The Yale Globalist - An Uncertain Homecoming

An Uncertain Homecoming
Hard times are pushing migrants in China's eastern cities back to their rural homes.

Saturday, 04 April 2009 | Jasmine Lau

Bent over her sketchbook coloring cartoons of Olympic athletes, Zhang Jia appeared to be as happy as any six-year-old. But her mother revealed that just a few months ago, when Jia first came to the city from her home in Sichuan, she would not stop crying, saying: “There’s a big hole on the road. There’s a big hole on the road.”

The earthquake that hit Jia’s hometown had traumatized her. “They were taking an afternoon nap at school when the earthquake hit,” Jia’s mother explained. “The roof of the school caved in. Our child was sleeping on the lower bunk, so she was saved. The one on the upper bunk was crushed.” Of Jia’s 110 classmates, 90 were killed.

Jia’s parents were not present when the earthquake struck. They were more than 700 miles away, working in a factory in dongguan, an industrial city in southeast China known as “the world’s factory.” The large disparity in wealth and opportunity between coastal cities and the country’s hinterlands has driven many Chinese to give up their rural livelihoods and migrate east to find jobs in factories or supermarkets in the cities. dongguan is one of the most popular destinations. It now has 10 times as many rural migrants as permanent residents. Jia’s parents work in a factory that makes sports equipment parts. They earn the minimum wage of 770 yuan ($113) a month, but on good months they can boost their salary to 1500 yuan ($219) by working overtime. They save most of their money, hoping to one day buy a bigger house and to invest in their daughter’s education.

Tsui Cheungling, a social worker who founded a center for migrant workers in Dongguan, told the Globalist that migrant workers are “the biggest and most underappreciated contributors to the Chinese economy.” Migrant workers, he said, are the “magical” force behind every cheap sweater, toy, or appliance that constitutes the pervasive “Made in China” phenomenon. These workers form the crucial workforce that is the backbone of China’s export economy.

Yet migrant workers get less than they deserve: They work for low wages, and because they are not permanent residents, they have no social security, insurance, political rights, health benefits, or subsidies. And in the hardest of times, as in today’s economic conditions, their jobs are the first to go. However, these migrant workers do not “magically” disappear when the jobs no longer exist. So, when jobs are scarce, what do the workers do?

Jia’s nightmares of deep holes have ended, but her parents’ worries have just begun. The global economic downturn has greatly decreased the amount of foreign investment in China, and the factory for which Jia’s parents work has not been receiving orders from abroad. “We heard that we may be getting the cut anytime soon,” Jia’s mother said.

An Early Return

For Jia, who arrived in the city in July to live with her parents, this instability may mean she will be moving again—back to Sichuan. There is no joy in returning home: In place of the Zhang family’s house, there are ruins; in place of Jia’s school of happy classmates, there are mourning parents; and in place of a steady income, there is unemployment and an uncertain future.

The Zhang family is unlucky to have been victim of China’s two recent crises: the earthquake and the large-scale layoff. The layoff is in some respects more threatening. While the earthquake attracted worldwide attention and brought recovery funds to China, the closing of firms and factories has not and will not inspire such sympathy, because many other countries are feeling the same pain. But the economic downturn is affecting more people, seriously if not fatally. According to official statistics, the financial crisis has eliminated the jobs of 20 percent of China’s 200 million rural migrant workers. This affects more than 40 million from rural regions of China—in other terms, the equivalent of the entire population of Canada being fired at once.

Since November, China has seen a large-scale reverse migration of unemployed workers back to their rural hometowns. In normal years, this homecoming occurs in late January or early February during the Chinese New Year, when migrant workers reunite with their families to celebrate before returning to their urban jobs. But for many workers, this year the break started early and may extend indefinitely.

The Chinese government has plans to make agriculture more attractive to farmers and investors by fostering agricultural employment, increasing processing in rural areas, and improving farm incomes. But social worker Tsui Cheungling doubts whether these plans will have any tangible effect on the workers’ lives: “Their futures are uncertain,” he told the Globalist. “The government has not created a policy that would directly help the many migrant workers who have lost their jobs in the economic crisis. All it has done is put out a program to reintegrate them into agriculture. But the profits from farming are low unless they are able to find a big corporation to support them.”

Opportunity in Hardship

For many of these city workers, the prospect of going back into agriculture is not appealing. To them, it is a backward livelihood that they left behind when they moved to the cities. “I don’t think I even know how to hold a plough,” said He Yushuan, a 28-year-old migrant worker who is leaving for home now that the sweater factory where she has worked for six years has closed down. “I definitely will come back. I’m a city person at heart.”

The consequences of this mass unemployment remain to be seen. The national atmosphere was tense, as workers all over the country anxiously awaited the end of the Chinese New Year break for the news about urban employment. Some worry that if many of the factories do not reopen, workers unsatisfied with their low incomes and living standards in the rural areas will cause unrest.

But Jack Hou, former president of the Chinese Economists Society and professor of economics at California State University, pointed out a possible positive effect. He believes that there is untapped potential in the villages and that migrant workers, with their newfound skills and knowledge about technology, can start their own small businesses and create new jobs. His hometown, in the Wu Wei county of Anhui province, is the perfect model of this possibility. It has grown from a poor village into one of the most prosperous counties in the province, thanks to the early-returning migrant workers who, after learning how to make electrical cables in the cities, came home and started factories. Now, Wu Wei is one of the main suppliers of cables in China.

Hou believes that if migrant workers band together and start new businesses, they will survive the downturn and even bring growth to the poverty-stricken villages that have long lacked the development opportunities of urban areas. Hou explained: “Before, when they were working in the cities, they were only contributing to the local economy by consumption. But if they use their skills to create new jobs, then they will actually be helping their villages grow.”

While reverse migration has potential for new ventures, such development is much easier in theory than in practice. Migrant workers, who lack higher education and connections to local government, have trouble finding the human and natural resources required to start businesses. The government has drawn up plans to encourage self-employment and entrepreneurship by working with banks and urging them to lend to small- and medium-sized companies, but most of the national funds are spent on stimulus packages that emphasize agriculture and infrastructure. Such a stimulus plan would bolster national economic growth, but Ziwu Chen, professor of finance at the Yale School of Management, told the Globalist: “Spending money on highways and infrastructure doesn’t benefit the individual households as much.”

Back in Dongguan, Zhang Jia, the girl who survived the Sichuan earthquake, finished her drawing and spoke about what she misses most about her home in Sichuan. “Cherry picking,” she said, her eyes glowing as she gestured to convey the span of the field filled with sweet, ripe cherries. The irony of the statement is evident. Her parents’ future rests on the global economy and a government order: either they will go back and pick cherries or they will need to find a better job elsewhere.

Jasmine Lau is a freshman in Calhoun College.

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