****trait of a Child Abusing "Olympic Host" -- Child labor cases
uncovered in China
-- Micky's humble opinion: One of the strong indignations that some
Chinese students have expressed on the the campus of U.S. universities
was: ". . .Western news media had not acknowledged the strides China had
made. . . .", IMHO: This is very childish thinking; These Chinese
students, many are graduate students who are approaching 30 years old,
yet their logic remain those similar to kinder garden kids, who is
eagerly begging for others approval and praises, when no praises were
found, the disappointment turned into anger. What a pathetic "Olympic
Host" ! --
International Herald Tribune
Child labor cases uncovered in China
By David Barboza
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
SHANGHAI: China said Wednesday that it was investigating whether
hundreds or perhaps thousands of children from poor areas in the
southwest part of the country had been sold to work as slave laborers in
booming coastal factory cities.
Authorities in southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they
had already rescued more than 100 children from factories in Dongguan, a
huge manufacturing city known for producing and ex****ting toys, textiles
and electronics.
The children, mostly 13 to 15 years old, were often tricked or kidnapped
by employment agencies working in an impoverished part of western
Sichuan Province, and then sent to factory towns in Guangdong, where
they were often forced to work as much as 300 hours a month for little
money, according to government officials and accounts from the
state-owned media.
The authorities in southern China said Wednesday that they had arrested
several people involved in the case and that they were trying to
determine the identities of the children.
"These youngsters have no ID cards, so it makes it difficult to identify
them," said Zhang Xiang, a spokesman for the Guangdong Labor Bureau. The
child labor scandal was uncovered by Southern Metropolis Daily, a
crusading newspaper based in Guangzhou, in southern China, less than a
year after the authorities said they had rescued hundreds of people,
including children, from working as "slave laborers" in brick kilns in
the north and central part of the country.
Many of the workers in that case also said they had been kidnapped.
The new child labor case "is quite typical," said Hu Xingdou, a
professor of economics and social policy at the Beijing Institute of
Technology. "China's economy is developing at a fascinating speed, but
often at the expense of laws, human rights and environmental protection."
Professor Hu said that although Beijing had pushed to improve labor
conditions throughout the nation, local governments were still driven by
incentives to make their economies grow, so they tried to lure cheap
labor. "Most of the work force comes from underdeveloped or
poverty-stricken areas," he said. "Some children are even sold by their
parents, who often don't have any idea of the working conditions."
The child labor cases are an embarrassment to the Chinese government,
which has in recent years announced a series of nationwide crackdowns on
child labor and labor law violations.
But experts say rising labor, energy and raw-material costs, and labor
shortages in some parts of southern China, have caused some factory
owners to cut costs or find new sources of cheap labor, including child
labor.
Even factories that supply global companies, including Wal-Mart Stores,
have been accused in recent years of using child labor, and violating
local labor laws. Big cor****ations have stepped up their factory audits,
but suppliers are sometimes adept are hiding operations and workers from
auditors.
Officials in Dongguan say they are now investigating all factories in
the area to determine whether any are employing children. Young people
can legally go to work in factories when they turn 16.
In a series of articles this week, journalists working for Southern
Metropolis Daily wrote that they had traveled to Liangshan, a prefecture
in Sichuan Province, to pose as recruiters and to interview parents and
other residents.
The newspaper said recruiters and labor agencies working in Liangshan
often trans****ted children south and then "sold" them to factories at
virtual auctions in Guangdong Province, one of China's biggest
manufacturing centers and home to a huge population of migrant workers.
At some coastal factories, children were even lined up and selected
based on their body type, the journalists wrote.
The newspaper also alleged that when the children were paid, they
received about three renminbi per hour, or about 43 cents, far below the
local minimum wage, about 64 cents an hour. By law, overtime pay is much
higher.
Chen Fulin, a government spokesman in Liangshan, said in a telephone
interview on Wednesday that the articles on child labor in Southern
Metropolis Daily were correct.
"So far, we have detected and found four people in Zhaojue County
suspected of luring the youngsters from Liangshan to Dongguan and
forcing them to work in factories," he said. "We are dealing with the
illegal employment agencies and the labor dealers, according to the
law." In its re****t, Southern Metropolis Daily said some children had
been threatened with death if they tried to escape from labor recruiters.
The newspaper did not identify the coastal factories where the children
worked, but the re****t said that one was a toy factory in Dongguan, and
that it had not been hard for the journalists to uncover the labor
scandal.
"Since journalists could discover the facts by secret interviews in a
few days," Southern Metropolis Daily wrote in a separate editorial on
Tuesday, "how could the labor departments show no interest in it and
turn aside from it for such a long time?"
International Herald Tribune Copyright
www.iht.com
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