Worker Rights

Hiring practices that discriminate against groups the Chinese government designates as ethnic minorities have continued in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the past year. As documented in past Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)analyses (1, 2), job recruitment announcements from the region have reserved positions exclusively for Han Chinese in civil servant posts and state-owned enterprises, as well as in private job announcements posted on both government and non-government Web sites. Such discriminatory practices have continued in the past year, even as at least one announcement reports an increase in positions available to ethnic minorities. The restrictions accompany other discriminatory requirements, also present in some job recruitment programs elsewhere in China, based on factors such as sex and age.

Official Chinese-language media coverage of a series of labor strikes in southern Chinese factories in May has been sparse in part because of tight government restrictions on reporting that authorities imposed on May 28, 2010, according to a June 12 article in the South China Morning Post. The New York Times reported on June 16 that the government is also working to censor Web sites and blog postings about the strikes. A report by the ACFTU on June 21 noted that the new desires of the younger generation of migrant workers had begun to have a "negative influence" on China's political and social stability.

During the past month, Chinese and international media and non-governmental organizations reported on at least 12 separate incidents—from a succession of strikes to suicides at a factory compound—at various Chinese enterprises, mostly foreign-owned, that garnered attention in China and around the world.

1. Starting on May 21, 2010, about 1,900 workers at a Honda-owned auto-parts factory in Foshan city, Guangdong province, went on strike to demand higher wages, as detailed in a May 28 New York Times article.

Discrimination in Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Continues

On February 9, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held a three-hour session to review China's human rights record. The UPR, which was created in 2006, is a new mechanism under which the UN Human Rights Council reviews the human rights records of all UN Member States once every four years. (See previous Congressional-Executive Commission on China analysis for background information on the review process.)

In January and February, the Chinese government issued new policies to lift certain restrictions on household registration (hukou), allowing citizens who meet specified criteria to obtain local hukou. Having local hukou is effectively a prerequisite for securing employment, healthcare, social insurance, education, and other government benefits; this has been the case since the issuance of the Regulations on Household Registration in 1958. The new policies aim to promote employment as authorities recently acknowledged rising unemployment of college graduates and migrant workers during the current economic downturn.