Insufficient Welfare

Many of these workers not only face lower salaries and poorer working conditions than their city counterparts, but do not receive social benefits, including pensions, schooling for their children and health care.

Chinese migrant workers head back to work in the construction site of the 2008 Olympic venues in Beijing Friday, April 21, 2006. [AP]

Although central authorities have issued reams of policy guidelines on protecting the rights of the migrant workers, experts say the local governments seeking higher growth rates and bigger local profits routinely ignored the law.

Even in Beijing, there is little evidence that the laws for protecting migrant workers rights are being enforced, according to an AFP report.

"If we asked for social insurance and pensions, we would be fired," said Zhang Duanqi, 38, a construction worker from northeastern Heilongjiang Province working on a site in Beijing's Chaoyangmenwai business district.

"In China you don't have a choice, you have to take what you can get. Very few workers are complaining, it doesn't pay to complain."

But Zhang, with salaries ranging from 1,200 yuan to 1,800 yuan (150 dollars to 225 dollars) a month and including board and lodging, gave the impression the workers with his team were better off than other migrant laborers.

He Xiao, 21, a security guard from central Henan Province working at a busy shopping center in Beijing's Chaoyangmenwai business district, provided perhaps a more accurate picture of the plight of China's rural migrant workforce.

"The labor law is a big mirage," He said, explaining he would be working throughout the holiday period with no extra pay.

"The reality is I have a job. I'm paid about 700 yuan a month, they give me neither a food subsidy nor a place to live, so they are not going to give me social security insurance."