China: Great Dragon Rising - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 322

an official level of 4 percent in 2007 and 2008, although
experts say it was more likely 9 or 10 percent. With the
economic downturn, thousands of workers returned to
the countryside. But in 2009, China' s economy picked up
again, and suddenly there was a shortage of workers espe-
cially in the coastal provinces. One of the driving forces
was the rush to finish construction for Shanghai' s World
Expo, where 400,000 laborers are needed.
Another region of labor shortages is Guangdong,
where the economy has recovered and demand for ex-
ports has increased dramatically . Now employers are
raising wages, storming job fairs, and staking out train
stations hoping to snare migrants. The China Daily , the
state-run English language newspaper, said that the city
of Dongguan, where most of the world' s toys are made,
was short of its usual population of 5 million workers.
The paper also reported that companies are offering
higher wages, better housing, and more benefits to at-
tract employees.
Continual reduction in China' s population growth
portends a demographic crisis. By 2050, a third of the
population will be 60 or older (compared to 26 percent
in the United States). Where will all the needed younger
workers come from?

own schools, which are of significantly lower quality
than official schools.
Migrant housing for both men and women is typi-
cally abominable. Apartments and dormitories are rudi-
mentary and overcrowded. Thirty workers may be
crammed into a single room with no ventilation or show-
ers. Shared sanitation facilities are limited. Women are
often locked into their dormitories at night.
Many migrant workers suffer from poor health. Most
live off vegetables and noodles and suffer from protein
deficiency . The most prevalent disease is silicosis, which
reduces lung capacity . Silicosis is caused by exposure to
silica dust, which fills the air in stone and glass, ceram-
ics, and fiberglass factories. In 2006, some 616,000
workers had the disease. Accidents, exposure to silica,
textile dust, and toxic fumes from dyes and other chemi-
cals kill as many as 130,000 women and men a year.

WOMEN'S WORK
“Women hold up half the sky .” So said Mao Zedong in
the 1950s. Women achieved many gains under commu-
nism, especially during the Cultural Revolution
(1966-1976) when people tried to be gender neutral and
participation of women in political and economic activi-
ties reached nearly 100 percent. Now , as communism
gives way to capitalism, women are falling back into old
situations of inequality in line with traditional Confucian
and Daoist thinking, which defined women as culturally
inferior to men.
In China, didactic thinking is common and is re-
flected in the fact that experience is classified in paired
concepts that are frequently polar opposites. Further-
more, contrasting concepts often have one that is more
highly valued. Gender differences reflect this system.
One fundamental dichotomy is that women are asso-
ciated with “inside” domains of work and men are asso-
ciated with “outside” domains of work. Women do
“light” work while men do “heavy” work. “Skilled” work
is done by men, and “unskilled” work is done by women.
The introduction of new technology has exacerbated
these divisions. Men dominate in work involving labor-
saving machinery while women are relegated to perform-
ing more menial, labor-intensive tasks.
T Today, , women work in the fields while many men
leave the village to work in a new factory enterprise.
Agriculture has been reclassified as lesser “inside” work.
Factory work is more important “outside” work, al-
though millions of women do work in factories. More-
over, women are responsible for family members and

“FLOATING” POPULATIONS
T Temporary residents obtain permission to stay in a city
for a fixed amount of time to work in factories or on con-
struction sites. These floating populations make up a
quarter of some cities' populations. In Guangzhou they
comprise 38 percent, and they outnumber permanent
residents in Shenzhen. Most of the temporary people
work in the building industry , followed by retailing, es-
pecially individual street-side enterprises. T Temporary
populations place great stress on social facilities, trans-
port, and housing.
In 1989, there were 30 million migrant workers in
China. By 2006, that number had reached 132 million.
While migrants are poorly paid, they can earn more in
cities than they can in rural areas. In 2005, these workers
sent home US$65 million.
Migrants take jobs that are zhan —dirty; lie —physi-
cally demanding; ku —bitter; and xian —dangerous. They
work 11 hour days and 26 days per month and their
hourly wage is only a quarter of that paid to permanent
urban laborers.
When migrant workers leave their small towns and
villages, they give up their entitlements such as educa-
tion and health care. Many migrants have started their