Migration and Health in China: Problems, Obstacles and Solutions

Full text

Migration and Health in China:
Problems, Obstacles and
Solutions
Xiang Biao
ASIAN METACENTRE RESEARCH PAPER SERIES
no.17
ASIAN METACENTRE
FOR POPULATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
ANALYSIS
HEADQUARTERS AT ASIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY of SINGAPORE

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iang Biao (BA and MA in Sociology, Beijing University; PhD in Anthropology,
Oxford) has worked on migration and social change in China, India and
Australia over the last decade. His main work includes a long-term ethnographic
study on a migrant community in Beijing (A Village beyond Borders. Chinese by
Sanlian Press, 2000; English by Brill Academic Publishers, forthcoming), a
sociological research on migrant workers in the Pearl River delta in southern China
(“Peasant Workers” and Urban Development. Beijing University, 1995; partly
reprinted in Chinese Youth Studies, 1998, issue I-VI) and an interdisciplinary study on
migrant Indian computer professionals in Australia (Global "Body Shopping". 2002,
PhD thesis and Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
Xiang published a series of articles in journals including International Migration,
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, China Quarterly and Chinese Social Sciences
Quarterly, and a few of them were reprinted. He also contributed papers to the World
Migration Report 2003 (International Organization for Migration) and other edited
books.
Xiang was a Research Officer of the International Organization for Migration
(2002) and a Visiting Fellow of University of Wollongong, Australia (2000-01). He is
a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the World Congress on Human
Movements and Immigration in Barcelona (2004) and members of various
professional bodies. He was extensively involved in policy consultations for
government and non-government organisations in China from 1993 to 1998 and was
interviewed by media agencies including BBC, ABC (Australia), Chinese Central TV
and Chinese Central Radio.
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Abstract
here are currently at least 85 million rural-urban migrants in the mainland China.
These migrants face great health risks, yet are not recognised or covered by any
medical care scheme. This paper demonstrates that the key issue for migrants’ health
is not their social characteristics such as low income or the lack of health awareness,
as most literature has emphasised, but lies in the institutional arrangements regarding
health security and service provision. Unlike in other countries, rural-urban dualism
and a unique household registration system in China render migrants unable to access
public services in either cities or villages.
I will first review the basic health problems facing migrants, and then explore the
question of why migrants are not included in the new medical care system that
supposedly aims to cover as many people as possible. I suggest that the reasons lie in
various structural and institutional factors far more fundamental than medical care
itself. They include the rural-urban divide in welfare provision; the potential conflicts
between the government’s immediate goal in medical care reform (to relieve State-
owned enterprises from welfare burdens) and the costs of including migrants in the
system; the tension between the informal employment relationship prevalent among
migrants and the current medical care schemes’ reliance on formal employment
relationship in implementation; and finally the friction between migrants’ mobility
and the scheme’s localised operation pattern. Alternatively, I suggest that grassroots
activities can become an important means of providing basic health services for
migrants. Activities proven to be effective in practice include providing health
education, extending urban community health services to migrants, allowing for or
even encouraging the setting up of clinics by migrants themselves, and empowering
migrants by providing legal assistance and developing migrants’ self-help
organisations. Though these activities cannot change formal policies immediately,
they may have far-reaching institutional implications in the long run.
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Acknowledgement
his paper is a preliminary report of my project of the same title funded by the
Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis and the
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Many people have offered
me generous help. Among others, Drs Shi Xiuying, Zhe Xiaoye, Tang Jun, Yang
Tuan, Huang Ping from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) shared with
me material and views. Ms Tan Shen from CASS provided me with her very valuable
information and insights based on her long-term involvement in research on migrant
welfare. Dr Sara Cook from the Ford Foundation in Beijing pointed me to various
valuable contacts and literature. I particularly benefited from her insight about the
tension between the informal employment relationship prevalent among migrant
workers and the formal medical care scheme. I also benefited from interaction with Dr
Xiong Pingyao from Beijing University, Dr Gong Sen from the State Council
Development Research Centre, Dr Yuan Yue from Horizon Survey Company and Dr
Li Weiping from the Ministry of Health. Dr Yang Xiushi at Old Dominion University
shared with me his work on HIV and temporary migration in China. Professor Brenda
Yeoh and Ms Verene Koh at Asian MetaCentre offered generous help throughout the
project. Finally, I would like to thank Dr Gu Xin at the Institute of East Asian Studies
of the National University of Singapore, Ms Doreen Montag at the University of
Heidelberg, Germany, and Ms Theresa Wong and Mr Leong Wai Kit at Asian
MetaCentre, for their careful reading of the earlier versions of this paper and
constructive suggestions for revision.
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List of Plates
Plate 1
Migrants in Beijing
Plate 2
Rubbish Collecting is an Important Occupation for Immigrants
Plate 3
The Living Condition of Migrants in Beijing
Plate 4
An Open Medical Consultation Organised by a Residential
Committee in Beijing
Plate 5
A Clinic Set Up by a Migrant in Zhejiang Village, a Migrant
Community in Beijing

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Introduction
he recently-released China’s Fifth Population Census reported 121.07 million
internal migrants as of the year 2000 (Population and Social Sciences
Department, National Statistic Bureau of China, 2001). This is about double the UK’s
national population, three times that of Spain’s, six times that of Australia’s and 30
times that of Singapore’s. Among them, more than 70 per cent were rural-urban
migrants, equivalent to 85 million, though a more commonly cited figure in official
speeches and public media is 100 million. These migrants are at their most
economically-active ages - almost 70 per cent between the ages of 15-49 and 20 per
cent between 25-29 (National Statistic Bureau of China, 2001). Undoubtedly, they
play a crucial role in China’s current growth regime, namely an economic
development model based on labour-intensive manufacturing industries.
The macro-economic impacts of rural-urban migration in China, such as its
contribution to industrial development, to the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment,
and to the agricultural efficiency as a means of relieving surplus rural labour, have
been well documented and researched. While this paper shares with this literature the
overarching concern on the relationship between migration and development, it is part
of a research agenda that tackles the issue from a different perspective, namely by
linking migration and development through human resource formation and
enhancement. Migration can be a process that enhances human capital. For example,
through migration migrants learn new skills, accumulate both material and social
capital (networks), obtain greater access to services, particularly health and education
services, for both themselves and their families.
1
But migration can also be
detrimental to human resource development. Given the fact that migrant workers
often suffer from ultra-exploitation at work, yet are hardly covered by any labour
protection and social security measures, migration may turn a healthy labourer to an
ill person.
Some recent news reports in China may give us an idea how damaging migration
can be as far as its health consequences are concerned. For example, as many as
70,000 female workers, mostly migrants, at shoemaking factories in Putian County,
Fujian Province had suffered from benzene poisoning by 1996. Benzene damages the
blood and nervous system and can be fatal; it is also very difficult to cure (see Chen
1996). In a few villages in Shangcheng County, Henan Province, about 200 returned
migrant workers acquired severe pneumoconiosis as a result of working in quartz
factories in Jiangsu Province without any protective measures. At least five of them
had died and two were fighting for their lives by late October 2001 (Gao, 2001). In
another case, more than 50 young male peasants in a village in Taishun County,
Zhejiang Province, suffered from the same disease as a result of working in a
construction project in Liaoning Province (for more details see below). All of them
had subsequently lost their ability to work, and need life-long treatment. By the end of
2000, China had a total of 425,000 patients suffering from this disease (Gao, 2001). It
1
During my fieldwork with migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta in southern China in 1994, I
sensed a strong tendency of “petty bourgeoisification” of migrants. “Petty bourgeoisification” refers to
the process by which migrants better their status from being employees to becoming small business
owners. For them, the most attractive places to settle down are usually small towns or newly-developed
cities close to their native villages, rather than the metropolises. In these places, the barrier to market
entry is lower and their savings can be better utilised.
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may not be exaggerating to suggest that China will have a huge population of
unproductive, and even ill people comprised of former migrants, in one or two
decades.
Given the massive scale of internal migration in China, the health of migrants
matters not only for themselves, but also have important implications for the larger
society. During the recent SARS crisis in mainland China, migrants were the most
worrying group for the government and society.
2
They were worrying not only
because of the perception that they are mobile and may therefore spread the virus to a
greater extent, but also because they seldom seek timely medical treatment when sick,
due to low incomes and to being excluded from medical care system (see below). This
made them a particularly dangerous potential source of SARS infection. Partly
because of this, the central authorities ordered all hospitals in China to offer free
treatments for SARS patients who have financial difficulties.
Existing literature on migration and health in China, in both English and Chinese,
focuses mainly on STD, HIV and reproductive health (e.g. Hansen and Li, 2002;
Yang, 2002, 2004). Most papers are descriptive and take a biomedical approach. Yang
Xuishi’s papers are among the few that pay attention to the social dimension by
calling attention to migrants’ presumably special behaviour patterns in examining the
links between migration and HIV, but they still fall short in providing an institutional
analysis. At the same time, there have been many academic analyses and policy
discussions on social security system reform in China from the perspective of
institutional analysis, but this literature has been predominated by a rural-urban
dualist framework and treats the rural and urban societies completely differently and
cannot accommodate rural-urban migrants. This is fundamentally a reflection of the
policy framework in reality. In China, the urban medical care system is under the
charge of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (this also directly reflects the
employment-based nature of the medical system, which I will tackle later), but it is
still not clearly designated which department should be the focal point for rural
medical care. This paper attempts to fill these gaps by offering an institutional
analysis on the relationship between migrants and the current health service provision
system in China.
To this end, this paper proceeds in the following way. The first section describes
the basic health problems that migrants are facing. The second section offers a
political economy analysis on China’s medical care system and discusses migrants’
relation to this system. I suggest that it is due to a series of institutional barriers that
are far more powerful than medical care itself that migrants are excluded from the
system, and for the same reason migrants are unlikely to be included in the near
future. Moving away from the discussion on formal policies, the third part of the
2
During the week of 18-24 May, 15 migrant workers were confirmed to be SARS patients and 33 were
hospitalised as suspected cases in Beijing, forming the single largest group by occupation (Ministry of
Labour and Social Security, 2003). Nationwide, rural-urban migrants and farmers made up 7.42 per
cent of all the confirmed SARS cases in the period of 26th – 30th April and their share jumped to 14.81
per cent during 21st – 25th May, becoming the second largest group by occupation, only marginally less
than persons without formal employment (15.74 per cent) (Ministry of Health, 2003). Migration has
also been blamed as a cause for the spreading of the virus from cities to the countryside. As of 15 May
2003, most outbreaks documented in 85 rural counties can be traced to mass migration (Garret, 2003).
Hebei province has nearly 3 million labourers working outside of the province, many in Beijing, and
1.28 million returned home by mid-June. By 16 June, the province reported 215 SARS cases and 12
deaths, and the provincial authorities estimated that as many as 90 per cent of them returned from
Beijing (Furutani et al., 2003). In Hubei province, which is a major place of origin of migrant workers
in Guangdong, 17 suspected cases were reported as of 19 May and 10 of them were returned migrant
workers (Zou, 2003).

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paper reports various grassroots activities that can constitute an effective means of
providing health services to migrants. Though these activities cannot change formal
policies immediately, they have important institutional consequences, particularly by
creating a new arena for delivering health services, and also, by increasing migrants’
bargaining power in the workplace. This paper is based on my documentary research
conducted during the period from December 2002 to May 2003 and fieldwork
investigation in Beijing and Zhejiang, China, in April and May 2003. During the
fieldwork, I interviewed about 20 researchers and policy makers in the Ministry of
Health, State Council Development Research Centre, Ministry of Labour and Social
Security, Beijing University, Qinghua University and other institutes. I visited Dashila
Street of Xuanwu District, Beijing, and its Community Health Centres, and
interviewed officials, health workers and residents there. Apart from this fieldwork, I
also draw on information from my earlier long-term research with migrants in China
starting in 1992, particularly my work on migrants in the Pearl River delta and on a
migrant community in southern Beijing.
Plate 1: Migrants in Beijing

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Health Problems Faced by Migrants
Work-related injuries and illness
It is widely known that migrants typically fill job positions that are unwanted by
urban workers and have high health risks, which are sometimes referred to as “3-D”
(Dirty, Dangerous, and Dead-end/Difficult/Demanding) jobs. According to a survey
conducted by Tan and her associates in 1994, about one third migrant workers in six
cities in the Pearl River delta believed that their health had been affected by their
working conditions, particularly by noise, dust and poison (Tan, 2002 [2001]: 145).
An incomplete estimate reported 12,000 work-related accidents and more than 80
deaths a year in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, most of the victims being
migrants (cited in Tan, 2002 [2001]: 145). In 2000, some migrants died when a
factory in Huizhou City, Guangdong Province forced workers to work more than 500
hours a month (Sun, 2002: 154). Indeed, a report on work-related accidents and illness
submitted to the State Council by the then-State Economy and Trade Commission in
July 2000 identified migrant workers as the main victims of all work-related health
problems (cited in Tan, 2002 [2001]: 145).
Work-related health problems include work-related injury and work-related
illness. Based on her investigation in migrant-sending places, Tan estimates that about
1-2 per cent of all male migrant workers had work-related injuries (Tan, 2002 [2000]:
255). In 1998, Shenzhen reported 189 cases of migrant workers becoming physically
disabled at work, mostly losing fingers or arms (Yu, 2001). More strikingly, it was
said that there were about 300 clinics in Kai County, Sichuan Province, offering
surgery to reattach severed fingers and arms. There were 200 similar clinics in
Jinjiang County of Fujian Province. While the clinics in Sichuan mainly target
returned migrants, the Fujian ones serve immigrants who are injured there (Huang and
Zhan, 2003). A news story reports that a visit to the surgery department of a hospital
in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province, would find that most patients are
migrant workers with injuries from work (He, 2002).
Plate 2: Rubbish Collecting is an Important Occupation for Immigrants

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Far more serious than injuries are chronic diseases acquired from work. Besides
the high treatment costs, victims of chronic diseases often develop symptoms only
after leaving the workplace; sometimes it is even difficult to determine which factory
should be responsible for the disease. Pneumoconiosis, which has been found among
many construction workers, is such a disease.
3
In one case, about 200 migrant workers
in Liaoning Province worked for eight hours everyday in air with 97.6 per cent of
silicon dioxide without any protective measure. Silicon dioxide cannot be dissolved in
the body and in the long term would clog the alveoli. By October 2001, out of these
200 migrants, 10 had died and 192 of them were confirmed to have severe
pneumoconiosis. Most of them had lost their basic capabilities to work. These
workers had no any medical insurance and a few had to stop medical treatment half
way due to financial difficulties (see Pan et al., 2001, Dai et al., 2001).
Benzene poisoning is probably the most common serious chronic disease found
among female migrant workers. Large numbers of benzene poisoning cases have been
reported in Beijing, Hebei, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, particularly in garment,
shoes or suitcase factories, which often use cheap glue with high compositions of
benzene. Female workers are also particularly vulnerable to fire accidents, mainly
because they are often put in congested dormitories without basic safety equipment.
In 1991, 72 female migrant workers lost their lives in a fire in Donguan City,
Guangdong Province. A fire in Shenzhen in 1993 killed 87 migrants, 85 of whom
were women (Tan, 2002 [1997]: 312). Based on a collection of news reports, Tan
(2002 [1994]: 79) estimated that by 1994, at least 300 female migrant workers in the
Pearl River delta alone had been killed by fires.
HIV and other STDs
Rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) in China doubled between 1996 and
2000 (Kaufman and Jing, 2002). More dramatically, the United Nations estimates that
there are over one million people infected by HIV, and both the UN and the Chinese
government predict that number could reach as high as 15 million by 2010 (UN
Theme Team, 2001). Experiences in other countries suggest that migration may form
a vicious cycle in the spread of STD viruses: migrants are more likely to be infected,
and in turn their mobility contributes to further spreading of the virus, particularly by
bringing the virus to the countryside where medical facilities are poorly equipped.
According to a survey of more than 600 STD patients conducted by the STD
Branch of the Guangdong Province Police Hospital in 2000, about 70 per cent of the
patients were migrants (China News Agency, 27 October 2000). Based on a review of
11 studies on STDs conducted in different provinces in China, Yang (2004) suggests
that migrants’ share in reported STD cases varies considerably from a low of 7.5
percent in Jiangsu’s Xinghua to a high of 69.0 percent in Shenzhen in Guangdong
Province (see Appendix 1). Of the 236,188 cases of STDs reported in all the studies,
an average of 36.8 percent involved migrants. As for the considerable variation across
the studies, Yang argues that it can hardly be taken as evidence that the role of
floating migration in the spread of STDs also varies from place to place and is
therefore inconclusive; rather, it may reflect differences in the extent of the presence
of floating migrants’ in the general population across places. Lou et al (2001) reported
3
Construction is a major occupation where migrant workers are concentrated in. For example, nearly
one third of all economic migrants (including self-employed) in Beijing in 1999 were construction
workers (Liu and Wu 1999).

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that similar numbers of migrant and permanent resident women in Shanghai visit
specialist clinics for STDs, but migrants’ diseases tend to be the more severe with
complicated syndromes.
The correlation between migration and HIV incidence seems even stronger.
Yang’s (2004) survey in a northern province shows that among HIV-positive persons,
migrants accounted for between 17.7 and 31.5 percent in 1996-2000, while migrants’
share in the general population covered by the survey was only 1.8 percent.
Furthermore, with the exception of the year 2000, migrants’ share in the HIV positive
population has generally been on the rise. Yang also reviewed 15 studies on HIV in
different parts of China and found that on average 42.4 per cent of HIV positive cases
were migrants (see Appendix 2). According to another survey of a small sample,
unemployed migrants, migrant business persons, migrant workers and sex workers
represented over 95 per cent of the HIV cases investigated in Shenzhen city of
Guangdong province, and the figure was 66 per cent for Shanghai and 78 per cent for
Zhejiang Province (Shao, 2002).
However, despite the strong statistical association between migration and HIV
and other STDs, the underlying mechanism between the two is far from clear. The
causal relationship is very difficult to establish. For example, the sex industry is often
thought to be a link between migration and STDs. China's commercial sex industry
has exploded in the last 20 years to include more than 3 million sex workers at
present. HIV positive rates among sex workers tested in Guangxi and Yunnan in 2000
were 10.7 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively (cited in Kaufman and Jing, 2002). It
is true that a large part, if not the majority, of sex workers are migrants. Pan Suimin
(2002) estimated that a sex worker typically stays in one place only for a few months.
However, in many cases, migration may be a result, rather than a cause, of being
involved in the sex industry. Sex workers have to move frequently in order to
maintain anonymity and escape governments’ regular campaigns to crack down on
the industry. In other words, sex workers are better seen just as sex workers rather
than “migrants”, a category that also includes so many different groups. Some
scholars (e.g. Hansen and Li, 2002; Yang, 2002) speculate that migrants contribute to
the spreading of virus as active patrons of commercial sex due to their separation from
families and the local society. But a national survey conducted by the Renmin
University Sexology Institute suggested that migrant workers make up only a minor
part of commercial sex clients. On average migrants buy sex more often than rural
residents but less than urban dwellers. Enterprise managers and government officials
are 10 times more likely than male manual urban workers to patronise sex workers
(Pan Suimin, 2001; 2002), though migrant workers may be more vulnerable to STDs
in individual cases, possibly due to their low usage of condoms (Hansen and Li,
2002).
The statistical association between migration and STDs may also be a result of
factors commonly affecting the two variables. Yang (2004) cites the association
between the numbers of temporary migrants per thousand permanent residents of a
place and that place’s incidence of HIV and other STDs as evidence for the positive
correlation between the two. However, it may well be the case that a place with more
migrants is economically more prosperous and socially more open and all the
residents, both permanent and temporary, may be more prone to STDs.
Therefore, reducing mobility will not help contain STDs in China. We should be
particularly careful not to lend new excuses to xenophobia against migrants by
overstating the link between migration and diseases. There is also a critical policy
choice to make with respect to this issue: should we identify migrants as a special

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group when devising programmes for HIV protection or do other characteristics (such
as age and occupation) serve as better criteria for identifying target groups? Should
we regard HIV and other STDs as a special issue for migrants or should we focus
more on general health services provision to migrants? As mentioned earlier, diseases
such as SARS may impose a much higher risk to both migrants and the general
population than HIV. Furthermore, migrants’ vulnerability to HIV infection may well
be caused by the lack of effective health service delivery mechanisms in general
rather than because their behaviours are especially prone to HIV.
Child vaccination and health check
accination rates among migrant children have been reported to be significantly
lower than the average. It was estimated that in Guangdong Province only 50.8-
70.8 per cent of migrant children obtained rubeola vaccination, 57.4-79.9 per cent
BCG vaccination, and 50.5-74.2 per cent, poliomyelitis vaccination. These figures are
much lower than the average for local children. The occurrence rate of these diseases
among migrants, unsurprisingly, is disproportionately high. For example, in
Guangdong Province where migrants were less than 20 per cent of the total
population, migrants made up respectively 34.3, 31.0, 46.6, 51.9 and 53.0 per cent of
the rubeola cases occurred in the years from 1997 to 2001. Migrant children made up
12.0, 14.6 and 12.9 per cent of all the poliomyelitis cases reported in the year 1999,
2000 and 2001 (Li, W.S., 2002).
Surveys conducted during the period from 1996 to 1998 on migrant children in
Wuhan, Hubei Province, reported that only 30.2 per cent had been properly
vaccinated as required by the government, and 4.0 - 7.5 per cent of migrant children
had never undergone any vaccination. Only 25.6 per cent of the children participated
in the regular health examination (known as “4.2.1” check) (Xiao, 1999: 761).
According to a survey by a research team from China’s Renmin University, 36 and 40
per cent respectively of migrant parents of children of 0-3 years and 4-6 years old
never took the children to health checks (Ketizu, 2000: 48).
Reproductive health
As mentioned earlier, the majority of rural-urban migrants are of reproductive and
sexually active ages. Over two thirds of female migrants are at the age of 15-45 (Ford
Foundation, 2001: 83). Of them, more than 75 per cent are aged between 20 and 34
(The State Family Planning Committee, cited in Li, 2003). Unsurprisingly, a study
reported that migrants themselves identified reproductive health as the health issue
that they need the most help with (Guan and Jiang, 2002: 258).
Migrants’ reproductive health status is worse than that of the general
population’s. According to several research projects funded by the Ford Foundation,
about one in every seven respondents have at least one of the symptoms of
reproductive tract infection (RTI), which figure is still likely to be an underestimate
(Ford Foundation, 2001: 83). Compared to permanent residents, migrant women in
Shanghai started their pregnancy checks later, check less frequently, and are more
prone to early delivery, stillbirth, and giving birth to babies who are underweight or
have an extremely low weight (Lou et al., 2001: 61). According to data from the
Shanghai Woman and Child’s Health Institute, the delivery-related death rate among
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migrant women is 5.5 per thousand, far higher than that of local residents, which
stands at 2.1 per thousand (Zhan et al., 2001: 199).
Apart from pregnancy and birth delivery, migrants’ active premarital sexual
behaviour and lack of adequate knowledge on reproductive health form another issue
of concern. A survey reveals that 10-80 per cent of young female migrants in
Shanghai, depending on their occupation and type of residence, have had premarital
sex (Lou et al., 2001: 62). Surprisingly, female migrant workers in Shanghai are even
more liberal in their lifestyle than the local women, who have been reported to be the
most “cosmopolitan” in China (Wang, 1999: 52-53). In southern Jiangsu Province,
24.5 per cent of the migrant women surveyed started living with partners within half a
month of the first meeting, while almost 30 per cent did so within 0.5-2 months and
21.4 per cent after 6 months (Yang et al., 1999: 78).
Despite being sexually active, migrants’ knowledge of contraception is far from
adequate. More than 76 per cent of unmarried pregnant migrant women in a district in
Shanghai never took contraceptive measures and only 3.2 per cent did so always
(Wang, 1999: 53). Zhang Zhen’s survey reported that only 13.4 per cent of the female
migrants had had some sex education (Zhang, 1999: 56). When becoming pregnant
unintentionally, migrants often turn to underground clinics for artificial abortion and
do not dare to ask for medical leave from work due to the social stigma over
premarital pregnancy, and this may lead to serious heath consequences (Wang, 1999:
55).
Apart from physical diseases, psychological and mental disorders are also on the
rise among migrant workers. According to a news report from Wenzhou City,
Zhejiang Province, a psychological counselling clinic has received quite a few
migrant workers in early 2003. Almost all of them are younger than 30 and the most
common problem is depression due to long time loneliness (Jin, 2003).
Lack of access to existing health services
Much of migrants’ health problems is caused by their lack of ability to utilise existing
health services. According to a survey of migrant women in Jiading District of
Shanghai, although nearly 80 per cent of the migrant women hoped to have
reproductive health checks regularly, only 17.3 per cent did so and 55.5 per cent did
not know where they could obtain help regarding family planning (Zhang, 1999: 56).
The key reason for the lack of this capacity is migrants’ financial difficulty. Very
few migrants have access to financial assistance for medical treatment. In a survey
conducted in Chengdu City (Sichuan Province) and Shenyang City (Liaoning
Province), no one single migrant had medical insurance (Guan and Jiang, 2002: 258).
Guan and Jiang (2002) reported that migrants could only afford about 100 RMB for
medical treatment a month. According to surveys carried out in 2000 and 2002, 46 per
cent of respondents had been ill during their stay in Beijing, 17 per cent more than
three times. Despite of this, a full 93 per cent had not received any payment for their
medical expenses from their employers (Wen et al., 2003, cited in Huang and Pieke,
2003).
Due to the financial constraints, access to big hospitals is now a problem for most
migrant workers. One consultation for a minor problem such as the cold in a big
hospital may cost 500 RMB, almost one month’s salary for some migrants. One
migrant drew on his experience of spending 3,000 RMB for treating his grandson’s
fever and said that he would rather die than going to big hospitals (Guan and Jiang,

13
2002). Giving a birth in a big hospital in Beijing costs several thousands of RMB, far
beyond many migrants’ earning capacities. According to a survey of migrant families
in Haidian District, Beijing, 20 per cent gave birth at home rather than in hospitals,
and surprisingly, 22 per cent of those who delivered babies at home did so in Beijing
(the rest delivered in their home places) (Ketizu, 2000). The financial difficulty also
forces some migrant workers to stop their treatment even after they are sent to
hospitals in emergency. Fourteen migrant workers in a suitcase factory in Beijing
were sent to a hospital by the local government when they were found to have severe
benzene poisoning in 2002. But more than 10 checked out soon afterwards due to the
lack of money (Xiao, 2002). The department of external injuries in Guangdong
Province People’s Hospital receives about 200 migrant workers a year and more than
one third of them cannot pay the bill after the treatment. Some hospitals now simply
refuse to receive migrant patients (Cheng and Wen, 2002).
The lack of access to financial help and proper treatment forces migrants to adopt
some very unhealthy behaviours when falling ill. Upon falling ill, they would
typically wait and see in the beginning, hoping the illness would go away. If the
situation got worse, they would go to small pharmacies to buy medicines according to
their own medical knowledge. Only when the illness becomes unendurable would
they visit hospitals, by which time, the disease may have already become very serious.
For example, gastric ulcer is a common disease among migrants. But migrants often
buy painkillers when having stomach-aches, with the gastric ulcer subsequently
developing due to the delay in treatment. What is worse is that since migrants are
young, in many cases they are able to endure the illness for the time being, but these
may develop into serious illness when they get older.
The lack of ability to utilise existing health services also severely impedes
migrants from protecting themselves in some circumstances. For example, migrant
workers are normally very reluctant to bring their employers to court for work-related
illnesses, no matter how severe it is. Besides migrants’ lack of legal knowledge and of
the financial capacity to hire lawyers, a very important reason for this is that some
employers pay for the medical treatment that is immediately needed to save the
migrants’ lives on the condition that they promised not to sue the employers. Migrants
themselves simply cannot afford to shoulder the costs while waiting for the legal case
to go through (for typical case see Xiao, 2002).
What compounds the situation is the rapid commodification of medical services
in China. Over the last decades, medical care costs in China have risen dramatically
but the quality and efficiency of services are getting worse (see Hu, 2001). Large
hospitals often have their own pharmacies or are tied with pharmaceutical companies,
and sales of medicines to patients is an important source of profit for hospitals. In
many cases doctors are given kickbacks by pharmaceutical companies for prescribing
more medicines to patients. As a result, overprescription becomes endemic. Hospitals
and doctors also often conduct unnecessary but expensive tests for patients. It has
been recognised that the most urgent task in urban public health system right now is
to fix the hospital management in order to provide affordable medical services to the
majority of the population, including migrants, which may be more important than
building a comprehensive new medical security system.

14
Plate 3: The Living Condition of Migrants in Beijing

15
The Political Economy of Medical Care
n discussing migrants’ health security, a commonly held view among researchers
and activists is that migrant workers should be included in a universal medical care
system. Although this should certainly be a long-term goal for China, my
investigation suggests this to be unrealistic in the near future. This is due to a series of
profound institutional arrangements that cannot be changed in the short term. In what
follows, I will first discuss why migrants are excluded in the new medical care system
at the national level. Basically, including migrants in the medical care system does not
fit into the government’s immediate goals in reforming the system. Second, based on
a review of local experiments, I suggest that including migrants in the formal medical
care system may not be operationally feasible either. Third, I attempt to reveal the
obstacles to the implementation of labour protection measures in the work place. The
obstacles largely lie in local governments’ lack of incentive to protect migrant
workers and migrants’ lack of legal rights to establish their own organisations.
Rural-urban dualism and the political economy of medical care
system reform
In order to understand China’s new medical care system and migrants’ relation to it,
we first need to look at the traditional set-up for medical care and the rural-urban
relation which forms a basic institutional background for any social policy including
medical care (for a comprehensive review of the rural-urban divide in China, see
Knight and Song, 1999).
In the 1950s, in order to prevent the rural population from moving to cities
spontaneously and to keep the grain price as low as possible to support a high speed
of industralisation (particularly in heavy industries) in cities, the Chinese government
established a special household registered system (known as “hukou” system in
Chinese). Under this system, people born in the rural area cannot move to the city and
obtain urban hukou status unless mandated by the State (for literature on hukou
system, see Christiansen, 1990; Cheng and Selden, 1994; Mallee, 1995; Chan and
Zhang, 1998). The rural and urban societies are also structured in completely different
ways. In cities, the “work unit” plays a central role not only in economic activities but
also in social life, including the area of welfare provision (for an excellent study on
the work unit system in China, see Walder, 1986, also see Lu, 1989; Whyte and Paris,
1984; Shaw, 1996; Lu and Perry, 1997). The rural society is organised along the
hierarchy of county-township-village and the village community is the basic unit
through which the State redistributes resources and executes control. Though Chinese
society has changed fundamentally in many aspects since the Reform started at the
end of the 1970s, the rural-urban dualism in social management largely remains the
same. This makes internal migration in China an institutionally unique phenomenon
in that migrants are not only undergoing change of residence and occupation, but are
also released from the state control and support system. Spontaneous migrants are in
general not allowed to become urban residents, yet few are willing to return to the
rural area. Therefore they become a special social category, the “floating population”
(see Solinger, 1993; Xiang, 1999).
I

16
The medical care systems, both in the pre-reform era and the one of the current
period, are directly shaped by the rural-urban dualist structure. In the countryside,
China used to have a well-established rural Cooperative Medical System that was set
up in the end of the 1960s. Peasants of a Production Brigade
4
contributed a certain
amount of money every year to form a fund to cover medical costs. Under the
commune system, the contribution did not take place in the form of individual
donation, instead, the Production Brigade diverted part of its collective resource to the
fund directly. At the same time, each Brigade had its own “bare-foot doctor” to
conduct daily health inspections, emergency treatment, and treatments for common
illness. But this system collapsed in the 1980s when communes were dismantled and
the new individual family-based Household Responsibility System was adopted.
There is now hardly any collective resource left to support the medical fund and the
management of the fund also became a problem (Li, W.P., 2002). According to the
1998 National Health Services Survey, the Cooperative Medical System covered only
1.83 per cent of all the farmers (Li, W.P., 2002: 27). Furthermore, the inputs from the
government in rural health care have also been declining. During the period of 1991-
2000, government input dropped from 12.5 per cent to 6.6 per cent of all the
investments in rural health care, input from society (such as donations) went down
from 6.7 to 3.3 per cent, while the share shouldered by peasants themselves increased
from 80.7 per cent to 90.2 per cent (Li et al., 2003: 2-3). In theory, migrants are
supposed to claim for medical care benefits in their home places since they are still
registered there. But it is self-evident that given the very poor medical care system in
rural China, migrants cannot expect anything from it. Apart from this, even in places
with rural medical care, it is unrealistic to require migrants to go back to their home
places for treatment or to expect the rural authorities to reimburse the medical cost
occurred in the city where the price is much higher.
The urban medical care system, completely different from the rural system, is
now facing a different crisis. Soon after the People’s Republic of China was founded
in 1949, China established a Public Fund Medical Care (gongfei yiliao, also translated
as Government Employee Insurance Scheme) for government staff and those working
for government-related units and a Labour Security Medical Care (laobao yiliao, also
translated as Labour Insurance Scheme) for State-owned or collective enterprise
employees. Both of them offered completely free medical care, but the former was
financed by the government while the latter by enterprises.
5
The two schemes share a
unique feature in that both of them were dependent on the work unit, rather than
directly upon the State or other apparatus (see Gu, 2001). Under these systems, the
work unit settled with the hospital engaged the costs occurred by its employees. There
was no individual account, nor was there a cross-work-unit coordination in managing
the medical care fund (risk pool). Therefore when a work unit other than that of a
government department was not profitable, its employee’s medical care would
immediately become a problem. In the event that a large number of State-owned
enterprises (SOEs) and collective enterprises go bankrupt, the entire medical care
system will be in crisis. There have been numerous complaints and even protests
4
Production Brigade is the equivalent to Administrative Village after the Reform. Typically one
Production Brigade has 1,000-5,000 population.
5
See then Political Department (now State Council) Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on
Labour Security (1951, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo laodong baoxian tiaoli); then Political
Department, Directives on Implementing Public Fund for Medical Treatment and Prevention for State
Staff of All Levels of Government, Parties, Organisations and the Work Units Belonging to Them (1952,
Guanyu quan’guo geji renmin zhengfu, dangpai, tuanti ji suoshu shiye danwei de guojia gongzuo
renyuan shixing gongfei yiliao yufang de zhishi).

17
staged by laid-off or retired workers from SOEs for not being given medical care or
pensions. Even for the enterprises who are performing well economically, their
obligation to cover the medical care of all their employees, both current and retired,
become an almost unendurable burden (see Gu, 2001).
China started reforming its urban medical care systems in 1994 and a new system
was put in place nationwide in 1999 to replace the Public Fund Medical Care and the
Labour Security Medical Care systems. Under the new system, every employee would
have an individual medical account at a medical fund, managed by the Health
Security Management Bureau (Yiliao Baozhang Guanli Ju) of the district or county
where the employer is located. Both the employee and employer contribute to the
account monthly. When medical treatment occurs, the hospital would contact the fund
directly for a person’s medical treatment without involving the employer. Compared
to the old system, the new scheme has three distinctive features, namely “unification”,
“socialisation” and “individualisation”. “Unification” means that the scheme requires
all types of employees of all urban enterprises to join the system. “Socialisation”
means that medical care fund would be managed socially and not confined to
particular enterprises. Finally, “individualisation” refers to the establishment of
individual accounts, which enables a person to accumulate money at his/her account
and to change jobs without changing his/her account. But as we will see below, all
these features have limitations. The implementation of the new medical care system is
not satisfactory either. By the end of 2001, only 54.71 million people participated in
the medical care system, compared to 108.02 million for pension and 103.55 million
for insurance for industrial injuries (Wang, 2002).
The new medical care scheme does not cover migrant workers. Documents
issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the State Council refer to
the new scheme as a scheme for “urban employees” (chengzhen zhigong).
6
Though
the term “urban employees” is not clearly defined, it is universally interpreted as those
working in urban enterprises and with urban hukou status. When provinces such as
Guangdong experimented to extend medical care to migrant workers, local
governments had to issue separate documents for that. This may seem at odd with the
reform goal of “unification” and the central government’s push for a unified labour
market. The reasons for this go beyond medical care itself and are related to more
fundamental issues, as I will now elaborate.
First of all, the immediate motivation for the central government to reform the
medical care system is to relieve SOEs from the burden of shouldering almost
unlimited medical care costs for their employees, which is believed to be a
precondition for SOEs to become profitable. Including migrant workers in the medical
care system does not help achieve this goal and may even conflict with this objective.
It has become a common practice for SOEs to replace old employees who enjoy
generous welfare coverage with migrants lacking any fringe benefits. Enterprises
planning to list themselves in the stock market may shift their old employees to
separate subsidiaries as a means to remove the high overheads from their profit report,
and then staff the sector planned to be listed in the stock market with migrants (see
Baozhang Ketizu, 2002: 3). Therefore, migrants’ cheap labour is critical for the
SOEs’ transformation to profit-making enterprises and providing migrants with
welfare and security would slow down the transformation. Apart from relieving SOEs
6
See for example, State Council Suggestions on Experiment Spots on the Reform of Employees’
Medical Care System (1995, Guangyu zhigong yiliao zhidu gaige de shidian yijian). State Institution
Reform Committee et al: Suggestions on Expanding of the Experiment Spots on the Reform of
Employees’ Medical Care System (1996, Guangyu zhigong yiliao zhidu gaige kuoda shidian de yijian).

18
from the burden, another key goal in reforming the medical care system as well as
other social security measures is to better maintain social and political stability. It is
feared that certain groups may turn into “elements of instability” if they are deprived
of basic social security. However, compared to groups such as laid-off SOE workers
and retired military personnel, who were among the most privileged in the pre-
Reform era but lost most of their benefits in the process of marketisation, migrants are
not seen as a high-risk group in this sense. Related to the objective of ensuring social
and political stability, government is more willing to allocate resources for
catastrophe reliefs rather than to offer basic medical care to all the citizens
universally, since the former is more effective for achieving that goal.
Second, the vested interest associated with the old welfare system forms another
obstacle to including migrants in the formal medical care system. As mentioned
previously, the old medical care system is directly linked to work units and different
types of work units offer very different medical care. Government departments and
large SOEs often designate well-equipped hospitals for treating their staff and cover
all the costs, while staff of collective enterprises can only go to small hospitals with
limited subsidiaries. Though the new scheme claims to break down the boundaries
between different types of work units, the vested interest is so deeply ingrained that in
practice the boundaries have been hardly challenged. Work units of the provincial,
municipal and district levels and those without ranks such as ordinary enterprises still
have different policies regarding employees’ medical care benefits though they may
register with the same medical fund because they happen to be located in the same
district. As a result, the health security management bureau may have to manage the
medical fund along with different modes simultaneously (Gong, 2003). Persuading
groups with vested interests to make sacrifices and join a unified medical care system
is difficult enough for the government and no party is willing to represent migrant
workers’ interest in the bargaining.
Third, there are concerns that migrants would bring extra difficulties to the
management of the medical care system. For example, it is feared that the rural
population may rush to the city when sick to claim to be migrant workers in order to
benefit from the medical care, or migrants may use their insurance to cover their
family members’ treatment costs.

19
Conflicts between formality and informality, between mobility and
locality
The section above has clarified how including migrant workers in the formal medical
system may go against government’s immediate aim in reforming the system. What
follows will demonstrate the operational obstacles to including migrants in the system
even when the authorities are willing to do so. Since the late 1990s, places such as
Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan, all cities in Guangdong Province, have mandated
that all enterprises should offer medical insurance to migrant workers. But the result is
far from satisfactory. For example, there were 3.3 million registered migrant workers
in Shenzhen and the actual figure was estimated to be 5 million, but by the end of
2001, only about 1.04 million persons, including both permanent residents and
migrants, had medical care insurance (Cheng and Wen, 2002). Given that most
permanent residents join the medical care system, the share of migrant workers should
be very small out of the 1.04 million.
The operational difficulty in including migrants in medical care stems firstly
from the fact that many migrants enter the job market informally while the medical
care system needs a formal employment relationship as a basis for operation. Unlike
commercial insurance that any individual can purchase on his own accord, the
medical care system is employment based. It is the employer who sends the money,
partly deducted from employee’s salary and partly from the employer himself, to the
medical fund. The Labour Bureau would conduct inspections over enterprises from
time to time to ensure that all the workers have been insured. But given the over-
supply of labour and particularly the very disadvantaged position of migrants in the
job market, it is common for a migrant to work for an employer without any formal
contract. If the worker insists on having a contract, the enterprise may cut down the
wage as a precondition on the grounds that a formal contract would cost the enterprise
more by obliging it to comply with government regulations and to pay various levies.
An inspection conducted by the Labour Bureau of Chang’an Town, Dongguan City of
Guangdong Province in 2002 found that a large proportion of private enterprises
grossly underreported the numbers of their employees. A toy factory hired about
1,000 workers, but paid medical insurance for only 150. Work-related injuries and
labour disputes increased by 40 per cent compared the previous year in the town and a
large part of these cases involved migrant workers without insurance (Cheng and
Wen, 2002). According to a survey conducted by Tan and her associates in the Pearl
River delta in 1994, only 10 per cent of the workers had a formal contract with the
employer and about 60 per cent had never signed any employment contract (Tan,
2002 [1997]: 312). In many cases when migrants sue employers for mistreatment, the
biggest problem turns out to be that the migrants cannot even prove that he/she was
employed by that enterprise. Apart from that, a large proportion of migrants in big
cities are self-employed. For example, the 1999 consensus of migrants in Beijing
showed that more than 40 per cent of all the migrants are self-employed (Liu and Wu,
1999). These migrants do not have any “work unit” to belong to and therefore cannot
join the medical care scheme.
It must be recognised that informal employments, namely employment
relationships without legally effective contracts, will exist for a long time in China.
Informal employment is projected by some scholars to contribute half of the total
urban employment opportunities in the coming 10 to 15 years (Hu An’gang, 2001,
cited in Baozhang Ketizu, 2002: 2). It may come as a surprise to outside observers to
find that many migrants themselves prefer informal employment relationship and do

20
not want to sign contracts. This is because the option of quitting a job immediately is
often migrants’ only and last resort when the situation in a factory becomes
unbearable, and a formal bond would deprive them of even this opportunity (Xiang,
1995; Tan, 2002 [2000]: 67). It is not advisable either for the government to force all
the enterprises to adopt formal employment relationships with various social welfare
benefits. The World Bank has pointed out in its 1990 World Development Report that
undue regulations on the labour market, such as minimum wage and compulsory
social security, would increase the labour costs therefore reducing the demand for
labour. As a result, stricter labour market regulations would favour those in the
advanced sector but worsen the unemployment problem for the poor. Undoubtedly, in
China today, employment should take the precedence over social security (see
Baozhang Ketizu, 2002: 3).
Another reason making the inclusion of migrants in the formal medical care
system difficult is the conflict between migrants’ extraordinarily frequent mobility
and the localised operation pattern of medical care funds. The scope of risk pooling
(“social coordination” as it is normally referred to in China) of the medical fund is
now at county level (or small city or district in large cities, which are equivalent to
county in administrative rank) and a nation-wide unified system is far from being
established. A Health Security Management Bureau is only responsible for the
enterprises and their workers within the county where that bureau is located. A
worker's medical care account will have to be cancelled from one bureau and
reinstalled in another if he/she changes jobs across counties. It would be even more
troublesome if the worker moves from one province to another since there is almost
no connection or coordination across provinces in medical care. If a migrant worker
goes back from the city to the countryside, as they often do, then the medical
insurance has to be cancelled altogether. The lack of any effective medical care
system in the rural area makes it literally impossible to transfer individual accounts
from urban to rural. Because of the tension between migrants’ high mobility and the
individual accounts’ low portability, even in the case where employers have registered
their migrant workers for medical care, the workers often withdraw later, particularly
around Chinese New Year when many of them change jobs or locations. For example,
17,817 persons withdrew their medical care accounts in Chang’an Town, Dongguan
City alone in the first three quarters of 2001, presumably most being migrants. In
2001, a total of 120,000 migrant workers withdrew their pension insurance in the
same town (Cheng and Wen, 2002).

21
The unbalanced relationship between the government, employer and
migrant worker
As demonstrated earlier, work-related illness constitutes the immediate health threat
for migrant workers. On the surface this problem does not seem particularly difficult
to tackle since it is relatively easy for the authorities to inspect working conditions
and to enforce its improvement. There are also a series of relevant regulations in
place. For example, in October 2001, the National People’s Congress passed the Law
of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Treatment of Occupational
Diseases, effective on 1 May 2002. The law clearly stipulates that workers must be
fully informed of the dangers related to work, employers must take adequate
preventive measures and employers should provide treatment in case illness occurs.
The law also designates that employer’s obligations should be clearly indicated in the
labour contract. Some provinces and cities, such as Beijing, also require enterprises
with high risks of work-related accidents to pay special insurance for employees’
work-related illness. Some regulations specifically aim to protect female workers’
health, such as the Regulations on Labour Protection of Female Workers (1988), the
Regulations on Activities not Suitable for Female Workers (1990), and the Regulation
on Female Workers’ Health Protection (1993). In 1997, the Eighth National Political
Consultation Conference proposed a bill on Protecting Female Workers’ Rights in
Foreign-Invested Enterprises, Township and Village Enterprises and Collective
Enterprises.
But these laws and regulations seem to fail to protect migrant workers,
particularly those in Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) and small-sized
private enterprises, who form exactly the major part of migrant workers. A news story
in the China Woman’s News reported that private and foreign-invested shoe factories
in Putian, Fujian Province, earned billions of RMB since 1984 by using female
migrant workers, but were not willing to divert even 1 per cent of their profit to
improve the working conditions that had destroyed thousands of workers’ health
(China Woman’s News, 6 January 1996, cited in Tan, 2002 [1998]: 241).
The failure of these formal regulations is to a large extent due to the unbalanced
power relationship between the government, employer and migrant workers. It must
be borne in mind that in China, government intervention is still the most powerful
measure, far more so than legal means, in regulating social and economic life. Local
governments are generally reluctant to intervene to protect migrant workers’ rights
against enterprises’ interest. While the traditional SOEs were built as the “working
class’ paradise” rather than as profit-making firms, TVEs and private enterprises run
to the other extreme and profit-making takes precedence over almost everything else.
For local governments, TVEs and other private enterprises form not only important
fiscal sources, the enterprises revenue income is also taken by the higher level of
authorities as a key criterion of evaluating the local government’s performance.
During my fieldwork in the Pearl River delta in 1994, local officials explicitly told me
that it was not in their interest to devote much effort towards protecting migrant
workers’ rights. The reason is simple: if they did so, it would increase the labour cost
for the enterprises and foreign investors may just move to somewhere labour
regulations are more lax. In 1993, the government of Kuiyong Town under the
Shenzhen Municipal wrote to the Shenzhen Fire Prevention Enforcement Team to
urge them to issue a fire safety certificate to a Hong Kong businessperson invested
factory in Kuiyong Town, the Zhili Toy Factory. The letter threatened that “if (the
certificate) is not given, the economic development of Kuiyong Town will be

22
affected, Hong Kong investors will organise a collective complaint to the municipal
government directly” (Workers’ Daily, 26 December 1993, cited in Tan, 2002 [2000]:
69). Soon after the letter was sent and the certificate was issued, a fire broke out in the
factory and killed 87 migrant workers.
What is more fundamental for protecting migrant workers’ rights is the
relationship between the employers and the workers themselves. Migrant workers
have literally no bargaining power in relation to the employer. Internationally, the
most common way to protect workers’ rights, including work safety and occupational
health, is to organise trade unions. So far, very few non-State-owned enterprises have
any union and more than 95 per cent of workers in these enterprises are not unionised
(Weldon, 2001/2002b: 28). Even for those enterprises who have unions, the union is
something very different from what is supposed to be internationally. According to
orthodox Marx-Leninist theory, workers in a socialist state are the owner of the State
and are fully represented by the Party, and there is no labour-capital struggle
anymore. Therefore trade unions in China are mainly concerned with issues such as
entertainment, education and other welfare (such as purchasing food collectively at a
lower price for the workers). Furthermore, all trade unions in China must be branches
of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the ACFTU so far works
strictly under the Party’s leadership.
The highly skewed relation between migrant workers and employers in private
enterprises is not merely a reflection of the general antagonism between labour and
capital. Enterprises normally treat local (non-migrant) workers much better than
migrants. Once again local government plays an important role here. Under the
current hukou system, government departments have no responsibility for those who
are not formally registered with them. For example, in many towns along China’s
eastern coast and particularly in the Pearl River delta, migrants have outnumbered the
local population by large margins, but these migrants are very rarely mentioned in the
local government’s development plans and reports. All the social and economic
development indictors, such as per capita income and numbers of hospitals for every
thousand persons, are calculated on the basis of the size of the permanent population.
Therefore, in a sense the existence of cheap, unprotected migrant labour is in the local
government’s interest since this labour would attract foreign investment, boost land
rent rates, and dramatically increase the income level of the local people (for a brief
discussion on the development model based on the alliance between foreign investors
and local government on one hand, and migrant workers’ cheap labour on the other,
see Xiang, 1995).

23
Grassroots Activities: Windows for Improvement
he above analysis has shown that due to various structural and institutional
reasons that are far more fundamental than medical care itself, it may not be
realistic to expect migrants to be included in the formal medical care system in the
near future. But this does not mean nothing can be done. On the contrary, realising the
difficulties in changing formal institutions urges us to refocus our work on something
more attainable in the short term. Recently, there have been various experiments at
the grassroots level which may offer alternative means of delivering health services to
migrants. Though these activities cannot change formal policies immediately, they
have important institutional implications, particularly by empowering migrants
themselves and developing new channels (mainly through the urban residential
community and NGOs) of health service provision. In what follows, I will describe
some of these activities individually and try to identify the practices that can be
learned on a larger scale and the areas where more work can be done.
Community-based health care
Developing community-based health care is an important current agenda of the
Chinese government. Previously, urban residents visited large hospitals that their
work units engaged even for trivial problems. This partly contributed to the hikes in
medical treatment costs, the worsening of care quality and the lengthening of waiting
time. The basic idea of community-based health care is to develop small hospitals and
clinics in residential communities to provide residents with comprehensive preventive
services and treatment for common diseases within the neighbourhood. The
equipment in community hospitals and clinics and the staff’s salary are covered by the
government budget, but doctors can earn more if they treat more patients. Community
health institutes are not tied with pharmacies and the doctors are subject to the close
scrutiny of the patients, who are often next-door neighbours of the doctors for many
years, therefore the problem of over-prescription is minimal.
The community-based health care system can open new channels for the delivery
of health services to migrants in two ways. First, community-based health care is not
tied with any work unit and anyone residing in the community can visit community
hospitals and clinics. Second, more resources can be mobilised for migrants’ health
care through the community. Big cities with large numbers of migrants often have
more medical resources than one would expect. These medical resources are not
directly at the government’s disposal and are often highly dispersed, therefore
activities at the grassroots level provide a particularly effective means of mobilising
them. The neighbourhood that I visited during my fieldwork in Beijing provides a
typical example of this.
Dashila Street
7
in the Xuanwu District of Beijing is a typical community in a
large city, with 56,000 permanent residents and just over 20,000 temporary migrants.
The community has one fully-fledged Street hospital, three Community Health
7
A “Street” (jiedao) is the lowest level of the urban government set-up, under District and Municipal.
Below Street are Residents’ Committees which are supposed to be residents’ self-governance bodies
rather than government institutes. The rural equivalent of a “Street” is “Township” (xiang or zhen).
T

24
Centres and one branch clinic. The community health centres and clinic have a total
of 20 doctors and nurses. Though the District Government and the Street Office have
not initiated any programme with respect to migrants’ health, these community health
institutes have made some experiments of their own. For example, the Liulichang
Health Centre, one of the community centres, offers free treatment to migrants, and
another health centre, Shitou Centre, charges migrants only half price for consultation.
In order to promote themselves among migrants, doctors from the Shitou Centre held
seminars on reproductive health for more than 30 migrants working in a nearby
restaurant in 2002. Community doctors have the incentive to do so firstly because one
third to half of their working hours are free. Secondly, treating more patients brings a
higher income. The head of the Shitou Centre, a young doctor, told me that a higher
income was an important incentive for her to extend services to migrants. The
Liulichang Centre offers free treatment to migrants because the centre head is a
retiring doctor and who, as she put it herself, simply takes it as a “joy” to treat more
patients.
Community-based family panning work also offers a new arena to improve
migrants’ health status, particularly reproductive health. The Chinese government has
attached so much importance to family planning that many resources have been
allocated to this at the grassroots level. For example, Dashila Street has four full-time
officers in charge of family planning. But the demand for family planning services
from permanent urban residents has been decreasing due to their increasingly high
awareness of reproductive health and decreasing willingness to have more than child.
The family planning officers therefore have enough spare time and energy to reach
out to migrants. The Family Planning Office of the Dashila Street now organises
annual reproductive health checks for female migrants in the community. The checks
cost migrant women 30 RMB each, compared to 100-120 RMB that hospitals
normally charge. One hundred and seventy migrant women participated in the 2002
check. On the Children’s Day of every year (1st June), the Office organises health
examinations for migrants’ children. About 20 children are checked every year. The
Street and its Residents’ Committees also help to organise migrants’ children to
participate in vaccinations. In 2002, the Street committee undertook a special survey
to uncover those left out of the vaccination exercises and identified 27 migrant
children unvaccinated that year, out of the 336 migrant children in the Street
(Wenjiaoweiti Ke, 2002). Many Streets in Pudong District of Shanghai City have set
up Reproductive Health Consulting Office. According to a survey, 56.2 per cent of the
316 migrant women investigated in Pudong District visited these Offices as of 1999,
representing a 45.5 per cent increase compared to two years earlier (Peng et a.,l
2003).
Community family planning work can be effectively utilised for improving
migrants’ reproductive health also because of its well-established institutional
framework. Apart from the Family Planning Office, each Street normally has a
Family Planning Association. The Association has a leading team, comprising the
Party Secretary, the Administrative Head and other important officials of the Street.
Members of the Associations comprise the Heads of Residents’ Committees who are
directly connected with ordinary residents, and other relevant personnel such as
doctors. The Association is meant to coordinate various parties in the family planning
work and ensure ordinary citizens’ participation. It has now become a common
practice to have a special Migrants’ Association for Family Planning (wailai renkou
jihua shengyu xiehui) as a branch of the standard Family Planning Association. The
Migrants’ Association for Family Planning is often led by migrant women with

25
relatively high levels of education and who are influential among fellow migrants.
The Migrants’ Association reports to the Street authorities on migrant women’s
family planning situation and help relevant institutes organise migrant women to
participate in activities such as health lectures and examinations. Two companies
located in Dashila Street, Tan’s Fish Head and Yuanfu Hot Pot with more than 100
migrant workers each, have registered all their workers to be members of the
Association. The problems with reproductive health and child vaccination among
migrants as mentioned earlier to a large extent can be attributed to the
underdevelopment of residential community as a channel for social service delivery,
particularly in newly-industrialised areas.
Plate 4: An Open Medical Consultation Organised by a Residential Committee in
Beijing
Education and training
It is almost a consensus among the medical personnel, social workers and researchers
whom I interviewed that health education among migrants should be given more
priority since it can have immediate effects on migrants’ health status. Some even
suggested offering special medical training to migrants to enable them to provide
emergency aid and daily health advice to their fellow migrants. Migrants themselves
also voiced similar views. A survey in Shanghai (Zhan et al., 2001: 197-8) found that
few migrants desired to join the formal medical care system, but most wished to have
more opportunities to improve their knowledge about health care.
Research has found strong association between migrants’ health knowledge and
their behaviour. For example, a survey found that about 70 per cent of unmarried
pregnant migrant women did not use contraception measures because they either had
no knowledge about it or feared that contraception may have negative consequences
(Wang, 1999: 54, table 7, translated as Appendix 3). According to a statistical

26
analysis based on a survey conducted in Shanghai, Zhan Shaokang et al concluded
that knowledge about reproductive health is one of most important factors influencing
migrant women’s reproductive health behaviour, more important than income level
(Zhan et al., 2001, see Appendix 4).
In practice, a variety of ways have been explored to provide health education to
migrants. First, there are government-organised or government-facilitated activities.
For example, on 1st December 2002, the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau in
cooperation with more than 20 NGOs organised a one-day public counselling on
AIDS specifically for migrants at the West Beijing Railway Station (Deng and Xie,
2002). Transport Bureaux and Rail Bureaux in some places, particularly in Yunnan
and Guangxi Provinces, have launched information campaigns for AIDS prevention
targeting truck drivers as well as passengers. Many migrant sending places now hold
pre-departure training for migrants and some training courses include health
protection as an important subject.
Second, the residential community forms an important arena for transmitting
information and improving awareness. For example, Dashila Street holds at least four
lectures or seminars a month on subjects related to health. They also hand out
booklets and set up special notice boards on street corners to promote health
knowledge. These activities target both permanent residents and migrants.
Third, NGOs are becoming more and more important in delivering services,
including training, to migrants. The Shenzhen Women Worker’s Centre runs a
“Women’s Health Express”, a minibus that visits factory sites throughout the Pearl
River delta. It is equipped with a small library, facilities for playing videos, and
exhibition boards with information on health and rights (Weldon, 2001/2002a:25).
The Migrants’ Education and Training Centre in Beijing offers courses on basic
literacy, computer literacy and reproductive health. The last decade has seen a
significant growth of “migrant literature” (dagong wenxue), which refers to articles,
newsletters and even magazines specially devoted to migrants. The well-known
Beijing-based magazine Nongjianv Baishingtong (Rural Women Knowing All), which
targets female migrant workers, has published booklets such as Learn to Take Care of
Your Health – Knowing All about Reproduction and Health Care. Telephone hotlines
provide another effective means of education. Currently there are at least two lines
devoted to migrants in Beijing and health is an important topic of counselling.
Alternative clinics
For places with large numbers of migrants yet are short of community health
facilities, clinics set up by migrants themselves may be a solution to the shortage of
medical equipment. “Zhejiang Village” is a migrant community located in southern
Beijing with about 100,000 migrant residents. Most migrants in the community obtain
their daily health services from clinics set up by their fellow migrants from Zhejiang.
Since so many people emigrated from rural areas in southern Zhejiang, local doctors
there lost their clients and some moved to Beijing to set up clinics. Migrants prefer
these clinics to formal Beijing hospitals because they are convenient to visit, cheaper,
and most importantly, the doctors are more familiar with the patients’ lifestyle and
understand their problems better. Interestingly, a clinic in “Zhejiang Village”
specialising in artificial abortion turned out to be particularly popular. The doctor is a
well-known gynaecologist in eastern Yueqing County, where many migrants came
from, and he told me that many migrants in fact did not want extra children and

27
sometimes they gave birth partly because of the lack of convenient access to hospitals
for abortion (see Xiang, 2000).
Such clinics are also found in other migrant communities. Some researchers plan
to set up specialist hospitals in areas where migrants face particular health risks. A
research team from Qinghua University has planned to help set up a specialist blood
hospital in Baigou Town, where surrounding villages host numerous suitcase
workshops whose migrant workers are particularly prone to benzene poisoning. At the
same time they plan to train village primary school teachers to carry out inspections of
working conditions and conduct regular health checks for migrant workers. Village
primary school teachers are chosen as potential part-time health workers because,
apart from their relatively high education level, they tend to be neutral to both the
local employers and migrant workers and are also less mobile and therefore can fulfil
these duties on a regular basis (Shen, 2003).
One of the biggest problems facing these alternative clinics is their lack of formal
licenses from the government of the destination place. Health authorities in large
cities often turn down applications for licenses from these clinics on the grounds that
they fail to meet the basic standards in facilities. When the Beijing Municipal
government tried to justify their repeated efforts to crack down “Zhejiang Village”,
one reason given was to eliminate “illegal medical practice” there. But in fact
providing health services to migrants can be an effective measure of facilitating
migration management. For example, local governments can use the services to foster
closer relations with migrants and to collect basic information about mobility. Given
the ever-increasing medical treatment costs and the widening gap between the rich
and poor in urban China, the government should seriously consider encouraging
clinics catering for migrants and other urban poor.
Plate 5: A Clinic Set Up by a Migrant in Zhejiang Village, a Migrant Community in
Beijing

28
Empowering migrants
Since the late 1990s, when the memory of the 1989 Tian’anmen event started fading
away and the composition of Chinese society became more diverse, there has been
increasing discussion and experimentation on non-governmental organisations. Some
semi-governmental organisations, most notably the All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU) and China Women’s Federation, started working more
independently on issues that they deem to be important. A new Trade Union Law was
passed in 2001, which clearly defines that the trade union’s main function is to protect
workers’ rights. In the new law, Articles 23 to 26 significantly increase the Union’s
powers with respect to occupational safety and health, specially giving the Union a
mandatory role in investigating accidents and infringements on workers’ other rights
(Weldon, 2001/2002b:28). In March 2002, a Migrant Workers’ Association, possibly
the very first migrant workers’ union in PRC’s history, was set up in Chenzhaiwang
Village, Tangxia Town, Yongjiao County of Wenzhou Prefecture in southern
Zhejiang Province. The Association attracted 1,500 members soon after its
establishment. One thing that motivated the founder, Mr Ning Jiaxin, a migrant
worker himself, to organise the union was an accident where his nephew was
electrocuted in a factory as a migrant worker (see Pan P., 2002). There are signals that
the ACFTU may be considering supporting trade unions organised by workers
themselves in the future (see Chan, 2001; Weldon, 2001).
The emerging civil society in China is another important means of empowering
migrants. For example, the Guangzhou Migrant Workers’ Document Handling
Service Centre, an NGO, provides help much needed by migrants: to produce proper
legal documents when suing employers or other parties. The Legal Assistance Centre
at Beijing University and the Labour Rights Clinic at Qinghua University offer similar
assistance. The Shenzhen-based Institute for Contemporary Observation collaborates
with the authorities and large companies to impose surveillance over plants to ensure
work safety.

29
Conclusion
his paper has offered an overview of the health risks that rural-urban migrants in
China are facing, the basic policy gaps in providing basic health services to them,
and possible solutions to it. Existing literature on migration and health, be it from a
medical or sociological perspective, tends to attribute migrants’ health problems to
their social characteristics, such as spatial mobility (therefore more likely to become
conduit as well as victims of infectious diseases), low income, lack of awareness, and
the lack of social contacts with the local society (e.g. Yang, 2002). All these
arguments are valid in the Chinese case. But more importantly, as this paper has
demonstrated, migrants’ health problems in China are a result of existing formal
institutional arrangements. For example, problems with reproductive health and
children’s vaccination are mainly a problem of the service provision system. The fact
that migrants face high health risks at work is seemingly a result of market
segmentation, but fundamentally it is attributable to the unbalanced relationship
between migrants, enterprises and local government, which is in turn related to the
hukou system and the current growth regime in China.
This paper went further to demonstrate that existing institutional arrangements
not only render migrants highly vulnerable, but also impede them from being included
in formal medical care system. The reasons include: the vested interests and the
government’s immediate goal in reforming the social security system lend the State
no motivation to do so; the gap between the urban and the rural in medical care
system makes it impractical to provide migrants with formal medical care; the
localised therefore geographically fragmented operation pattern also discourages
migrants to join the system; and finally, the informal employment relationship
prevalent among migrant workers conflicts with the fact that the medical care system
relies on formal employment contracts for its implementation.
Based on this assessment, we may need move our focus away from formal
policies to grassroots activities in improving migrants’ health status. Activities proven
to be effective include providing health education, extending urban community health
services, allowing or even encouraging the setting up of migrants’ own clinics, and
empowering migrants. Compared to change in formal policies, these grassroots
activities have three important advantages. First, they can be initiated and carried out
immediately while any formal policy change may take a long time. Second, grassroots
activities can mobilise social resources effectively. This is particularly important
given that the governmental channels for resource allocation have become
increasingly ineffective in the Reform era. For example, one of the biggest obstacles
to establishing a universal medical care system in China is the financial constraint that
the government faces. But in fact there are plenty of resources outside of the State
system, such as the extra medical personnel in big cities and the emerging civil
society that grassroots programmes can tap on. Thirdly and most importantly,
grassroots activities will lead to institutional changes at the operational level and in a
bottom-up manner, which is essential for the implementation of any formal scheme in
the future. For example, migrants’ awareness of self-protection and legal rights is
indispensable for improving their welfare status no matter how perfect a formal policy
design can be. An active civil society is also crucial for ensuring that government and
enterprises would comply with laws and regulations. But having highlighted the
importance of grassroots activities, it must be stressed that this is only an immediate
T

30
action agenda and this does not mean that formal institutions are not important. A
unified and universal medical care system must be taken as a long-term goal for
China.

31
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35
Appendix
Province Reported Reported Temporary Permanent
/City STD Cases Year(s) Migrants (%) Residents (%)
Guangdong/Shenzhen 1,570a 1997-1998 1,084 (69.0) 486 (31.0)
Liaoning/Lianyungang 13,464b 1989-1998 2,343 (17.4) 11,121 (82.6)
Jiangsu/Xinghua 6,119b 1991-2000 457 (7.5) 5,662 (92.5)
Hainan 97a 2001 32 (33.0) 65 (67.0)
Shanghai/Nanhui 672 2000-2001 143 (21.3) 529 (78.7)
Guangdong/Shenzhen 102,538b 1983-2000 59,400 (57.9) 43,138 (42.1)
Liaoning 26,038 1998 3,787 (14.5) 22,251 (85.5)
Beijing/Shijingshan 3,492b 1990-1999 1,189 (34.0) 2,303 (66.0)
Guangxi 2,040c 1996-1997 394 (19.3) 1,646 (80.7)
Yunnan/Qujing 178d 2001 62 (34.8) 116 (65.2)
Shanghai 79,980a b 1994-1997 17,962 (22.5) 62,018 (77.5)
Notes: a Based on sentinel surveillance data.
b Cumulative cases.
c Syphilis only.
d Based on samples.
Reproduced from Yang, 2004.
Appendix 1: Reported STDs by Migration Status in Selected Provinces, China

36
Province Total HIV Reported Temporary Permanent
/City /AIDS Cases Year(s) Migrants (%) Residents (%)
Shanxi 174 1995-1999 116 (66.7) 58 (33.3)
Zhejiang 9a 1999 9 (100.0) 0 (0)
Hunan/Zhuzhou 9b 1998-2000 8 (88.9) 1 (11.1)
Shaanxi 58b 1986-2000 24 (41.4) 34 (58.6)
Guangxi/Wuzhou 148a 1998-2000 14 (9.5) 134 (90.5)
Guangdong 91b 1997 53 (58.2) 38 (41.8)
Yunnan/Chuxiong 226b 1991-2000 27 (11.9) 199 (88.1)
Liaoning/Shengyang 45 1991-9/2001 35 (77.8) 10 (22.2)
Yunan/Kunming 71b 2000 14 (19.7) 57 (80.3)
Jiangsu 133b 1986-6/2001 85 (63.9) 48 (36.1)
Liaoning 137b 1991-7/2001 43 (31.4) 94 (68.6)
Hainan 12b 1996-1998 6 (50.0) 6 (50.0)
Guangzhou 267b 1985-1999 150 (56.2) 117 (43.8)
Henan/Jiaozuo 51a 1994-2000 24 (47.1) 27 (52.9)
Fujian 188 1987-2000 80 (42.6) 108 (57.4)
Notes: a Based on samples.
b Based on sentinel surveillance data.
Reproduced from Yang, 2004.
Appendix 2: HIV/AIDS Cases by Migration Status in Selected Provinces, China

37
Reasons
Percentage
No contraception knowledge
49.3
Worried about by-effects of
contraception
20.4
Too shy to buy or take equipment
22.7
Do not know where to get the
equipment
7.6
Lack of money
0
Total
100
Sample
211
Source: Wang, 1999: 54, Table 7
Appendix 3: Reasons Why Migrant Women Never Used Contraception Measures
Statistical test H = 61.1
V= 3 P < 0.01
Source: Zhan et al., 2001: 193, Table 13
Appendix 4: Association between Migrants’ Knowledge about Reproductive Health and
Their Frequency of Taking Prenatal Exam
(Survey Conducted in Minghang and Meilong Districts in Shanghai)
Scores of
knowledge
Percentage of respondents who have taken checks of different
frequencies
0 time
1-3 times
4-8 times
9 plus times
0 ~
12.9
32.3
32.3
22.6
10 ~
0
25.4
46.0
28.6
15 ~
0
7.9
27.7
64.4
20 ~
0
0
5.9
94.1

38
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