Migrant workers seen as salvation of Shanghai

Migrant workers seen as salvation of Shanghai

By Mark O'Neill

SHANGHAI (Reuter): Ask most Shanghai people what they think of the city's estimated three million migrant workers and they will say they are dirty, ill-educated and responsible for most of the crime.

But Shen Weibin, a history professor at the elite Fudan University, takes the opposite view. For him, these workers are the instrument of Shanghai's resurrection.

"The world's great cities are all immigrant cities," he said in an interview. "It was immigrants that made Shanghai a great city before World War II. After 1949 the city started to die because it cut off the flow of immigrants.

"Now it is the immigrants that have rebuilt the city and are bringing it back to life."

The migrants, from inland regions of China, are everywhere -- they account for most of the workforce on Shanghai's more than 20,000 construction sites, they clean streets and windows, serve in restaurants and work as maids and in factories.

It is the migrants who are transforming Shanghai from a decaying European-style city into a forest of hotels, office buildings, ring roads and high-rise apartment blocks.

For Shen, history is repeating itself.

When foreigners received their concession in Shanghai in 1842, it was a small market town with no major port facilities or factories.

By the 1930s, it had become the premier industrial and commercial city of east Asia, thanks to the immigration of thousands of foreigners and millions of Chinese, from traders and landlords to penniless peasants and refugees.

But the Japanese occupation of the city from 1937 and the Chinese civil war after World War Two caused widespread destruction and the flight of thousands, both rich and poor.

After the Communists took power in 1949, they imposed a nationwide system to restrict population movement, with urban citizens having to register and carrying coupons to buy grain.

"The system was introduced to enable the Communists to control people," said a second Shanghai academic who declined to be named. "It was not aimed specifically at Shanghai but brought an enormous economic cost for the city.

"Chairman Mao was the son of a farmer. He did not understand modern economics and the importance of mobility of people and goods to the economy."

Shanghai's resident population soared to 11.32 million by 1979 from 5.03 million in 1949 but there was limited investment in new roads, housing, sewers and other infrastructure. The resident population reached 13 million at the end of 1995.

Only after economic reforms began in 1979 were controls on migration eased. But the flood of migrants into Shanghai did not begin until the early 1990s.

Then the eastern side of the city, Pudong, was declared a special zone, offering tax privileges, and the city was allowed to sell land to developers. These two policies set off a building boom that continues in full swing now.

Most of the hard labor on the building sites is done by peasants from poor inland provinces like Sichuan, Anhui, Jiangxi and Hunan, who live in bunks in wooden shacks on the site, work seven days a week and earn about 1,000 yuan ($120) a month.

"These people do jobs which local people do not want," Shen said. "Even Shanghai people who have been laid off do not envy them. They would not work in such conditions."

Shen said the system of household registration, though nominally in place, was breaking down, with migrant workers staying here and able to acquire what they need with money and not permits from officials.

The flood of people has been more than the authorities expected, causing problems of public health and hygiene, law and order and worsening housing shortages.

While most migrant workers live in rooms provided by their employers, the better off ones rent or buy apartments, to the delight of local property companies who are holding a glut of commercial apartments.

Shen sees this process as providing the natural growth of the city.

"The less skilled will go home once they have finished their job," he said. "Those with skills and ability will stay and become Shanghai people."