"Is the Pearl River Delta Growing Too Fast?"
Marsha Smith, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Augustana College
Rock Island, IL

            The Pearl River Delta (PRD) has certainly experienced rapid industrialization and population growth in recent years. Much of this rapid growth is built on the backs of millions of rural migrant workers who leave their home communities to work in PRD factories. Researchers estimate that ninety-five percent of the labor force in the PRD comes from migrant workers, among whom over sixty percent are women. They leave their home communities searching for a better way of life, and in fact, they can earn more income in the PRD than at home. However, they experience incredible obstacles and disadvantages as migrants in the new economic zones.
Only in the most up-to-date factories, for example at CCTC  (China Circuit Technology Corporation) in Shantou, are workers seemingly well-trained for jobs, have contracts that provide appropriate benefits, and have low turn-over rates. Elsewhere, for example, the Wang family shoe factory, managers say that all workers have contracts, but migrants themselves often disagree. Many receive low wages, work up to twelve hours per day and work six or seven days per week. 

Dr. Liu Kaiming, Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Observation (ICO), located in Shenzen, indicates that approximately sixty percent of migrant workers have no labor contract. Even when contracts are provided for workers, migrant laborers with only elementary or middle school education are unable to negotiate favorable terms. For example, even though laws in China guarantee women workers maternity leave, often migrant workers are fired if they become pregnant or employers may refuse to provide this benefit. Liu Kaiming documents a case where worker's contracts indicated they would be charged a minimal fee to cover retirement savings and death and disability insurance, but workers learned, in fact, though this money was collected, no funds were ever dispersed to make sure workers needs were covered. Injured workers found that there was no money to be had after they were no longer able to work.

Workers often live five or six together in a single-room, perhaps having one or two toilets per floor. They often pay around 30 yuan a month plus water or electricity costs if applicable. They may earn between 150 and 450 yuan a month. Cooking is often done on a portable burner, but most eat at the local factory canteen for a fee or at an outside dining location.

The hukou registration system and its tangible benefits such as education, social security, worker compensation, and health care are not available to migrants. Workers in many PRD locations are often classified as locals, resident migrants and non-resident migrants. Locals are those workers who originate from the community, have hukou residence, and receive appropriate social welfare benefits. Local residents (perhaps originally peasants themselves) often work as restaurant owners, shop keepers, managers, landlords or security staff for higher wages than migrants.  They also are likely to receive substantial monthly governmental support.  These residents may accept the influx of resident migrants as necessary to development, but often look down on them as backward outsiders. Resident migrants are those workers who come from outside the area but are able to transfer their hukou status to the new community. Often these workers have high educational degrees, are well-paid, have good homes, and are employed in the financial, managerial, or research development and technical sectors. According to one scholar, Professor Wang Xiaohua, of Shenzen University, of the 12 million current residents, only 300,000 are residents, around 2 million are resident migrants, and the other 10.7 million are non-resident migrants, who for all intents and purposes, have no clear access to social welfare benefits, housing, education, or health services. Although many PRD provincial and local governments officials welcome the huge influx of workers because of the continued need for a steady, cheap labor force to maintain the region's economic growth, they are slow to respond to the labor concerns and social service needs of migrant workers. They recognize the problems, but they have yet to develop sustainable solutions.

A most interesting and somewhat unexpected outcome due to the gap between migrant worker needs and services is an emerging space for the rise of indigenous NGOs, located within the PRD, to fill the gap. Probably the best-known of these indigenous NGO's is the Institute for Contemporary Observation (ICO) located in Shenzen. According to Rose Tang of the Hong Kong Standard, ICO is the first and largest NGO in China. ICO was founded in March, 2001. In June of that year ICO received its first funding from Oxfam Hong Kong and since then has received monies from the Ford Foundation, Winrock International, University of California, Berkeley, and Oslo University among other projects.  Much of the work has been in the area of investigative reports, labor negotiation, and migrant training.

Liu Kaiming has indicated that there has been suspicion about what ICO is doing, and he feels that he has clearly been under observation by officials. However, much of his work is beneficial to governmental needs, particularly the training workshops on corporate responsibility and the Migrant Workers Community College, and they tolerate some of the other activities that have been critical of labor management practices.  Independently, an unidentified Sun Yat Sen University faculty member indicated that there is some concern among officials about the ICO, and that it was, indeed, under careful watch.

There are other NGO's that have been emerging in the Guangdong area, according to Jim Turner, head of the Economic and Political Section of the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou.  Additional NGO's that he is aware of, or has worked with, include the Female Migrant Worker's Training Project in the Pearl River Delta, the Migrant Workers Document Center, China/Hong Kong, BSR International, Disabled Peoples' Service Center and the Chinese  Working Women's Network. Since 2001 the emergence of NGO's in the PRD, although experimental, seemingly has experienced a measure of success and continues to grow. 

Is China growing too fast? China is growing quickly, to be sure; there are substantial problems that need to be solved, particularly in the PRD, but there seems to be a growing acceptance and flexibility emerging among the political and civil structures that allows for innovative, non-governmental programs to "step in" and begin to remedy some of the issues.