China's migrant workers give city life thumbs down
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The same brutal fate has befallen urban schools for children of migrant workers who simply cannot afford to send their kids to their host city's public schools. Even award-winning schools can suddenly be deemed unsafe for some reason or another and have their license revoked. This requires some parents to send their kids back "home" to rickety, one-room schoolhouses where even chalk may be in short supply.
Estimates show 58 million kids have been "left behind" in villages to be raised by aging grandparents, while their mothers and fathers migrate to cities to eke out a living that is supposed to support the entire family in both locations. There's a new worry that the emotional turmoil and separation anxiety are creating a lose-lose generation that hasn't been properly raised or loved or educated.
Yet all the issues above aren't the worst of it. I bet the withering disrespect, the arrogant glares and the disparaging comments from urbanites, plus an overwhelming sense of being exploited to enrich others must be galling beyond relief.
The sense of entitlement I see from "official" residents of the city seems in complete contradiction to the last 60 years of history and the country's embrace of socialism.
A neighbor told me the main reason her daughter plans to return from overseas is because services in Canada are too expensive. Here in China, if your toilet is plugged, your pipe is leaking, your car needs washing, or your home needs cleaning, you simply call a local migrant worker to step in and fetch it.
My neighbor's daughter, who is making close to a six-figure salary, is right. People in the service industry in Canada are paid their worth. She might even find that the plumber she paid to change the washer in her faucet earns enough to be her neighbor.
Western countries also seem oblivious and uncaring about the plight of China's migrants and their families in the countryside.
After years of snapping together cheap made-for-export electronic gizmos they can't afford, their livelihoods are hanging by a thread and few more downward clicks of the currency exchange rate. I wonder if the young factory workers who produce fodder for gluttonous, overextended overseas consumers know the West is cheering for their downfall.
Of course there are millions of people from China's countryside who are doing okay in the city. Yet this year, even successful migrant workers have decided that a pay check isn't the only thing that matters and they've decided to stay home. They've come to realize that the road to riches is a dead-end that stops at the city limits.
The author is the founder of R.D. Communications. billsiggins@ realdogcomm.cn
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