Building Dreams, Bearing Scars (Chapters 3-4)

May 25th, 2025:

Uncle He (second from the left) and I (third from the left), at Futian Disability Center's reception area

Building Shenzhen’s Skyline

Now men in their forties, boys back when they arrived at Shenzhen, Uncle He and a group of Henan folks followed a subcontractor to a construction site in Nanshan District. Their first day began as steel beams were silhouetted against a rising sun. They became what was called “carpenters,” formworkers who assembled and held wooden frames that shaped liquid concrete into walls and pillars during pouring. “The pay was slightly higher than most factories, whether you were paid per piece or per hour,” Uncle He recalled, “I got a little over 200 [RMB] per day. That was about the highest you could’ve got on construction sites. Only external scaffolding workers came close in terms of wage rates. As for scaffolding, that job was perhaps the most torturous. You were exposed to raw wind and heat and rain, always in danger of falling. Carpenters were a bit different. Safety risks and work intensity went into our higher pay for sure, but we also had to read architectural drawings and figure out the exact positioning of frames. Not everyone can master that.”

Indeed, not everyone could cope with the intensity of construction work. “Sure, I wasn’t standing or sitting at a single spot, and I didn’t have to keep up with no lines,” Uncle He contemplated, “but by the time I end a day’s work after sundown, every muscle and joint ached.” He did not receive sufficient rest either: “At the very first, I lived in one of the white, primitive tin houses near the site. The walls were way too thin. Not only were they not soundproof, they made noise themselves if anything came into contact: raindrops, wind, etc. Tin sheets also got heated easily. The houses were always hotter than the outside over summer, and colder over winter. But later on, most tin houses were disassembled as construction expanded.” It was then that Uncle He rented a small room in Baishizhou, Shenzhen’s largest urban village, well absorbed into Shenzhen’s sprawl: “It was more convenient. Baishizhou was inside of Nanshan District, relatively close to where I worked. It was more expensive than urban villages on the outskirts, though.” As with most urban villages, Baishizhou’s jostling buildings left little space for sunlight to penetrate even in summer. “Rainy seasons,” Uncle He described, “made everything moldy, muddy, slippery.”

Rain also meant muddy scaffolds and slippery tools. Summer meant baking metal and burning heat. Exposed to the blistering sun, the temperature statistics were Uncle He’s daily realities.

Upon waking up under a brightening sky, Uncle He puts on his deteriorating rubber-soled boots each morning, his back aching from hours spent bending over for work. “Over summer, we were told to start work before 6 a.m., ostensibly so that we could take more time for break around noon, when the heat was utterly intolerable. Buses don’t start running until about an hour later, so I’d rent a ‘little yellow [shared] bike’ and cycle to work,” he said. “Toward the end of day, because we were supposedly allowed more rest around noon, we were told to stay for longer, sometimes until ten or eleven at night if the boss needed. All the bosses I had seemed to be in a rush. They always needed us to work longer.” Accepting these demands was common: not only for earning extra overtime pay, but more importantly, to protect their existing pay against wage theft. “We listened to our [sub]contractors because our pay first went to his pockets, and only then to ours. Most of us construction workers signed contracts with a [sub]contractor, essentially a middle man for the construction company. It was common for [sub]contractors to owe us wages for months and then vanish. What’s more outrageous was that even if you could confront them in person, they’d have a bunch of excuses, the most common one being that the builders owed him the wages in the first place, or that one kept leaving the construction site early and so didn’t deserve the contracted wage rate. They just withheld our pay; there was no way to fight back.”

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s migrant worker population numbered 285.5 million in 2020, the construction industry employing 18.3 percent (52.26 million) of them. Available academic literature suggests that wage arrears for migrant construction workers amounted to over 33 billion RMB as early as in 2005. The industry’s wage arrears ratio, measured as the average number of workers experiencing wage arrears out of a hundred, stood amongst the highest of all. NBS’s 2014 Investigation Report on Chinese Migrant Workers documented a ratio of 1.8 per hundred in 2013 and 1.4 per hundred in 2014, twice as much as the number for the manufacturing sector. Around one million migrant construction workers face wage arrears annually.

The multi-tiered subcontracting system the Uncle He described was a prominent factor behind the vulnerability of construction workers. Money trickled through as many as five layers before landing in the workers’ pockets. Property developers secured land rights and architectural design, before outsourcing implementation to a general contractor company. The general contractor broke projects down into specialized sections, each handed down to specific, smaller contractors. These small contractors then contacted subcontractors, who finally recruited workers through labor supervisors. 

This intricate system of subcontracting effectively distanced higher-level players from individual workers, thereby externalizing direct responsibilities outlined in Labor Law. Partial payments arrived lump-sum at each level upon the completion of certain tasks, often leaving subcontractors with little choice but to either withhold workers’ wage or invest their own savings to pay workers. Though this payment schedule incentivized efficiency and reduced big players’ upfront payouts, such benefits came at the cost of smaller actors without much bargaining power.

Among the most financially vulnerable players were migrant construction workers. The cash flow was halted if payments to subcontractors were delayed at any layer upstream, leaving them practically unable to pay their employees. Even in cases where subcontractors received payments on time, they might also choose to dam up the trickling down of money, withholding workers’ wages. Some redirected the pay into their own pockets. Others invested the gain into other ongoing projects. To get their money back, “some [workers] begged. Some protested. Some kow-towed with tears in their eyes,” Uncle He vividly portrayed. “But they can’t do anything consequential. At best, the [sub]contractors made empty promises. Some [sub]contractors outright told the workers that they’ll never receive their pay.” Over the years spent on construction sites, Uncle He learned to distrust promises. “I can’t stay and wait for promises to be fulfilled. I had to move forward.”

Shenzhen’s booming real estate market propelled Uncle He forward. Shaping the city’s skyline was something he took pride in, but he distinguished well between pride and arrogance. “I poured concrete into pillars here, there, and there,” Uncle He searched up photos of a few buildings he had worked to build. As each project neared completion, Uncle He asked around for other construction jobs, losing no time to transition. He sent a portion of each check back to Henan, covering his mother’s medical expenditures. He returned once over the Spring Festival, and a second time for his sister’s wedding. Yet most winters found him staying at Shenzhen for Spring Festival’s tripled wage rates. His savings never quite reached the sufficient sum. Nearing his once-remote legal compulsory retirement age of 60, his plan was to “work another few years, make as much as [he] can with every opportunity, and build a solid brick house back in [his] hometown.” What if his savings turned out insufficient? “I pool it with that of others. My parents’ money. A bit of my sister’s. That was certainly enough for a modest house,” Uncle He said with matter-of-fact confidence. “The house needn’t be big or beautiful on the outside. By that time I’ve come to realize that when it’s done, at best, my parents and I would live in it: I was too old already, old enough to rule out the possibility of marrying someone. The worst scenario I could’ve imagined at that time was my parents’ illness or death. It’d be really problematic if they got seriously sick or anything before I earned enough to build the house.”

Coming into the second decade of the 21st century, China’s 86 million first-generation migrant workers were approaching their legal retirement age. Born before the 1970s, they moved to cities in the 80s and 90s, where they worked for the next three decades. “Retirement,” however, was a remote concept for most of them. In their eyes, it was a privilege, not a norm.

Having ruled out retirement, employment became a privilege as well. No longer suitable for harsh physical labor, they faced rampant ageist discrimination. Not long ago, at the age of 65, Uncle He’s friend was detained for purchasing a fake Identity Card that documented a younger age, just so he could find a job at Shenzhen’s construction sites.

Stories like this are common. In fact, most first generation migrant workers have no other choice but to continue working past legal retirement age. From Korea to Japan, China’s aging East Asian neighbors share similar trajectories. Absent employment, Koreans’ average monthly retirement income stood at 880,000 won (~750USD) in 2017, CCTV reported, barely over half of the 1.45 million required to sustain the minimum standard of living. It is no surprise, then, that in this country with a population of 50 million, over 4 million are workers past retirement age. Lacking educational and physical advantages, they often find themself resorting to low-paying jobs like couriers or security guards. Korea’s legal retirement age is set at 60, expected retirement age at 65, whereas actual retirement age often goes past 71. Given the country’s life expectancy of 81 years, most Koreans have only a few years left after authentically retiring.

Japan is not much different. ANN found that one out of every four senior Japanese are struggling to secure basic standards of living. Living on 300 yen (~2USD) per day, they treat survival as success.

As early as in 2006, the Japanese Parliament obligated all businesses to offer continued employment until their employees reach 65 years of age. In 2023, Nojima, a popular Japanese home appliance retailer, announced that it would offer labor contracts to employees until the age of 80, so long as their health conditions and work attitude meet the company’s requirements. For affected employees, this option to stay working in the same company would save them tremendous time and effort that they otherwise would sacrifice for finding and adapting to new jobs. Far from exploitative, Nojima’s policy is a demonstration of the corporation’s social responsibility.

China, however, is different. Unlike that of Korea or Japan, the backbone of its labor force—migrant workers—are stuck in the nation’s deep rural-urban divide, materializing in the nation’s pension regime.

China’s modern pension system provides full coverage for urban seniors, yet such provisions were nonexistent in the countryside until the 2009 pilot insurance program named “New Rural Pension Insurance.” Since then, this program represented the only option for securing pension payments for those not eligible for urban pension insurance. The insurance was financed through three channels: personal payment, collective subsidy, and government subsidy.

The China Statistics Bureau quantified that 65% of China’s workforce paid into New Rural Social Pension Insurance, whereas 26.2% did not. The other 8.8% either enjoyed urban pension insurance’s coverage or purchased commercial insurance on their own. Of the migrant workers covered under the New Rural Social Pension Insurance, 69.4% paid 100 to 350 yuan (~13-50USD) per year. After 15 years of payment, they’re eligible to receive 40 yuan (~5.5USD) per month past the age of 60, a sum clearly insufficient for sustaining basic livelihood.

An alternative exists. At the age of 60, one can choose to make a one-time supplementary payment of 90,000 yuan (~12,500USD) into pension insurance, in exchange for subsequently receiving 1,200 yuan (~165USD) each month. Taking into account structural differences in the population’s life expectancy, this option is expensive at best and scandalous for most.

As of 2023, China’s average life expectancy stood at 73 years. This number reached 76 for urbanites, yet stagnated at 69 for farmers and migrant workers. Given their average life expectancy of 69 years, after a one-time supplementary payment at the age of 60, migrant workers are expected to receive payments for the next 108 months, totaling 129,000 yuan (~18,000USD). Paying into one’s pension insurance generated a surplus income of mere 39,000 yuan in 9 years. For most migrant workers, “working themselves to death” is not a hyperbole, but a reality that they must cope with.

Uncle He was fortunate in that he did not, and will never work himself to death. Yet on a rainy afternoon in June 2019, the final chapters of his life were forever reshaped by a single, most unfortunate misstep.

The Accident and Aftermath

“It had rained for three days straight,” Uncle He told me about that June. The construction site was soaked, a slurry of smelly mud, red clay, and broken brick. He “had been moving bricks and sandbags using iron wheelbarrows since morning.” The clouds cracked open again at 3 p.m., but the foreman ordered them to keep moving.

“I reached for the next wheelbarrow, a bit rusty, loaded with bricks just like the others,” Uncle He recounted. “I gave it the same, usual push. But the cart hit something on its side front, perhaps a jagged tile or small rock hidden under the mud.” The cart jolted, wobbled, tipped. Uncle He stumbled. “It all happened so quick. I tried to hold onto the cart and keep it upright. I tried to step back.” But a brick dropped squarely onto his left leg.

“At first, I didn’t feel pain,” he said. “I felt the soft, muddy ground. The heat. I heard a few shouting near me. When other workers pulled the brick off, I saw my muddy, bloody left leg bending inward at a weird, impossible angle. It was then that I realized that I was in serious trouble.” A site manager called an ambulance. “The doctors said the leg was infected, and that had it not been infected, it probably won’t recover either, with old leg problems added to this recent injury. Even if the leg stays on my body, it will feel as disconnected as it could, maybe except the pain. They told me they had to amputate my left leg below the knee. ‘The sky is falling,’ I thought. I felt my life practically ending, me becoming crippled, deformed, a waste. But it wasn’t as if the doctors would sit down and chat with you and work carefully for a perfect solution. They were very busy. They spoke fast. They didn’t have time for emotions. I had to say yes to amputation. They told me that at least with prosthetics, I can learn to walk. (Though, if my [sub]contractor refuses to compensate for my injury at work, how expensive would that be?) I lied in my bed and started thinking about my future. The next thing I heard the doctors say was that my infection got too bad. Amputating half a leg wasn’t enough.” After a quick surgery, Uncle He lost his entire leg.

“It felt like my body was gone. One side of me was empty. At first there wasn’t much pain, and the world for the most part acted like nothing changed. Except that my sister went to Shenzhen to take care of me. But then weird feelings came. I felt my left leg itching, but when I sat up, I found myself having nothing to scratch. My leg vanished.”

Uncle He’s employer, too, vanished. He was directly employed by a subcontractor, who signed a formal contract with another contractor, employed by the general contractor to complete basic, labor-intensive construction tasks. “I didn’t have a formal, stamped contract. I didn’t keep a proof of my hours. I didn’t have any signed document about my role on the construction site,” picking his fingers, Uncle he enumerated the absence of evidence. The case was cast de jure in his favor: China’s Regulations on Work-Related Injury Insurance entitled injured workers to full compensation so long as labor was substantively committed, regardless of formal contract status. In practice, however, the burden of proof fell on the workers.

“I went through my phone and called every number the site manager gave me. On my wheelchair, I went to the labor bureau three or four times,” Uncle He told me about his journey. “I got nothing back. All these groups and government agencies out there to protect labor rights? Some of them tried, but they in general offered very little help. Then I thought of searching for aid for the disabled. I called the Legal Consultation room here, and some other government legal aid offices. They helped me file for work-related injury certification, essentially a process that determines how serious my injury was. My lawyer told me to get my co-workers’ to testify for me. They were witnesses of me working at the site. Initially, they appeared very helpful, sounded enthusiastic; it was briefly heartwarming. Then, one by one, they gave me excuses and refused to testify. They never said it so bluntly, but I knew that they were still working on the site, afraid of angering the site manager. Well, they never considered: what if one day they become the injured, in desperate need for someone else to testify for them? Or maybe they did consider that, but were betting, or wishing, that they don’t be the next unfortunate one.”

In the end, Uncle He won partial compensation with his medical records, disability certificate, and WeChat chat history. He did not obtain witness statements, time logs, or contract copies.

Uncle He’s struggles are emblematic of the current state of injured migrant workers in China. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security reported that as of 2017, work-related injury insurance covered only 27 percent of migrant workers. The construction sector represents a fortunate exception. Around 40 million construction workers, constituting 74 percent of the industry’s workforce, enjoyed work-related injury insurance, largely because of its economic nature: employers only contribute a small fraction of the insurance’s cost, whereas it could save employers substantial sums in cases of accidents, a common occurrence on construction sites.