The main reason for migrant worker sacrifice today however, is the desire for their child to get a government job tomorrow. This way, the future for the extended family will be a little brighter.
This is how it has always been in China. This is also how we might understand local corruption.
That grasping county official whom we love to despise is respected by his extended family. They depend on him and his ability to squeeze money out of the community and into the family coffers. He is expected to educate his nephews and nieces, take care of the elderly, provide better housing, and generally raise the socio-economic status of his grateful family.
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It’s what you do in a country which has little social security and few laws to protect the rights of individuals. Thus family is everything. Anyone outside the family is fair game.
But the closure of factories and the mass laying-off of workers in places like Shenzhen and Guangzhou have postponed the dreams of this generation of adult migrant workers who wait patiently for the next train home to their small communities in the poor rural areas of Sichuan Province.
Their gaunt faces betray a grim acceptance of fate rather than volatile emotions of anger, revenge, or self-pity. These tough brown-skinned survivors are steeling themselves for an uncertain future again. They have been in this situation before: they know how to survive in a cruel and unjust world. That lucrative government job will have to wait awhile.
Strong, wiry men and their tired-looking wives returning home with little to show for their effort. Their entitlements disappearing with the factory owners who bolted en masse back to Taiwan after their enterprises collapsed.
And for the first time I seriously consider the potential advantages rather than the known disadvantages associated with political reunification between mainland China and Taiwan. If only to deny these exploiting, delinquent, economic opportunists their Guomindang safe haven across the Taiwan Strait.
The defeated Nationalist leader Jiang Zhe Shi (Chiang Kai Shek) and his cronies and relatives would have been proud of these criminals. This kind of behavior was one of the reasons why Mao’s communist revolution succeeded in the first place.
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Is there any hope for fair compensation or natural justice for these abandoned migrant workers?
None at all. This is history repeating itself. Europe exploited the same class during the industrial revolution in the 18th century, and now laissez-faire capitalism in nominally communist China is doing the same. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Chinese people know how to endure suffering. They have had plenty of practice. These stoic migrant workers will endure.
That’s the Government’s hope anyway. The alternative could be a different kind of catastrophe.
A quote from some Chinese friends:
“Sheng huo” - Western people know how to live.
“Huo zhe” - Chinese people just live (survive).
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