They number around three hundred million. For nearly fifty years they have traveled from place to place to build the nation. We are often told that the Communist Party has “lifted” hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The fact is that the migrant workers have done the heaviest lifting, but they themselves remain poor.
In recent days, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee has mapped out the course for the next five years. The main message is that China will continue to grow, both economically and militarily. In the wordy final communiqué we also find a sentence stating that the country must become better at distributing its wealth. The catchword here is “common prosperity.”
But how is that supposed to happen?
Social inequality has characterized China for more than two thousand years. In imperial times, peasants were burdened with heavy taxes while the court and officials lived in luxury. Today the country calls itself socialist, but the disparities in wealth and living standards are among the greatest in the world.
The Gini Index is the most commonly used measure of inequality. The higher the figure, the greater the gap between rich and poor. In China, the index is 0.47. That is significantly higher than in the United States (0.41), which is often cited as a horror story, and far higher than in the EU (0.30). Norway, by comparison, is around 0.27.
In China, it is not unusual for urban households to earn more than twice as much as rural households. The gap between town and countryside is as wide as it was in the 19th century – though in a completely different economic reality.
Deng Xiaoping laid the foundation for this paradox. When he opened up the economy in the 1980s, he said that some should get rich first, so that prosperity would eventually spread to everyone. The reasoning worked to some degree, for over the years millions of people attained a better life. Not because they were “lifted out of poverty” by a benevolent Communist Party, as we so often hear, but because they seized the opportunities of the time and worked hard.
At the same time, the country gained a new elite of entrepreneurs, party bureaucrats, and businessmen with the right connections. The result is a society where luxury apartments in Shanghai sell for prices exceeding Manhattan’s, while poor farmers in Gansu can barely afford to send their children to school.
China’s richest citizens have not only money but also power. Many are members of the Communist Party, which in theory strives for a classless society. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, is a party member and one of China’s most prominent entrepreneurs. According to Forbes, he is worth at least 300 billion Norwegian kroner. Pony Ma of the internet company Tencent is a member of the National People’s Congress and has some 650 billion in the bank. The list could be made much longer.
These are billionaires who not only run businesses but are also woven into the state’s political structure. Business success provides access to political power, and political power offers protection when storms arise. Yet the system is fragile, for when Jack Ma grew too outspoken and began criticizing the authorities, he vanished from public view for more than a year. The Party wanted to put him back in line.
For ordinary Chinese, attitudes toward wealth are mixed. On one hand, they admire successful entrepreneurs who create jobs and raise family status. On the other, they suspect their wealthy compatriots of being corrupt and closely tied to the Party. Many young Chinese openly express on social media that they are no longer impressed by luxury cars and expensive watches. Instead, they ask where the money really comes from. In the cities, the growing middle class has begun to feel that housing prices make it nearly impossible to buy a home. Here lies one of many seeds of social discontent.
Xi Jinping has made the slogan “common prosperity” a cornerstone of his policy. He claims it is not about making the rich poorer but making the poor richer. The measures have so far been symbolic. Several tech giants have been forced to donate money to social causes, but the fundamental structures have hardly changed. The urban middle class receives subsidized loans and better schools, while migrant workers from the countryside are still treated as second-class citizens.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country had 296 million migrant workers in 2023. These are residents who have a hukou (household registration) in the countryside but work in the cities, often far from home.
Most live in cramped dormitories, shared housing, or simple rooms near factories or construction sites.
Workdays are long. Ten to twelve hours is not unusual, six days a week. Many return to their village only once a year, at Chinese New Year, to see their families. In the cities they are denied access to healthcare, daycare, and schooling for their children, because the hukou system ties welfare rights to one’s place of origin.
The average monthly wage for migrant workers in 2023 was about 6,500 Norwegian kroner. Many send a large part of their income back home to their families. In urban areas, incomes are almost twice as high. Leaving aside the poorest in the countryside who have no jobs at all, migrant workers sit at the bottom of the wage scale.
Without migrant workers, “China’s economic miracle” would not have been possible. They are the flexible and cheap labor that has turned the country into the world’s largest factory.
As Bertolt Brecht wrote in one of his poems:
Who built Thebes with the seven gates?
In the books stand the names of kings.
Did the kings drag the blocks of stone?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times?
In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did its builders live?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them?
The gulf between migrant workers and the urban middle class is perhaps the most important reason why China – despite its massive propaganda – appears as a clearly stratified society.
Chinese and Western economists alike have pointed out that the Party leadership broadly has only two options. One is to continue as before, with all the dangers that entails. Xi Jinping’s realm has so far been spared large-scale social unrest, but the system is by no means immune. The other is to abolish the unjust hukou system and move toward a more radical redistribution of wealth, with a clear progressive taxation and social safety nets. But the latter means challenging the Party’s own elites, who have grown immensely rich under the current system.
The final communiqué from the Central Committee meeting in Beijing suggests that things will remain much as before. The document does not mention the hukou system even once, and the migrant worker – China’s indomitable hero – receives no mention either.
Many, both Chinese and others, wonder how a party founded to represent peasants and the working class has today become an alliance of bureaucrats, military men, and multimillionaires.
“Catchphrases may sound grand, but if they are not transformed into concrete reforms, they remain nothing but empty words,” the Chinese online newspaper Caixin wrote recently.
It was an important reminder.
