On day one, we see a video of the experiences of one migrant worker forced to return from Shenzhen to her parents’ farm in her village, following a huge drop in the monthly wages she can now earn.  She reports that where she could formerly earn up to 2,500 yuan per month, she is now only able to earn 800 yuan per month, barely enough for her to buy food.  She is facing a similar story to the estimated 140 million migrant workers across China, and is now forced to turn her back on the bright lights of the city to return to a place where she says “there’s still nothing much to do…just watch TV or help with chores.”

The series promises to provide an interesting insight into the challenges facing China and her citizens in the current economic climate.  We will watch it with interest.

Various media outlets in China including the Southern Metropolitan News, Xinua and Sina (links in Chinese) have been reporting that bonded child labourers have been found being ‘sold like vegetables’ in Shipai, Dongguan.   The working conditions into which they were sold were horrific. The reports allege that:

• There are up to 750 bonded child workers in the Pearl River Delta area.
• Workers as young as 9 years old are sold to factories.
• Young workers are threatened and beaten if they try to escape.
• Child labourers are working over 300 hours a month.
• Hourly rates for young workers are RMB 2.5-3.8 (18p-28p) per hour, with no overtime premiums, no benefits and no weekend rests.

This is the latest in a long line of exposes on the very worst forms of child labour in China.  We at Impactt are finding children in factories more and more often. All too often, shock and lack of information about what to do cause delays in tackling the problem, resulting in children slipping through the net and back into work.  The fate of these lost children has prompted us to develop our draft Child Labour Remediation Guidelines for the industrial context.  These set out some simple steps to for stakeholders to take when children are found in factories with the objective of getting children out of danger and back into school.  We are currently consulting on the guidelines – to give your views please, click here. 

Our China team just sent over this terrible story from the Chinese papers. Be warned its not for the faint hearted…

Following the news stories on the Olympics firm accused of using child labor, the Chinese papers have reported that at least 1000 trafficked children were found working in brick-making factories in Shanxi. The youngest children were only 8 years old, the oldest only 13. The children were locked up after working all day until 10 at night. They did not have water for showers, many had skin diseases. Many were reported to have been severely beaten by the supervisors, some to the point where they had limbs broken, others had been beaten up with hot pods for churning bricks until their backs were burnt deeply.

About 400 parents have signed a petition letter on the internet desperate to seek help. The local media have reported that some parents rescued 40 children, but found that some local police deterred parents from rescuing other children, warning them ‘not to interfere with children of others’ while leaving the children working in the factories. Local police have been accused of being involved in trafficking the children among different brick factories in the region. Other local police were accused of putting money for financing the rescue action into their own pockets.

This sheds light on how deep corruption in the Shanxi area goes.

The article, posted on ChinaCSR.com, reports that 20 workers at an unnamed jeans-dyeing factory in Guangdong were paid in fake bank notes. When the workers asked the factory to exchange the fake notes for real ones, they were dismissed.

The factory reportedly claimed that they were victims of the forgery as well, and that they would pay the workers in real currency when they had resolved the issue with their bank. But this does not explain the dismissal of the workers, and goes against the additonal reports that the factory ‘usually uses the fake notes only for new workers’.

The story is in fact not remotely funny.

We have spent the past 30 minutes discussing what we should say on this matter, and how we as a company should react to the news. What we all agree on is that this is a form of forgery that goes well beyond the common practice of faking books to show that workers have been paid the correct amount of real currency.