(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-25 07:30

It is ridiculous to lay the blame for high inflation on the shoulders of migrant workers, says an article in Sanqin Metropolis News. The following is an excerpt:

With the CPI running at a high level, China is facing more inflationary pressure. Many government departments have tried to diagnose the problem and prescribe solutions.

Recently an official with the National Bureau of Statistics said that we should prevent the incomes of migrant workers from rapidly increasing to ease inflation.

This official's words are puzzling. For one thing, when did the income of migrant workers ever rise "too fast"? Although it does increase annually, the rate is much slower than the inflationary rate. Migrant workers still earn very low wages.

The fundamental reason for the inflation is because of too much hot money in the society, large fixed investments, and more importantly, various international factors such as the depreciation of the US dollar and rising oil prices. No matter how hard we rack our brains to think of reasons, migrant workers' incomes cannot be one.

As we all know, people's income make up a very low proportion of China's GDP, and current labor costs are not high. Even if labor costs had pushed up China's inflationary pressure to some degree, the income of migrant workers should not be the first to be lowered to reduce this pressure. Instead, we should reduce the income of employees in monopoly enterprises. Their incomes are unreasonably high.

(China Daily 03/25/2008 page8)