BEIJING: Fresh data show that a growing number of rural migrant workers have been elected as deputies to the National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature.
Drawing on their personal experiences, the national legislators have joined the annual two sessions — the meetings of the NPC and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body — to voice their desire for more vocational training opportunities and societal respect for their fellow workers.
The data, released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Feb 28, show that China had 295.62 million migrant workers last year, a rise of 1.1 percent from a year earlier. A list of names of deputies to the 14th NPC, released by Xinhua News Agency on Feb 24, shows that this year 56 of them are migrant workers. The number was just three in 2018, when members of the group were first elected to the NPC.
Zou Bin, an award-winning bricklayer from a rural area of Hunan province, was elected as a deputy to the 13th NPC in 2018. He was reelected last month for another five-year term.
He said that he was pleased to see the change as it means that more people are speaking up for the group, and he noted that it is part of China’s “whole-process people’s democracy”.
During Zou’s first five years as a lawmaker, the 28-year-old made a slew of suggestions while attending the two sessions.
One of his best-known proposals was that skills-based training should be strengthened for migrant workers, especially for younger people such as himself.
The suggestions were the main driver of a government guideline that was published in 2021 by the employment authorities, which stipulated that training of industrial workers must be improved
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
