For 16 years, Ren Xiaoyun, a street cleaner, drove his truck past the Great Hall of the People during his daily waste collection route along Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue. Yet he had never entered the political landmark, and for a long time it seemed even more distant than his hometown.
In November, he finally had the opportunity to enter the hallowed hall, and in a capacity that he had never before expected: as a delegate to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Ren is one of the 26 migrant workers elected as delegates to the landmark meeting. Although they only accounted for 1.14 percent of the 2,270 delegates elected to the congress, they collectively represented more than 158 million migrant workers in China.
Ren, 39, left his hometown in Pingquan County of north China’s Hebei Province, in 1996, and has since worked in the Yiqing Co. of the Beijing Environment Sanitation Engineering Group Co. Ltd.
Although Ren has worked in Beijing for 16 years, and was honored as a model worker by the municipal government, he still does not have a Beijing hukou (permanent residence status), nor can he afford Beijing’s expensive housing. His wife and 7-year-old daughter still live in his hometown.
Encouragingly, the end to this awkward situation for Ren and millions of people like him seems near as the Party has shown its determination to establish in due course a system for guaranteeing fairness in society featuring, among other things, equal rights, equal opportunities and fair rules for all.
Delivering a report to the congress, the then CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao said,“We should accelerate reform of the household registration system, conduct registration of rural migrant workers as permanent urban residents in an orderly way, and endeavor to ensure that all permanent urban residents have access to basic urban public services.”
Changing demands
In 2011, China’s urban population exceeded rural population for the first time in history, said a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in August. Approximately one fourth of permanent urban residents were migrant workers from the countryside who had resided in cities for more than half a year.
Migrant workers on average have worked in cities for 5.3 years, with 40 percent of them having worked for more than five years, and 20 percent of them having worked for more than 10 years, according to the Development Research Center of the State Council in 2010.
Young migrant workers, born in the 1980s and 1990s, account for a large percentage of all migrant workers. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that as of 2011, 39 percent of migrant workers were 30 years old or younger, and 22.7 percent were between 31 and 40.
“Many young people in my hometown have left to work in big cities,” Ren said.“Better educated, they expect better jobs, higher incomes as well as a more colorful life, and are more eager to integrate into the city.”
At a press conference held on the sidelines of the 18th CPC National Congress on November 12, Yang Zhiming, Vice Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, said that the young generation of migrant workers have different demands and interests than their parental generation.
“While the old generation of migrant workers would like to make money and return to the rural areas for further development, now the new generation would like to integrate into and seek development in cities; the old generation demands to be paid in full, while the new generation demands insurance coverage; the old generation requests better work conditions, and the new generation requests a share of the fruits of development,” Yang said.
Recently, China Youth Daily conducted an online survey of 10,365 young migrant workers in their 20s or 30s across the country. The study showed that 60.2 percent of the respondents aspired to become urbanites within 10 years. In their eyes, to become urban residents means receiving equal pay for equal work, being covered by the urban social security system and owning real estate in cities.
Another survey in more than 20 cities conducted by Beijing-based Outlook Weekly showed that 85 percent of young migrant workers never worked on farms and only 8.9 percent would like to return to rural areas in the future.
In the meantime, young migrant workers find that it is not very easy to become bona fide urbanites.
The survey conducted by China Youth Daily revealed that young migrant workers faced some major obstacles to integration in cities. Seventy-three percent of the respondents reported that their biggest problem was high cost of living.
In addition, up to half of young migrant workers complained about a lack of cultural activities, unequal pay, difficulty in finding jobs, disrespect and unpaid salaries.
Approximately one third of them said that they were concerned with their own inability to take care of their parents, the difficulty in getting social security coverage and unequal access to education for their children.
While reading between the lines of Hu’s report, Yan Wenjing, a Party congress delegate from Zhongshan, southern Guangdong Province, noticed a change concerning migrant workers compared with five years ago.
“The report emphasizes in the part on educational development to ensure that children of rural migrant workers in cities have equal access to education,” she said, adding that the report to the 17th CPC National Congress in 2007 only pledges equal access to compulsory education for children of migrant workers.
Yan said that this suggested children of migrant workers would not only be able to receive compulsory primary education in the cities where their parents work, but also preschool and high school.
“This accurately responds to the suggestions that I heard from fellow migrant workers,” Yan said.
After being elected as a delegate to the 18th CPC National Congress, Yan visited 70 communities in Zhongshan and collected more than 1,000 questionnaires from migrant workers. She said that the lack of equal access to education for their children was the problem most complained about by the respondents.
New hope
“The government is working hard to safeguard migrant workers’ rights and interests in 10 respects,” said Vice Minister Yang at the press conference.
Yang said that the government strives to ensure migrant workers to be able to find jobs in cities, sign labor contracts with employers, receive job-related training, and be paid for their efforts. “They should have access to social insurance, better accommodation, legal services to protect their rights and cultural activities, their children should have access to education, and they should be able to pursue their goals,” he said.
Despite a government requirement for employers to sign labor contracts with migrant workers and pay for insurance, many migrant workers are still not properly covered.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in the year 2011, only 43.8 percent of migrant workers had signed labor contracts with their employers, and coverage of pension, work injury, health, unemployment and maternity insurance lagged at 13.9 percent, 23.6 percent, 16.7 percent, 8 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively.
The government requires employers to pay for insurance policies such as those covering work injury and unemployment, whereas pension and health insurance are to be jointly paid by workers and employers. But some migrant workers are reluctant to pay the premiums which are relatively high in comparison to their low and unstable incomes. A number of employers, too, would rather avoid paying social insurance to cut costs.
Li Shi, Executive President of the China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, said that migrant workers often move from city to city, whereas currently the insurance benefits are not readily carried over to other provinces and municipalities, which to some extent reduces migrant workers’ incentive to pay into the system. Li suggested setting up a separate and transferable social insurance system for migrant workers besides increasing benefits.
Yang emphasized that the government is making efforts to train most migrant workers into technical workers, and turn qualified migrant workers into new urban residents.
