Migrant Nation
- added December 5, 2007
- 20 responses
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- lauraling
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The biggest mass migration of people is happening in China. Over 100 million migrants have moved from the poor countryside to the cities in search of work. Laura Ling looks into the migrant situation in China and the rights for migrant workers.
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Totally, totally brilliant.
1) Charming, intelligent presenter. So nice to have someone who''s genuine, knows what they''re talking about, native speaking, and not arrogant or patronising
2) Loved how you went everywhere, everything you talked about is visualised
3) Really packed, pace is perfect
Some of the shorts are so nice, and demonstrate what I love about indy news gathering, showing things as they are, without blatant bias (showing the madness of the migrant schools, which presents nothing for either side of the immigrant arguement, it''s just giving you an interval where you can see some just real life moments "film me! film all three of us!!" brilliant. it''s so nice when you feel like you are there, seeing with your own eyes)
I want to work with you. do you want another camera operator? -
NPR : Chinese Migrant Children Face Educational HurdlesAnother story on the issue of migrant workers and education for their children. With audio. -
BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Chinese migrants seek schoolingMore in-depth look at the issue of Chinese migrant education from the BBC.
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BBC News | BUSINESS | Inside China: Workers on the moveA story from 2001 about the problems of internal migration in China as it was just started to become more widespread. -
People's Daily Online -- Chinese migrant worker has little to celebrate on Labour DayArticle highlighting another big problem facing migrant workers in China – wage exploitation. -
China executes migrant worker for rampage that left 3 dead - Asia - Pacific - International Herald TribuneA migrant worker was sentenced to death for a rampage that killed three people, an incident that is being called a reflection on the growing gap between rich and poor in developing China. -
Sinomen (in Chinese)This is a Web portal aimed at helping migrant workers in China find jobs, training, legal help, and activities. -
RFA: Web Site Breaks New Ground for China's Migrant WorkersA story about Sinomen, a new Web site that aims to help Chinese migrant workers find jobs, training and legal help, as an effort to complement help offered by the government. -
China defends shutting unregistered schools | Breaking news | Guardian Unlimited SportChina's closure of many unregistered migrant schools has fueled speculation that it is an attempt to drive migrants out of the capital in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. -
TV clip: migrant workers' prostitutes arrested in Beijing (in Chinese)A clip from Chinese television describing the arrest of Chinese prostitutes who serve mostly migrant workers.
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Toward the end of our trip to China in November of 2006, Laura and I had a couple of long nights. On the Wednesday that we arrived in Beijing from Shenzhen, we had dinner with the head of a Chinese human rights organization and a few of his staffers. At dinner, we mentioned that we were working on a story about commercial sex workers, so after dinner, a couple of the young staffers took us out in a randomly hailed taxi on a tour of seedier commercial sex establishments and when ended up getting cut off by three car loads of thugs wielding iron bars who wanted to discuss what we were videotaping--as you can see in the piece, China Sex Workers. The next night, we were on a tour of water projects with Greenpeace, and when the tour ended far north of Beijing, we were obliged to ride a series of overcrowded buses back to our hotel--standing up. At this point, back in the Crowne Plaza on Wangfujing, Laura said to me, "I think I might just have room service in my room and then have an early night." I walked around the streets near our hotel for bit, but after two weeks on the road, couldn't find anything that I wanted to eat. So the next morning I hit the breakfast buffet in the lobby pretty hard, and was surprised not to see Laura, who's usually a pretty hearty eater. Finally, just as our contact for the day's shoot--on migrants--arrived in the hotel lobby, Laura comes down on the elevator and that's when I found out that she had spent the night in a local hospital emergency room due to the kind of intestinal issues that are endemic in this line of work--a hotel bellboy took her over. So when you look at this piece, there's not only the great job that Laura did covering the plight of migrant workers in China's capital, there's also the amazing feat of coming off a night being treated in a hospital emergency room, and then spending ten straight hours in the field without letting it show. Even knowing what I told you, if you go back and re-watch the piece now, you still won't be able to tell. That's tough.
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PART TWO:
But even though Vanguard isn't over in Beijing this week, we have covered a lot of the basic issues and tensions presently in play. It's well known that China is undergoing an almost unprecedented economic and social transformation. But as Vanguard coverage has shown, even though the Communist Party still rules, the country seems to be in the midst of political change as well. That is, despite periodic crackdowns such as now, people, groups, and the media have generally become much freer of governmental control--not because the government wants them to be, but because it seems to be losing the power to repress them.
In fact, if you read the statements of President Hu Jintao, China's leaders seem to be very aware of anger rising in people. Hu has been quoted as saying that the number one problem in China is social instability caused by the widening gap between rich and poor and exacerbated by governmental corruption. Each year, China has tens of thousands of disturbances--protests by angry farmers, workers, etc--and keeps a public tally of them.
So, if you watch Angela Sun and Tracey Chang's stories on underground missionaries in China, or Angela's story about blook donors infected with HIV, Laura Ling's stories about migrant workers, e-waste villages, commercial sex workers, Internet freedom, and China's hopes for the Beijing Olympics they're all in a way about the Chinese people becoming more disgruntled and/or more assertive of their rights--that is, they're all stories about how economic and social transformation also seem to be transforming the Chinese people into a force that China's Communist rulers must figure out how to deal with...
Check out: Secret Faith, Underground Christians, China Missionaries, China's Blood Sellers, Migrant Nation, Toxic Villages, China Sex Workers, The Great Firewall, and China's Chance -
I'm prepping for my upcoming trip to China to do a series of stories --- I'll be looking at the unprecedented rate of economic growth, the generational changes that are taking place in mere years, as well as the crippling effects these changes are wreaking on the nation's environment. But as Mitch points out above, the much larger story seems to be about how the central government is beginning to reveal its limited ability to control the world's biggest populace, as it had in these pre-boom times.
Environmentalism isn't just about the environment in China -- it's become one of the rallying points for a whole host of grievances the people have for a government which had shown little tolerance for dissent. As Laura Ling showed in Toxic Villages, the citizenry have created a nascent environmental movement that shakes the party at its core -- and the local media have begun to play an instrumental role. And while the central and local governments are probably annoyed at the increased level of reporting on environmental issues, they realize they can no longer muffle the voices of the people.
The burgeoning movement has the ring of something that makes a lot of people in China nervous --- the rise of a civil society.-
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- Adam_Yamaguchi
- 11 months ago
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- woodywoodbeck
- 10 months ago
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- woodywoodbeck
- 10 months ago
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This is the kind of stuff that should be on our local news stations instead of well for example the corrupt mayor of Detroit's sex scandal in my case. I don't care who he has sex with. I do care about children being denied an education because their families aren't viewed as valuable members of society. This issue affects every American because in a way we support this. Thank you for doing this piece. It was very eye opening. I'm just sad that it's not on every station like it should be.
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Hey Laura, your mandarin is pretty good!
Are you an ABC or are you also an immigrant? :)
Anyway, another nice piece of journalism.
The poverty in China is pretty mindblowing, but then again, Americans are so sheltered pretty much any condition outside of the 1st or 2nd world will probably shock us. -
Laura Ling... you are amazing... everything you do is amazing. Keep it up... this coverage changes the world!!!
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great job laura!
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grapes of wrath, anyone?
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