I just saw a story on the TV news here that the Beijing government has set up a 'job fair' outside one of the main train stations.... to assist arriving migrants in finding work.
Allegedly.
I figure most of these people find work readily enough through family contacts already here, or through the freelance employment agents who circle the train and bus stations like vultures. Assuming there is any work to be had, that is.
No, nasty old cynic that I am, I am inclined to suspect that this is more of a social control measure - trying to establish a more accurate register of migrant workers arriving in the city so that, if there is a serious shortfall of new jobs ('if'???), they can be easily rounded up and sent back home.
Then again, maybe it's more just an empty propaganda exercise. I imagine these new arrivals don't have any contact details to give out (with any luck, they've arranged to crash with family or friends - but they might not know the address, and probably wouldn't want to give it out to government representatives anyway). Most migrant workers have a very precarious and sub-legal status here: without valid Beijing residence papers, which very few of them have or can get, they are subject to fines or detention at the drop of a hat. I am therefore very dubious as to how many of them would sign up with a government-run employment registry.
Still, all this talk of caring for and helping the migrants is very uplifting, isn't it? Help with finding jobs. Help with re-training (wonderful shot of beaming peasant, quite probably illiterate, flicking through a booklet on safety procedures in the building industry, seeking out the illustrations, looking at them rather bemusedly; perhaps he's already worked in construction for several years and has never seen a safety harness.....). Gosh, they might even make them eligible for healthcare and education one day. And remove that threat of arbitrary arrest. One day.
In the midst of all this rather unconvincing happy-clappy stuff, there was one chilling statistic: a spokesmen for the government employment agency said that they had details of 30,000 jobs available..... but they needed to find 100,000 more.
As is usual with the Chinese handling of statistics, no parameters were mentioned. What's the timeframe there? 100,000 jobless peasants have arrived in Beijing in how long???
Yes, somewhat alarming.
I am becoming increasingly unsettled by the unaccustomed (perhaps inadvertent?) candour we've been seeing on CCTV9 items about the economy in the past month or so. Even Yang Rui's Dialogue, a talking heads programme which is usually to be relied upon to provide reassuringly gung-ho and right-on pro-China commentary from Chinese and foreign guests alike, was just recently mentioning terms like "social unrest" and "rising crime" in relation to "mass unemployment".... in China. After 6 years of nothing but good news most of the time, these little unexpected doses of reality are quite a shock to the system.
10 million job losses this year in the construction sector alone, they were saying. And that's just what they're admitting to. Oh my gawd!
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