project, and stating that the job of the various government departments is to provide guidance, service, and management so that rural migration will proceed in an orderly manner. At the same time the provincial authorities also eliminated some of the arbitrary restrictions on rural migration.

But the benefits of peasant migration should not be overblown. In our investigations, we also saw the negative side of peasant migration. As the rural labor force drained away, local agriculture shriveled and declined, increasing the distance between the poor provinces and the affluent provinces, and discouraging investments in the poor provinces, thus creating a vicious cycle of increasing poverty and decreasing investment.

In addition, there are other problems beyond the control of the provinces, the most glaring being that migrants are not treated as equals. The cities they have migrated to are interested only in controlling the migrant population, preventing crime, and ensuring the safety of their own cities; they care nothing for the benefits brought by the migrants, and certainly not for their needs. Many places regard migrants as potential

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criminals and sources of unrest and leave the management of the migrant population to the public security. Thus the government has more or less stumbled into discrimination against rural migrant workers, and this will hold back China’s modernization.

During the sixties, when scholars were discussing modernization, we were suffering from the three years’ famine; after that, we were dragged into the Cultural Revolution, which lasted ten years. When it was announced that we were turning to reform and modernization, people did not understand that to realize the goal of modernization—especially the modernization of agriculture—it was necessary to decrease the agricultural population and transfer the surplus labor to the city. People didn’t realize that this is an irreversible trend.

In the most developed country in the world, the United States, the percentage of the total population working in agriculture is just 7 percent. In Japan, economic transformation moved at an unprecedented pace after the Meiji Reform (Meiji Period: 1868–1912); during this period Japan’s rural population dropped from 85 percent to 15 percent of its population. It’s a similar story in Taiwan: the period of fastest development coincided with the years when the rural population dropped from 80 percent to 15 percent of the total population.

Our current population stands at 1.3 billion, of whom 900 million are rural; 500 million of these are of working age, but agriculture needs only 100 million and local township and rural enterprises can only provide jobs for several tens of millions. So, where is the rest of the 300 million to 400 million to go? Consequently, there is hope for China’s modernization only if the surplus rural laborers leave the countryside and move to the city. But right now the city is not a haven for rural migrants. They are mostly homeless wanderers, and have never enjoyed equal status as citizens. Furthermore, city officials use their power against them, as seen in some of the injustices they suf—

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fer from: they work overtime for no extra pay; they are subject-ed to dangerous working conditions with no protection; sometimes their pay is delayed; sometimes they are robbed by swindlers; they are kicked out when they are hurt or sick or maimed. Some become beggars, prostitutes, drug dealers, or other sorts of petty criminal.

According to a study of migrants in Beijing for the year 2002 by the sociologist Li Qiang, fully one quarter of migrant workers could not collect their pay or had their pay held back; for a variety of reasons, almost 40 percent of migrant workers had at one time or another found themselves penniless in the city. Over 60 percent of migrants worked over ten hours a day; 33 percent of these worked more than twelve hours a day; and 16 percent of the last group worked over sixteen hours a day. As for health care, 40 percent of migrants had been ill at one time or another, and virtually none of them had ever been paid a penny for their medical care. Such were the conditions for migrants in the capital.

Migrant peasants have built the great cities in all their glitter-ing glory, only to learn that wealth hardens the human heart. Migrants and city people live the same city, but there is no equality between them, no mutual friendship nor help nor respect nor civility, not even a shred of kindness or pity. The “residence registration” system has drawn a line between city and country people, creating inequality in status, opportunity, and income, and obstructing the free flow of people to the city. It has created a sense of superiority in city residents. To add insult to injury, the city government took inappropriate steps that further solidified the prejudices against migrants, treating them all as potential criminals, and they have ended up being the “untouchables” in the great city.*

*The responsibility for dealing with the migrant population (work permits, birth control, and so forth) was turned over to the public security agencies, so that they were in effect treated as potential criminals.

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