Workers at the Honda Lock factory in Guangdong province return to work

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has called for better living conditions for migrant workers from rural areas.

He said China owed them its wealth and tall buildings, and officials should treat them as their own children. The comments follow a wave of strikes and labour-related suicides.

Up to 200 million Chinese workers have migrated from the countryside to the cities in recent years.

But the government has refused to relax the system of residence permits.

Mr Wen made his remarks as workers at a Honda factory returned to work after a week-long strike over pay.

No pay promise

“The government and all parts of society should treat young migrant workers as they would treat their own children,” Mr Wen said.

He promised to improve public facilities in the countryside, like schools and hospitals, so that migrant workers would have less to worry about in their hometowns.

Migrant worker arrives in Shanghai, one of millions to leave the country

The labour disputes at factories in the Chinese industrial belt have raised fears that migrant workers are becoming restless about tough working conditions and curbs on pay.

Strikes are illegal in China but the government seems to be tolerating the recent walkouts at Honda suppliers and other firms, as long as the disputes are settled quickly and quietly, says the BBC’s Chris Hogg in Shanghai.

In the past five months, 10 Chinese employees of the IT manufacturer Foxconn have committed suicide. Three more have attempted to take their own lives.

Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of computer components, supplies brands such as Apple, Nokia and Dell.

It is not unusual for Mr Wen to speak out in favour of the low paid or those from the countryside who come to the cities seeking work, our correspondent says.

But in light of the recent unrest, Mr Wen’s comments will be seen in China as an effort to calm them, he adds.

Mr Wen did not address the most common complaint of the different groups of striking workers that their pay is too low.

However, his words send a signal to government officials that they must pay greater attention to the needs of the migrant workers.

R-Force says:  Many people here in the West do not realise just how many strikes and protests there are in China over working conditions and pay. A small proportion of which do end up in riots.  The fact is that the Chinese people as a whole have a great pride in their country and state, however they are getting more and more openly verbal about the things that don’t work so well for their families and friends. I can understand how they feel, it is hard to follow and old philosophy of a country for the people when the majority of the people are not the elite few receiving vast amounts of money in corrupt deals.

Things are changing in China, a greater respect for their history is becoming more prevalent now more than any time since the peoples revolution.  We can only hope that the message that their history gives of a powerful past is enough to allow those people of now to realise that they are the cogs in the machine.

Hopefully China will find this uneasy middle ground between the Western Desire for possessions and the Chinese desire for a peaceful life with family. The current system of  poor wages, bad living conditions and where  families are split apart for the largest part of the year, does breed unrest. The types of unrest that could see the bloodiest civil war ever witnessed on this small planet of ours.

Be it open politics or not, there is no easy fix for China’s current woes, who ever is in power is faced with the colossus tasks of resolving the day to day running issues of one of the most populated countries in the World. Here in the west we cannot even begin to understand the scale of what is involved in evolving China into the 21st Century financial power house that it actually is.

Many want change, here and now. It really is not going to happen like that. Things are changing, the problem is finding the balance between, economic growth, modernisation and the welfare of the people. Inevitably on this scale this will mean that its not just a few thousand people that fall foul of changes implemented, it will be Million’s.

Original Article With Courtesy of : news.bbc.co.uk