Amnesty report says China's internal migrants face employee abuse, legal discrimination

(AP) China's migrant workers are becoming an "urban underclass," held down by economic exploitation and residency rules that deny them access to medical, housing and education benefits, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday.

Workers from China's vast rural hinterland are often forced to work overtime and are fined for infractions such as being late or not meeting production quotas, the London-based rights group said.

Pay is also routinely withheld to keep migrants from changing jobs, a practice that has helped keep wages down despite rising demand for workers and annual economic growth of more than 10 percent, the report said.

"China's so-called economic 'miracle' comes at a terrible human cost _ rural migrants living in the cities experience some of the worst abuse in the work place," Catherine Baber, Amnesty's deputy Asia Pacific director, said in a statement accompanying the 42-page report.

Asked to comment on the report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang acknowledged workers' rights were abused "in some places in China."

But Qin said Amnesty's claim that China's economic growth had come at the cost of human rights was "biased and baseless" and said the government was working to eradicate abuses.

Migrants usually perform the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs in factories and on construction sites. The widespread lack of labor contracts leaves them with little legal recourse in disputes with employers, the report said.

Amnesty said migrants are heavily victimized by residency restrictions that tie a person to their place of birth. While migrants are allowed to apply for temporary residency, they must pay extra for schooling and rarely receive insurance or access to subsidized housing, the report said.

That system "provides a regulatory and administrative foundation for discrimination against internal migrant workers," Baber said.

Chinese officials and legislators say they are debating how best to overhaul the residency system but no timetable has been put forward for replacing the current model.

China imposed the residency rules shortly after the 1949 Communist revolution as part of strict controls on where people could live, work, and even whom they could marry. Up to the early 2000s, the system closely paralleled the "pass" rules imposed by apartheid-era South Africa, requiring migrants to carry their residency papers and exposing them to police abuse and extortion.

However, the system has eroded heavily amid rising wealth and greater personal freedoms. In recent years, an estimated 150 million to 200 million Chinese have moved from the countryside to urban areas where their labor has fueled breakneck economic growth.

The rules were reformed after the 2003 beating death of a young college graduate in a detention center for undocumented migrants. Residency papers no longer have to be carried, police can no longer forcibly detain migrants, and temporary residency fees have been slashed.

Privatization of health care and housing has meanwhile diluted many of the benefits enjoyed by those possessing permanent urban residency permits, observers say.

"The divide is breaking down," Anita Chan, a research fellow on Chinese labor and law at Australian National University, told The Associated Press.

Yet, the system still places migrants at a strong disadvantage in primary and secondary education, the cost of which has soared amid rising competition for college and jobs.

City schools charge migrants additional fees they often can't afford, forcing them to place children in unofficial schools or leave them behind in the countryside.

As a result, experts say about 20 million children live with their grandparents or other relatives in their home villages. Many are poorly supervised and often receive only rudimentary educations.

Abolition of the residency rules is opposed by local-level officials and urbanites who would have to share access to services with migrants, Chan said.

Meanwhile, China's government "still wants some control" over the movements of its 1.3 billion people, she said.