Migrant workers

Most of China’s internal migrant workers are treated as an urban underclass and denied their basic rights. They’re shut out of the healthcare system and state education, live in appalling and overcrowded conditions and are exploited by their employers.

One migrant worker described sharing an unfinished underground storehouse with more than 30 people sleeping in bunk beds. There were no windows, showers or ventilation. They were only allowed to take a shower or bath at a nearby building once a week.

Another worker, 21-year-old Ms Zhang, described working seven days a week in a garment factory in Shenzhen:

“We worked overtime every day and the earliest we would get off would be around 11pm. Sometimes we would work until two or three in the morning and we would have to work the next day as usual.” She had worked in nine different factories within the space of four years.

An estimated 150 to 200 million Chinese rural workers live and work in the cities and that number is expected to grow. In some cities they make up the majority of the population.

The lives of migrant workers are plain miserable, says former internal migrant Wang Yuancheng, who is now a businessman and a China National People’s Congress member.

“They have to live in makeshift shelters, eat the cheapest bean curd and cabbage. They have no insurance and their wages are often delayed. And most of all, they are discriminated against by urban people.”

For more information see Internal Migrants: Discrimination and abuse. The human cost of an economic 'miracle'.