Crowds of Chinese piled on to trains yesterday in the biggest migration of humanity on the planet as hundreds of millions travel back to their home provinces for the Lunar New Year.
But some can't afford a family holiday. Many of the poor migrant workers who have flooded into China's cities have been cheated of their wages by their bosses, despite growing government efforts to stop the fraud.
The shadow of sickness has also threatened to dampen spirits this year.
Most Chinese were set to spend yesterday night, the eve of Spring Festival, at home with their families.
But migrant workers slumped over in the shadows of the Beijing railway station yesterday were not going home to their families.
"How can we go home? The boss ran off and didn't give us a cent," snapped Yang Jianguo, a 48-year-old from Hebei province sprawled on the floor.
Breathing fumes of sorghum-based moonshine, he launched into a classic account -- dubious builders, fly-by-night contractors, callous officials -- repeated yearly like a broken record by down-in-the-mouth migrants who fail to collect wages.
This Lunar New Year, China's new Communist leaders are trying as hard as ever to change that, observers say.
End-of-year gross domestic product figures announced on Tuesday saw year-on-year growth of 9.1 percent.
But many of the rural migrants who build China's highways and villas and contribute to that impressive growth are mired in poverty and debt, often because they received no wages.
Hu and Wen have both issued orders to find ways to dig workers and peasants out of debt, official media said.
State television has saturated the airwaves with melodramas about people finally collecting their unpaid wages.
Some must run bureaucratic obstacle courses before breaking through red tape, others simply wait, like one Shanxi province man who has just been paid for work he did on a road in 1993 to 1994.
Populist pressure in the government and state media are making a difference, official figures indicate. In Beijing alone, more than 99 percent of wages-in-arrears on record from last year had been reimbursed.
Try telling that to Yang and his friends.
"Lies," he said. "There is no law to protect us."
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
RSS