The Mingong: Half Animals, Half Laborers

In China, it is possible to completely lose your dignity as human being. Waking up day after day to find only hunger, misery, infinite injustice and no future; the dignity of being a human being is nowhere to be found – and never was. All that is left is to live as a beast.

This is what has happened to over 800 million farmers in China this year: the land they work is not their own, their crops belong to the Chinese communist party, to which they owe taxes, labor and obedience. So just like animals migrate, millions of these poor farmers try to become workers instead of beasts of burden by moving to the city. Here they morph into clandestine citizens – as the law does not grant them with resident permits for the cities – then into Mingongs ("min"=farmer, "gong"=work). Mingongs are clandestine nonentities with neither a past nor a future, human fuel for the unstoppable Chinese production machine, slaves to be exploited.

Only those with a regular employment are granted residence permission, called hukou. But regular employment is a dream for these people. Mingongs can be arrested and jailed at any moment because they lack residence permits. For this reason these faceless, nameless people spend entire days seeking any kind of job, no matter what the conditions. They can be seen often with cardboard signs dangling from around their necks with their employment capabilities written on them. This exploited underclass makes up the large part of those who manufacture all the products that are flooding the West. They are children of the latest policies of the Chinese communist business class.

Mao Zedong promoted the migration of urban intellectuals from the cities to the countryside so that they would acquire "working-class consciousness." Deng Xiaoping successfully promoted the opposite: everyone back to the city, to accelerate the "new communist capitalism" - the biggest, quickest and most evil expansion in the history of mankind.

This phenomenon dates from 1984. The "critical mass" began to arrive in 1995, when the supply of agricultural products began to overcome the demand, pushing rural families to seek their livelihoods in the cities. Today it is estimated that there are over 200 million of them, more if we consider the "fluctuating" ones who each day go back and forth to the country instead of sleeping in the workplace. They are mostly concentrated in the building sites of the Olympics, in other big cities or in the industrial complexes of the Southeastern China.

It is easy to recognize them because, due to the diffused malnutrition in the rural areas, they are usually a few inches shorter than most citizens (and it is common to find minimum height requirements in ads for workers), and also thinner. They also carry the marks of the murderous jobs they perform on their faces: they start their 12-hour work shifts around 5 a.m. Their usual lunch is a plate of greens with some rice and bread.

According to statistics provided by the Social Science Academy of Beijing, based upon 31,000 migrant families, the average monthly salary is about 1,000 yuan (a little over $145 USD) while 20% of these families have less than half that income. 17% of the Chinese population lives on less than a dollar a day. Obviously they are not paid on a regular timely basis; sometimes, they are not even paid at all – they can’t complain or do anything about it anyway. Their lives consist of working and sleeping.

The mongong are rejected by the populations of the cities (in Beijing they’re called waidiren, strangers); the fact that they don’t share the same rights as others only confirms this prejudice. Because of the hukou policies, Mingongs are prohibited from driving cars in the city and, until a few years ago, they were not even allowed to use public transportation. Medical assistance in hospitals is reserved exclusively to those who can afford to pay sums that are the equivalent of one or two months pay.

In addition to their lack of residence permit, the Mingong lack any form of social protection, medical care or pension fund, and they live in precarious lodgings within building sites or near the factories, with no heat, sometimes in tents, without access to water or electricity or bathrooms.

It is almost impossible for these families to provide their children with an education. It is very costly to send their children to school – in addition to the regular taxes, they are required to pay extra taxes that can amount to tens of thousands of yuan per semester. The only viable alternative is to send them to clandestine schools run by other farmers who have migrated to the city.

On the average, the Mingong see their families once a year, often during the anniversary of the Communist revolution or for Chinese New Year’s. They bring home plastic bags filled with miserable gadgets and the money they’ve been able to save for the family. Maybe these visits are useful for them – they can see the miserable conditions of life in the countryside – the only place worse than the cities– and somehow find the courage to carry on.

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