In China, millions of children of domestic migrants are 'left behind'
As people move from rural to urban areas in China in search of work, a high proportion of their children follow only to face a range of hardships, ranging from poor emotional support to limited access to public services. Despite some improvements, their full development is thus stunted by inadequate living conditions.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – Although about a third of China's population is made up of rural migrants who moved to the cities where they have contributed to the country's economic growth, rural workers continue to have limited access to its social safety net.
The consequences of this state of affairs are particularly hard on the children of these workers, known as the "left behind" (留守儿童), who are often denied access to proper healthcare and education, despite the government’s decision at the start of the year to make it easier to get a residence permit in cities.
The root of the problem lies in the notorious hukou (户口) system, a household registration process that includes a domestic passport introduced in its current form by the communist regime in 1958 to facilitate the distribution of resources and ensure that the then largely rural population continued to work in the countryside.
Under the system, social benefits can only be obtained at one’s official place of residence, which is passed on from one generation to the next. As a result, rural workers who lived in cities for years still have limited access to hospitals and their children cannot attend local high schools.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (BBS) show that rural migrant workers in China number 295.6 million, with the largest increase since 2013 recorded in 2021 following a drop due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the South China Morning Post reported, only 45.4 per cent of the population had an urban hukou in 2020.
Although the problem of children left behind is not new, their and their parents’ situation has not improved so that at present 36.4 per cent of Chinese children do not live with both parents.
The issue is included in a recent report titled China’s Child Population Status in 2020: Facts and Figures, published jointly by the NBS, UNICEF, and the United Nations Population Fund.
According to data from 2020 (the year of the last official survey), children up to the age of 17 number 298 million, 21.1 per cent of the population, but almost half, 138 million or 46.4 per cent are involved in internal migration.
Out of that total, 71 million migrated with their parents while 67 million remained in their hometown with their extended families, especially poorly educated grandparents; thus, in rural areas, the children end up speaking mostly local dialects rather than standard Mandarin while their level of education remains low.
Rural children might see their migrant parents about a dozen times a year, and often report a sense of emotional detachment from their grandparents as well. One secondary school student, for example, is quoted as saying, “I help [my grandparents] cook and we watch television together but we don’t really talk.” Some older children also leave their hometown on their own for study or work.
According to the report, between 2010 and 2020 the number of people without a hukou dropped by half, from 8.05 million people to 4.03 million, 2.91 million were children under 17.
Since the 1980s, when Chinese cities began to need cheap labour, hukou restrictions have been gradually eased.
As a result, the percentage of urban population rose from 21.1 per cent in 1982 to 63.9 per cent in 2020, as thousands of rural workers poured into urban centres, sometimes – such as the industrial hubs of Shenzhen and Dongguan – overtaking the local population.
The number of children "left behind" in urban areas grew by 65.4 per cent from 2010 to 2020, while the proportion of children left in rural areas rose by 5.2 per cent, or 2.07 million.
This might seem encouraging, but in fact, over the same period, the child population in rural areas decreased by 28.6 per cent, so that the number of children left behind in rural areas reached 41.77 million, accounting for 62.4 per cent of all the "left behind".
The data show that the problem has worsened in the cities, going hand in hand with the urbanisation of the country.
Although the number of children who now follow their parents has increased thanks to limited access to public services regardless of where the hukou is registered, their situation has not really improved because the living conditions of the parents continue to prevent the proper development of children.
The vast majority of migrant workers are still employed in low-paid jobs in manufacturing, construction and services.
Despite salary increases, the average monthly salary of a migrant worker is 4,615 yuan (US$ 630), while the national average rate for outpatient services in general hospitals is 329.2 yuan (US$ 45) per visit, and the average rate for hospital services is 1,191.7 yuan (US$ 162) per day.
Access to education in cities is also hampered by red tape, which limits enrolment in public schools.
Domestic migrants often work up to 11 hours a day without social insurance coverage. In 2017, for example, only 22 per cent had a basic pension or medical insurance.
Migrant workers also do not have access to public housing. According to a number of studies, their average living space is only 17.6 square metres per person in cities with more than five million people (a medium-sized city in China).
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15/02/2006
