Vietnamese workers rest while loading tapioca onto a boat in Dongxing, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 2012. Photo: CFP

Braving the windchill by a highway in Baise, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, 18-year-old Vietnamese Lau Mi Lenh and his family desperately tried to hitch a lift to their dreamland of neighboring Guangdong Province.

Hailing from a village in the Vietnamese province of Nghe An, Lau and his eight relatives had sneaked into China by themselves, hoping to find a job in Guangdong Province, as he had heard that the bustling coastal province could guarantee handsome incomes for people like them.

It wasn't to be. Lau told the Xinhua News Agency his tale from a Chinese jail cell.

He is among the booming numbers of people without valid entry and employment paperwork, who are flooding into the country's eastern seaboard. Most come from Southeast Asia, seeking higher wages in a part of China that is increasingly looking to the black market to fill gaps in affordable labor.

The issue is once again in the national spotlight after two groups of Vietnamese stowaways, a total of eight people, were detained by local police in Baise on March 14.

Regional border control police of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region intercepted 4,500 foreign laborers who entered the country surreptitiously in 2012, and though the number dipped to a little over 3,500 in 2013, police say there are "definitely more still at large."

The laborers, taking advantage of the many trails that snake through the China-Vietnam border area, stick their necks out to bypass the checkpoints in Guangxi and reach the eastern paradise of their dreams.

Mi Lenh said that his family moved heaven and earth to get to Baise, eventually enduring an anxious 24-hour ride in a minivan to get there.

"I was prepared to labor in jobs planting eucalyptus or sugar cane even in the countryside of Guangdong," he explained.

Money chain 

China's black market of foreign labor is booming on the back of a shift in the country's own labor forces from east to west, driving human traffickers, or "traders" as they are dubbed, to transport cheap labor from abroad into the eastern areas like Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.

Ah Xiang, a trader detained by police in Guangxi, said that they usually lure poverty-stricken foreigners willing to work in China with blandishments about working opportunities, and then charge "registration fees" before transporting them into Chinese factories.

"We negotiate with the factory owners in advance to remove any possible stumbling blocks, and then the procedures go smoothly," she said.

Many illegal workers, mainly from Southeast Asian countries, cross Chinese border with fabricated hukou (household registration), pretending to be ethnic minorities from Chinese villages near the border, while others come to China on tourist visas, Economic Information magazine reported in November 2013.

They usually need to pay a significant amount of money to "snakeheads," a Chinese term for human traffickers, to do so. A snakehead can earn 240,000 yuan ($38,647) in six months by bringing more than 100 illegal foreign workers into China, according to the Economic Information reports.

According to Ah Xiang, foreign laborers are becoming increasingly popular in factories in eastern China, as domestic workers are thin on the ground, while foreigners tend to be cheaper, more "well-behaved" and "quiet."

But the opportunities to make more money in China are often outweighed by terrible working and living conditions, Ah Xiang said, adding that it is hard to protect the rights of the illegal workers.

Expensive labor 

Experts attribute the rise in cross-border migration to a wide range of factors, including rising labor costs in China as well as loose supervision.

One of the underlying reasons for the rampant black market in foreign labor is that China's coastal cities have come under pressure from a severe shortfall of labor, according to Yu Yimao, captain of Baise's border control police.

In February, a survey by the Guangzhou Human Resource Market Service Center showed a shortfall of 123,300 workers in Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong. A similar warning was issued later by the Fujian provincial government, warning that the province needs 80,000 laborers to fill the gap.

The cost of domestic labor is also on the rise. Construction worker Li Deqin said that the daily salary for people like him used to be about 80 yuan, but now they command at least 180 yuan.

That is a huge sum for many foreign workers like Mi Lenh, who barely makes 50 yuan each day in Vietnam.

"I heard that even illegal migrants can make more than 100 yuan a day in China," the young Vietnamese said.

While his dreams have failed for now, many others are still drawn by the prospect and authorities have called for a taming of the black market with a spate of proposed legal measures.

Xu Ningning, deputy secretary-general of the China-ASEAN Business Council, said that China needs to ramp up supervision to tackle the problem, in the interest of both foreign workers and domestic factories.

"I think that the government could work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to figure out a mechanism to both ease labor pressure and guarantee the rights of workers," Xu said.

He suggested that the problem could be solved by allowing more foreign laborers to work legally in China under government supervision.

The revised Exit and Entry Administration Law, which was enacted on July 1, 2013, has much stricter supervision on employment and residence status of foreigners. However, enforcement of the law, especially in small factories on the border, still remains weak.

Xinhua - Global Times