Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Thousands of laborers are toiling around the clock to complete dozens of Olympic stadiums and support facilities, overhaul the entire metropolitan infrastructure and transportation system, and install state-of-the-art toilets at all the tourist attractions.
The noise generated by the pounding and drilling with heavy equipment has city residents complaining of sleepless nights. An even greater concern is air pollution.
[Republished at PFP with Agence Global permission.]
City officials claim that Beijing’s notoriously poor air quality,
which has led to speculation that some Olympic events may have to be
cancelled, is a temporary problem caused by the dust stirred up due to
construction. They have assured a visiting delegation of the
International Olympic Committee that the air will be fine by the time
of the games. The city has plans to close all factories and stop all
non-essential traffic during the games, and is tinkering with the idea
of artificial rainmaking to flush out the pollutants just before the
games.
The Chinese government views the Olympics as the
chance to showcase its achievements and proudly project China to the
world as a prosperous and modern nation. Towards this end, it has
ordered that 22 squatter villages that house the city’s huge migrant
population be torn down before the games. Never mind that the
Olympic-related construction boom relies almost exclusively on 850,000
migrant workers recruited from across China. Beijing’s Mayor Wang
Qishan maintains that the demolition of the migrants’ “dilapidated
structures” is necessary to make Beijing “a livable city.” His
government is so ashamed of the migrants’ presence that it plans to
repatriate them back to their home villages for the duration of the
games. To underscore the determination of the pre-Olympic “clean-up,”
it has already closed down dozens of schools for migrant children.
These
measures hardly fit the spirit of “One World, One Dream -- the official
motto of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Unfortunately, treating
migrants as disposables is common practice in all cities across China.
City governments can get away with it because of the Chinese “household
registration” (hukou) law. The law deprives people of the right to move
from their original place of residence without obtaining temporary
hukou from the new location. Cities have made this procedure so
difficult that few migrants are able to assemble the required
documentation, and are thus considered to be in the cities illegally.
Yet
their services are indispensable to China’s booming economy. They are
the primary labor force in factories catering to the export trade and
the backbone of China’s monumental infrastructure construction. They
are essential for the needs and comforts of the city dwellers. Without
them the urban building boom would halt, restaurants would close down,
and most service clerks, street vendors, security guards, and nannies
would disappear.
Some 200 million migrants have moved to
China’s cities in the last three decades -- the largest peacetime
migration in human history. Up to one fifth of the populations of some
cities -- such as Shanghai and Beijing -- are migrants.
Chinese
rural migrants moving to cities are like illegal immigrants entering
another country. Without legal standing to live and work, they exist in
a legal void and are easy targets for exploitation. Aside from making
them work long hours for low wages, unscrupulous employers denied them
time off even when sick. In some factories workers are fined one yuan
for every minute they are late to work -- this when they make under
fifteen yuan (US $2.00) a day to begin with. According to one study,
only 31 percent of polled workers regularly received their full salary
on time. The migrants’ non-status allows employers to flout safety
laws, resulting in rashes of maiming, poisoning and death among workers
who are poorly trained and overworked.
It is by the sweat
of the migrants that China has become the factory of the world. And the
income from these exports has China sitting on the largest currency
reserve in the world (over US$1.2 trillion). The surplus value created
by the migrants enables the Chinese government to finance old age
pensions, unemployment benefits, and health care programs -- for
permanent urban residents only. To add insult to injury, the migrants
are regularly stigmatized by the city dwellers, who blame them for
everything from crowded buses to street crime. Police target them for
harassment and extortion. As of now, the 200 million migrants do not
have a single representative in the Chinese People’s Congress to speak
for them.
While the systematic impoverishment of the
migrants may help China continue the trade surplus with the rest of the
world, it forestalls the growth potential of China as a nation, given
that 200 million of its citizens do not have the income to live
decently and educate their children. Disenfranchising such a
significant part of the population is politically explosive in a
country founded in the name of Chinese workers and peasants. The
invisibility the officials wish on the migrants during the Olympic
games cannot hide this contradiction.
As for the rest of
the world -- all of us who regularly consume products made by the sweat
of their labor -- the least we can do when the time comes to cheer the
winners of the Olympic games is to acknowledge the real losers.
Peter
Kwong, a professor of Asian American studies at Hunter College, is
co-author of Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New
Community.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark
Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong,Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and
Immanuel Wallerstein.
Writings 
The opening of the 29th Olympic games in Beijing is less than nine months away.
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