Farmer-turned-workers in China have obtained an all-round
equitable treatment enjoyed by their urban counterparts in recent
years.
Shanghai, China's leading industrial center, has 7.7 million
industrial workers, of whom 3.8 million came from rural areas. In
2004, local enterprises bought all-risks insurance for 2.09 million
workers from other parts of China to Shanghai. More than 9,200
migrant workers benefited from the insurance against injury at work
last year and 4,900 others benefited from the insurance on
hospitalization.
The Changzheng Township, a rising economic center in Shanghai,
has employed 20,000 migrant workers, accounting for 70 percent of
the total workforce in the township. Consequently, the township
government has shifted its work emphasis from state or collectively
owned enterprises to migrant workers, said township official Yuan
Fangrong.
As from 2003, each migrant worker to Changzheng Township was
presented a book on in-service training, which bears words of: "You
are a migrant worker today and will be new citizen of new Shanghai
tomorrow. While you create wealth for the township, the township
provides you boundless opportunity and bright future."
In the past, there was a strict restriction between residents in
urban districts and those in rural areas. Farmer-turned-workers
failed to enjoy public welfare in residence, employment, medical
care and education.
The country's economic reforms made it possible for 100 million
rural residents to work in cities, breaking a barrier between city
and countryside.
It is an inevitable trend of industrialization and modernization
for surplus rural laborers to move to non-agricultural industries
and to cities and towns, according to a report made by Jiang Zemin,
the then general secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China (CPC), at the 16th Congress of the CPC
held in 2002.
Under the plan, the rate of urbanization in China is expected to
reach 56 percent by 2020. It means that 13 million farmers will
become urban residents in upcoming 16 years.
Farmer-turned-workers have become an important force in
production. Some have been awarded model workers and elected
factory directors or neighborhood committee officials, said Shi
Taisheng, an official of a construction corp. in Chengdu in
southwest China's Sichuan Province. "In our company, farmers used
to do odd jobs. Now, they play a vital role in production. Some
have become technicians," he added.
Bao Xianfeng became the country's first peasant laborer winning
a national model worker medal during the Labor Day of 2004.
Peasant laborers in many cities have begun to enjoy equal rights
of their urban counterparts in sending their children to urban
schools and receiving legal aid and social security treatment. They
have also been included in in-service training, according to a
regulation jointly issued by six government departments in
September 2003.
In the course of household registration reform, quite a number
of Chinese provinces, including Hebei, Hunan, Zhejiang, Shandong
and Jiangsu, have adopted various reform measures to cater to their
specific situation in easing restrictions on rural residents moving
to urban areas.
The Chinese Ministry of Finance has issued a directive ordering
the termination of all kinds of irrational surcharges levied by
local governments on rural laborers working in cities.
China is drafting its first law on protecting farmers' rights
and interests, which will put the nation's largest disadvantageous
group under legal protection.
A growing number of migrant workers have cultivated their love
for the cities they work in and take the new workplace their second
home. For instance, some 1,500 migrant workers in Shanghai choose
to spend the upcoming Spring Festival, China's Lunar New Year, in
Shanghai.
(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2005)