Experts attending an international seminar Tuesday urged the
government to adopt a more liberal policy towards transient rural
laborers and make cities more accessible to them.
At
the 2001 International Rural Labor Mobility Forum, experts
acknowledged the changes the government has initiated to help
migrant laborers over the last two decades, but stressed that it
should do more to facilitate and regulate the flow of surplus rural
labor into cities, and enhance the protection of their rights and
interests.
“Government policies (towards transient labor) are lagging behind
research and the actual employment situation,” said Du Ying,
director of the Industrial Policy and Law Department of the
Ministry of Agriculture.
There were between 70 to 76 million rural residents living and
working in cities and towns last year, according to a study by the
Research Center of Rural Economy (RCRE) under the ministry.
Because China still employs a household registration system that
gives a different status to rural and urban residents, migrant
laborers are treated unequally in employment, social security,
education and housing in cities compared with their urban
counterparts.
The income generated by migrant labor will remain the main source
of rural income growth in the coming years, according to Lin
Yongsan, vice-minister for labor and social security.
Du
estimates that rural employment pressure will build up during the
10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-05), with a growth of 26 percent
in labor supply over the previous five years.
“The employment peak will not subside until 2007,” Du said. The
forum, which will end tomorrow, is organized by RCRE, the State
Council Development Research Center and the Ministry of Labor, and
funded by the Ford Foundation. It was attended by more than 100
officials and experts from both China and abroad.
Farmers began to pour into rural enterprises and cities in the mid
1980s, when rural reforms unleashed huge potential in productivity,
making millions of laborers surplus to requirement and creating
huge numbers of job opportunities in urban economies.
Increasing labor mobility has contributed to between 16 and 20
percent of China’s economic growth during the past 20 years, said
Lu Mai, a senior RCRE researcher.
Over the past two decades, the government has moved from imposing a
complete ban on labor mobility to taking steps to introduce and
regulate migrants into cities, Lu said.
(China Daily 07/04/2001)