An area in southern China renowned as a major export hub is at the center of a child labor scandal after more than 1,000 children were found toiling away in factories.
The children, aged from nine to 16, worked long hours in factories for about US$0.35 an hour, the state-run China Daily and other media said yesterday, in echoes of a brick kiln slavery ring that made world headlines last year.
The news came as workers in communist-ruled China prepared to celebrate May 1, Labor Day, as a national holiday.
But the latest incident showed that labor abuse remained a major problem in China, where many poor people remain vulnerable to exploitation despite the country’s phenomenal economic growth, a workers’ rights group said.
“They [labor scandals] get exposed from time to time. If they become a big story, then the government usually promises to crack down and investigate,” said Geoffrey Crothall of the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin.
“But the underlying problems that give rise to these incidents just continue. The situation never seems to improve noticeably in terms of poverty relief and in terms of keeping kids in school,” he said.
Police have so far rescued 167 children in Dongguan, one of the cities at the center of the latest scandal, the Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po newspaper said.
The China Daily carried a photo of a young girl crying after emerging from her place of work in Dongguan, which has sought for many years to attract foreign investment and is an export hub.
The children were also found working in factories in nearby Shenzhen and Huizhou, which are also key to Chinese exports, the China Daily said.
Authorities have set up a task force to rescue all the other children, local authorities in Dongguan were quoted as saying.
“Our labor enforcement and trade union will investigate all companies in the town, the labor market and agencies,” the China Daily quoted Wang Yongquan, a spokesman for Shipai town in Dongguan, as saying.
An underground organization had lured the children from Liangshan, a poor farming area in Sichuan province thousands of kilometers away, the China Daily said.
The factories paid the children between 2.5 yuan and 3.8 yuan (US$0.35 and US$0.55) an hour.
The Southern Metropolis Newspaper, the first to report the scandal, quoted a factory foreman as saying that all the children were passed off as 18 to pass the labor department’s inspections.
“We have absolute management control over them — we can adopt any measure,” another foreman named Pan Ajie told the newspaper’s reporter before the crackdown began.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was