Coronavirus: China’s economic woes could be worse than thought as legions of migrant workers return home

Migrant workers, some who had only arrived in the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou a few days earlier, are being forced to head back home

Rising unemployment figures and closed factories suggest China’s job market is straining in the wake of the virus

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Independent analysts estimate that tens of millions of Chinese, or even up to 205 million according to one expert, have been left unemployed. Photo: He Huifeng

Published: 9:00am, 29 Apr 2020Updated: 11:02am, 29 Apr 2020

The sight of hundreds of migrant workers standing, sitting or even squatting at a temporary bus stop at the end of last week resembled the scene of an emergency evacuation, but it was not a natural disaster that had fallen on the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou they were fleeing.

The group assembled in Shangchong village had with them the bags and suitcases usually carried by passengers on interprovincial buses, but the addition of kitchen items, sewing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners suggested their owners would not be making a return journey any time soon.

Some had arrived in Guangdong province just a few weeks earlier with China’s coastal areas in dire need of migrant labour to resume production after lockdown restrictions across small cities in Hubei province had finally been lifted.

But these migrant workers were not being forced to again flee the coronavirus, they had made the decision to leave as the economic opportunities they had arrived in search of no longer existed.

The wages given by the factories are much lower than last year, and the jobs are very unstable

Zhang Li

The scramble for labour as China sought to kick-start its economic engine proved short-lived amid vanishing export orders and a fragile domestic economic recovery, leaving migrant workers with no jobs and no income to pay basic necessities, including rent.