China - what price progress?

As China embraces global free trade, large cities such as Beijing are attracting huge numbers of rural workers hoping to share the country’s new found wealth.

But the result is a growing divide between rich and poor.

Rural life in China remains a harsh and unforgiving existence. Farmers face high taxes, land is degraded and barren, investment and infrastructure practically non-existent. Today the gap between the rich and poor in China is unprecedented, with the richest 20% of the population accounting for 50% of consumption, while the poorest 20% struggle to consume just 5%.

In 1950, 13% of China’s population lived in town and cities – now it is about 40% and is expected to reach 60% by 2030. For a country with a population of 1.3 billion, that’s a lot of new livelihoods to sustain. The reality for most of the rural migrant workers is a severely underpaid, menial job, working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

social exclusion
China’s system of hukou, or household registration, makes it difficult for rural migrants to get good jobs. This ancient system has been used for centuries to control the population. Hukou divides people into categories of ‘rural’ or ‘urban’, stating that everyone must live and work in the place they are registered.

While urban workers can apply for jobs, state housing, healthcare and pensions, rural workers need permission to work in towns and cities. For Beijing’s migrant workers, it automatically places them outside of the system, with no right to education, housing or healthcare, open to discrimination and exploitation, and treated as outcasts by city dwellers, police and state alike.

The majority of women end up toiling as cleaners, nannies or rubbish collectors, while the men join the construction industry. They are seen as cheap labour, desperate enough to work without contracts, without rights and without any means of redress.

actionaid’s work
ActionAid has been active in China for six years, and is currently funding a centre in the Beigaozhuang district in northern Beijing in a bid to provide help to the thousands of migrant families in the area.

The centre is a constant hive of activity, offering not just information, education and advice, but also a place to interact and gain a sense of community and respite from what can often be a lonely way of life.

ActionAid also works with migrant children, who themselves have lost their right to state education through hukou. State schools in Beijing charge much higher fees for migrant children.

The Beigaozhuang centre works in partnership with Tao Yuan school in north Beijing, one of the few schools for migrant children to exact its own high standards. It is well known for its high pass rates amongst pupils, and is popular with parents and pupils alike.

For many children, Beigaozhuang represents freedom, the only place where they can be themselves and simply be around other people and play with their friends. "I go to the centre every day," says 12-year-old Li Jie. "I really feel part of the activities, and it has given me a broader future because they tell me I am good at things. It is a part of my life, and if it was taken away from me a part of my heart would be lost too."

photo : ©Barry Lewis/ Corbis/ ActionAid