Predatory princes and princely peddlers: The state and international labour migration intermediaries in China

Pacific Affairs

Volumn 85, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 47-68

  Xiang, Biao ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Agent chains; China; Labour; Policy; State

Indexed keywords

CENTRALIZATION; GOVERNANCE APPROACH; IMMIGRATION POLICY; INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION; LABOR MIGRATION; POLICY MAKING; RECRUITMENT (EMPLOYMENT);

CHINA;

EID: 84930485362     PISSN: 0030851X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5509/201285147     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Global Commission of International Migration, Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action (Geneva: Global Commission of International Migration, 2005),70.
2. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration, 3rd edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 114.
3. For how private migration agents have historically been a concern of modern states Adam McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (Columbia University Press, 2008).
4. For historical debates along this line, see McKeown, Melancholy Order, 87.
5. For recent arguments in China, see below.
6. International Labor Organization (ILO), ILO Convention 97: Migration for Employment Convention (1949), available at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C097; last accessed on 10 October 2011.
7. Sidney Jones, Making Money off Migrants: The Indonesian Exodus to Malaysia (Hong Kong and Wollongong, Australia: ASIA 2000 and the Centre for Asia and Pacific Social Transformation Studies, 2000).
8. These estimates are based on data provided by the Center for International Exchanges, Ministry of Labour and Social Security, The Basic Facts and Analyses of the Statistics on Overseas Employment of 2004 [Jingwai Jieye Tongji Gongzuo Yiben Qingkuang yu Fenxi] unpublished report, 2005.
9. China's International Contractors' Association, Annual Report on China's International Labor Collaboration [Zhongguo Duiwai Laowu Hezuo Niandu Baobao 2004] (Beijing: China's International Contractors' Association, December 2004).
10. Ministry of Commerce, Annual Statistics of China's Overseas Economy (Ministry of Commerce Annual Reports series, Beijing: Ministry of Commerce, 2005).
11. Xiang Biao, "The Making of Mobile Subjects: How Institution Reform and Outmigration Intersect in Northeast China," Development 50, no. 4 (2007): 69-74.
12. Reports in International Contract Projects and Labor Service, a business magazine run by the Ministry of Commerce, various issues 2002-2007.
13. Despite the government regulation that agent fees should not exceed 12.5 percent of the worker's total income over the contract period that the agent guarantees, agents in 2007 charged 180,000 renminbi for a job in the United States, 140,000 for the United Kingdom, and 120,000 for Australia, far exceeding the ceiling given the workers' low wages overseas. Agent fees for jobs in Japan, South Korea and Singapore increased from zero in the early 1990s to 40,000 renminbi in the late 2000s.
14. Clifford Geertz, Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (The University of Chicago Press, 1963). For Geertz, princes indicate a centralized, hierarchical, firm-like mode of economic organization, while peddlers means an unorganized, horizontally connected, market-style economy. They can both be paths towards economic modernization but are embedded in different social and cultural contexts.
15. For classical definitions of intermediaries from such an "in-between" perspective, see Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974).
16. F.G. Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics (Basil Blackwell, 1969).
17. Liaoning provincial labour bureau, "Annual Statistics Collection," (internal document, 2008). The number remains stable since 2004.
18. The Chinese government sent skilled personnel to more than 50 developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and East Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. He Xiankai, ed., Practice of International Labor Cooperation (Guoji Laowu Hezuo Shiwu) (Beijing Industrial University Press, 1994), 150-162.
19. China Construction, one of the four, for example, entered the international market as a labour subcontractor of a Japanese company in Iraq and Kuwait. Interview with director, department of project planning, China Construction, Beijing, 26 January 2006.
20. For example, Shenyang municipal government turned its Foreign Economy Liaison Office into Shenyang International Ltd. in 1984 and registered the company with a 150 million RMB operational fund while in reality they had only 3.7 million!
21. Beijing allowed Taiwan fishing boats to stop at designated ports in Fujian; owners of the boats often recruited labour onshore nearby. A considerable number of Hong Kong and Taiwan garment factories were relocated to South Pacific countries and Guan and Saipan of the US in the 1980s and 1990s in order to avoid the tariff imposed by the international textile quota system.
22. Interview with deputy director general, Xiamen International, 25 February 2005, Xiamen.
23. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation (reorganized into Ministry of Commerce in 2003), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, Provincial Regulations on the Procedures of Dispatching Labor Overseas (22 October 1996, effective from 20 December 1996).
24. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Urgent Circulation Regarding Tightening Up Scrutiny Over International Labor Collaboration Projects (17 May 2000).
25. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Urgent Circulation Regarding Tightening Up (2000).
26. See an article by the secretary general of China's International Contractors' Association Diao Chunhe, "Fahui Shanghui Zuoyong, Cujin 'Zouchuqu' Kaifang Shiye de Fazhan" [Enhancing the Functions of the Association, Facilitating the Development of the 'Stepping Out' and Open-up Mission] Guoji Gongcheng yu Laowu [International Contracting and Labor Service], 3, (2004): 5.
27. CHICA, Tentative Methods of Regulating and Coordinating Labor Cooperation in Israel (1 January 2003).
28. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Circulation Regarding Criteria for Applying for Licenses for International Labor Cooperation and Regarding Strengthening Follow-up Management (1999, Document Code 748).
29. Interviews with officers at the Department of International Collaboration, Ministry of Commerce; Manager General, Shenyang International Co., Shenyang; Manager, Transocean International Co., Beijing; Manager, Xiamen International, Xiamen. Various times, 2005-2007.
30. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Circulation Regarding Criteria for Applying for Licenses (1999). It is common practice in a socialist economy that the state sets performance targets for all work units. The Philippines and Indonesia adopted similar policies in regulating international labour migration agents.
31. Interview, deputy director of a major state-owned corporation, Beijing, 5 May 2007.
32. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Methods of Regulation on Ordinary Labor Cooperation with Macau (July 27, 1998).
33. Interview, cadre, Ministry of Commerce, April 23, 2007, Beijing.
34. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press, 1998).
35. Herbert Simon, cited in Scott, Seeing Like a State (1998), 45.
36. Long Guoqiang, Zhongguo Fuwu Maoyi [Trade in Service from China] (Beijing, CITIC Press, 1995), 356.
37. He Xiankai, ed., Guoji Laowu Hezuo Shiwu [Practice of International Labor Cooperation] (Beijing: Beijing Industrial University Press, 1994), 156.
38. Guanjiang Gao, "Economic, labour market and migration developments in China," in Migration and the Labour Market in Asia: Recent Trends and Policies 1999 (Paris: OECD, 1999), 77.
39. Personal conversations, May 3, 2005, Beijing.
40. Clifford Geertz, "The Bazaar Economy," in The Sociology of Economic Life, eds. M. Granovetter and R. Swedborg (The Westview Press, 1992), 227.
41. Mathew Hull, "Ruled by Records: The Appropriation of Land and the Misappropriation of Lists in Islamabad," American Ethnologist 34, no. 4 (2008): 501-518.
42. Annelise Riles, The Network Inside Out (University of Michigan Press, 2000)
43. Annelise Riles, ed., Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge (University of Michigan Press, 2006).
44. Mathew Hull, "The File: Agency, Authority, and Autography in a Pakistan Bureaucracy," Language and Communication 23 (2003): 287-314 Mathew Hull, "Ruled by Records" (2008).
45. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Circulation Regarding Strengthening Regulation Over the Permission for International Labor Cooperation (18 August 1995).
46. Ministry of Foreign Technology and Economic Cooperation, Methods of Regulation (2000).
47. Ministry of Commerce and State Bureau of Industry and Commerce, Methods of Regulation on Qualification for International Labor Cooperation, Decree No. 3 (26 July 2004).
48. Friedrich Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," The American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 510-530.
49. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1998.