Child workers in China are particularly vulnerable to crime and exploitation because they lack the ability to protect themselves. In nearly all cases, the victims are migrants from the countryside and factory owners routinely exploit the families’ lack of legal knowledge and awareness of their rights, as well as their distance from the factory, in a bid to circumvent their own legal obligations. Victims’ families are ignored, lied to, or harassed when they attempt to press for compensation.
Wang Zengqin, a migrant worker from rural Hebei had been working at the Shanghai Guanxing Valve Co. in Minhang district for a month and a half when he was killed. Wang’s mother told Radio Free Asia that although he died after being attacked at the factory and during work hours and the authorities had subsequently certified that he was under-age, the factory boss still refused to accept any responsibility.
Around 5.30pm on 29 March, Wang got into a fight with a colleague at the entrance of the company’s sales department. After being knocked to the ground injured, he was taken to hospital but did not recover. His assailant, He Jian, was detained and is awaiting trial.
In June, the Shanghai Labour and Social Security Bureau fined Guanxing Valve Co. the statutory 5,000 yuan for employing child labour. Nevertheless, in July, the Minhang Labour Arbitration Committee refused to consider the victim’s family’s claim for compensation because it said the case was an ongoing police matter. The family subsequently filed a civil suit at the Minhang District Court. The trial began on 26 September and the family is still awaiting judgment.
On 25 September, Southern Metropolis Daily reported the case of a 13 year-old migrant from Hubei who was raped by her supervisor. Due to her family’s financial difficulties, the newspaper said, the victim had dropped out of school after graduating from primary school in order to look for work. She had arrived with her aunt to work in the Bao’an factory just a couple of weeks prior to the incident. The victim’s father reportedly received some 10,000 yuan in compensation from the factory boss’s withholding of the alleged culprit’s wages, but when he asked for additional compensation he was threatened and harassed by the factory management.
All attempts by the newspaper to contact management failed and the factory closed down after the incident. A relative of the victim said she was severely traumatized, cried all the time and stayed in her room refusing to see anyone.
In September last year, China Labour Bulletin published a detailed research report on child labour in China, which revealed the extent to which children are routinely exploited and brutalized at work and examined the reasons why children like the 13 year-old victim in Shenzhen were forced to drop-out of school and seek work far from home.