BEIJING, Nov 15 — Not since he left home to find work in China's booming south five years ago has He Huan been back for more than two weeks at a stretch. And even when he does return to Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan province, it is during the Chinese New Year break — the only time when China's masses of migrant workers can leave their factory jobs to rejoin their families.
But this year, the 23-year-old journeyed back from Shenzhen city in July and stayed put.
The Taiwanese-owned garment manufacturer he joined last May was showing signs of being in trouble. Until this January, there were more than enough orders from abroad to keep all 4,000 workers and their sewing machines busy, churning out casual wear, he said.
Then things began to change.
“There was less and less work, and they started to cut workers. Before I left, there were only half left,” said He, who was paid a monthly wage of 2,000 yuan (RM1,060). Unnerved by stories of bankrupt factory bosses who fled without paying their workers, he picked up his last pay cheque in mid-July and caught a train home.
Under the weight of the global financial crisis, thousands of labour-intensive factories in China's southern manufacturing and export hub that hire millions of migrant workers, have collapsed. Others are slashing pay, relocating, or shedding workers.
Hosts of migrant workers — who have long flocked to the Pearl River Delta region for employment that pays better than farm work — are being forced home to ride out the storm.
In Guangdong, with 30 million migrant workers, 50,000 of the province's one million companies have closed down in the first nine months of this year. China last year had 226 million migrant workers toiling far from home in its manufacturing, coal and construction sectors.
There are no official figures of those who have returned home. But local newspapers in provinces that are traditional sources of migrant labour — including Sichuan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Chongqing municipality — have in recent weeks reported on the rising numbers coming back, especially from the Pearl River Delta region.
Guangzhou city, Guangdong's capital, reported that from Oct 11 to 27, departures from its main train station hit 1.17 million people, an increase of 129,000 passengers over the same period last year. Most were migrant workers heading home.
Chinese media reports are not unanimous over whether the trend amounts to a tide, as some analysts note that the number heading home has not yet overtaken that still leaving in search of jobs or those currently outside. But many warn that the homeward-bound movement could grow into an exodus if the economic crisis deepens.
Most migrant workers are not legally registered as living in the cities they work in, and have little social protection to fall back on when they lose their jobs.
“A slowdown in the West might not lead to disturbance because the basic lives of the people are more or less guaranteed. But in China, high unemployment, a drop in incomes, will mean many like these migrant farmers will lose their basic livelihoods,” said economics and China issues expert Hu Xingdou. “Without that basic level of living, this could lead to prominent problems in social order and stability — we could see more protests, riots.”
The loss of income for migrant farmers, who remit the bulk of earnings home, could also cast a damper on the economies of their home provinces.
Beijing's newly unveiled four trillion yuan economic stimulus package, with its focus on national infrastructure projects and social welfare, is crucial to maintaining stability by preventing growth from falling below 8 per cent, said Hu.
That is the level at which economists say China needs to grow in order to keep generating enough factory jobs to maintain stability in the labour market. Already, labour protests have hit struggling businesses in the south in recent weeks, with reports of unpaid factory workers protesting after their companies folded.
Jiangxi native Ye Qingfang, 30, was one of the unlucky ones. His former employer, an automotive parts maker in Zhejiang province, has not paid workers since September.
With hardly any savings and no suitable job openings, he too, is heading home. “If the company is bankrupt, no matter what you do, they have no way to pay you,” he told The Straits Times.
The situation looks likely to get worse before getting better. Some 2.5 million jobs in the Pearl River Delta region may be lost by year-end, according to government and industry estimates.
Migrant workers who have returned home say the weakening job market is grounding them for longer than they would like. Former farmer Tang Ximing, 38, has been back in Lanzhou city since September, when he left his job as a cook, earning 1,200 yuan a month in a Shenzhen factory canteen, to start a small business back home.
When that fell through due to lack of capital, he thought of heading out and contacted friends in Guangdong. “They told me, ‘Don't bother. There is nothing’,” he said. — The Straits Times
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