China's Great Leap by Minky Worden

Author:Minky Worden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

BROKEN BONES AND UNPAID WAGES

Next to coal mining, construction work has the highest number of casualties in China, with 2,607 reported fatalities in 2005. Steel-tipped boots are rare. China’s workers clamber around in thin canvas shoes, often without safety harnesses, and buy their own work gloves. Many of their hard hats are just thin plastic shells, sold for a dollar apiece.

Wang Qishan, the mayor of Beijing, said in a recent interview that he personally reviews construction accident statistics daily. “I can never be happy when I read such reports,” he said. “Beijing can’t do without these people.” The city tries to provide services such as health care for registered migrant workers, but its resources are overstretched, he said.

Like many other construction workers, Mr. Wei entered the trade because there was little else to do on his family’s farm, a small plot where corn and soybeans grow. He left home at seventeen for a province next to Beijing.

When he was in his twenties, Mr. Wei’s left little finger was sliced off by an electric saw. In 1994, he was hit on the head by a steel rod, landing him in the hospital for more than a month. He counts himself lucky because his employer paid for his medical bills.

Last year, the owner of an art gallery in Tongzhou, a Beijing suburb, stiffed Mr. Wei and seventy-six crew mates, according to the men and a later court ruling. They had been paid halfway through the project and promised the rest of the pay upon completion. Instead, when they finished they say they were driven from the site by thugs armed with iron staffs and meat cleavers.

China’s state-controlled banks have poured credit into real estate, where many companies are politically connected. The easy money often leads to ill-conceived projects that quickly go bust. When financing collapses, construction workers—the ones at the bottom of the totem pole—aren’t paid. They find it difficult to claim restitution because they often are employed indirectly through subcontractors.

Mr. Wei and his friends say they had no success appealing to authorities in Tongzhou. About twenty of the workers drifted home, defeated. With no money, Mr. Wei and the remaining workers were forced to make camp in the neighboring province of Hebei, eking out a living with odd jobs. They say they lived on steamed buns, mostly, six for one yuan, or about thirteen cents.

In November 2005, more than fifty of them rose at dawn. They marched for five hours to central Beijing to appeal to authorities there. They wound up at Beijing’s Legal Aid office on Qianmen West Street. Wang Xuefa, the center’s director, remembers the sight of Mr. Wei and his friends kneeling en masse on the office floor. “It was sad to see men brought so low,” he says.

The Intermediate People’s Court in Tongzhou ruled in the group’s favor on January 6, ordering the Hong Kong developer Lian Ka Fu International to pay more than $30,000 in back wages to the workers. They haven’t seen a cent. Lian

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