Migrant workers helped build China’s economic miracle, now they are dying because of it
- They laid the foundations for Shenzhen’s skyscrapers, and its prosperity, and became wealthy in the process. But the labourers from Hunan paid a deadly price
- They didn’t know they had risked their health. Now, as the effects of construction dust take hold, the men are mobilising to hold those responsible to account
Ill and defeated, Xu Chunlin approached the railing, the limits of a search for justice.
Before him was a nine-metre plunge into Shenzhen’s rush-hour traffic. Behind him stood police he had just clashed with. On the overpass with him were about 80 other former construction workers considering the same desperate calculus.
Leap now? Or wait to die when their lungs gave out?
Many Hunanese worked for years, even decades, boring into the bedrock to build subway lines and the foundations of Shenzhen’s cityscape. But they didn’t know the inadequacy of the US$1.50 cotton masks they were given, or the irreversible harm of inhaling silica dust that caked their faces once their drills bit into granite-streaked crust.
More than 100 labourers from Hunan have died in the past decade from silicosis, an incurable condition caused by inhaled dust particles that scar and harden the lungs.
About 600 more are suffering or slowly dying, the leaders of worker groups say. Three dirt-poor Hunan communities that once survived off their earnings – even saw progress – are now mired in debt and grief while survivors spend their few savings and energy to clamour for compensation.