In March 2004 author Jasper Becker and photographer Bob Sacha reported the plight of the hundreds of families in Xiushui-Daqiao in China's Jiangxi Province who have been affected by silicosis, a disease contracted through the inhalation of gold-mining dust ("China's Growing Pains"). In this update, Becker describes the conditions these families—particularly their children—find themselves facing.
By Jasper Becker
The damage that China's runaway economic growth is wreaking on its environment is easier to grasp than the human suffering. Families are torn apart in the scramble to get rich, and some 200 million workers are in regular contact with toxic materials.
Hoping to join the boom, the Jiangxi men we met had enthusiastically gone off to work in a gold mine opened by the local authorities. But before they had a chance to make any money, they fell ill from inhaling the mining dust. Soon they discovered they were dying from silicosis, a disease they had never even heard of, and their wives were faced with fending for themselves and educating their children alone.
With silicosis, the fine dust particles permanently scar the lung tissues. There is no cure. Victims are condemned to suffer a slow and painful death, watched by their horrified—and helpless—families. The disease is easily preventable with the use of masks in mines and ventilation systems in factories. But today there are nearly 500,000 cases in China, with estimates of unreported cases in the millions.
The Xiushui county villagers are just one group plucked at random out of the 200 million people who have left farming to work in other sectors in the past 20 years. Yet their plight touched me. When we visited them, they were delighted to see us. They had been waging a tough battle to extract some compensation from the authorities, going to court, and trying to petition the higher ups but with mixed results.
Soon after we arrived the local officials tried politely at first to get rid of us, but the residents defied them and invited us to dinner. When we left, our hosts followed us. As we left the local township, they used their fists to stop the officials from detaining us and confiscating our notes and film.
Despite the high hopes the villagers placed in us, our article did nothing to help their cause. It is true the central government is now putting into place measures to curb silicosis and to protect miners in the future by requiring mining companies to provide health insurance. But this didn't help the Xiushui villagers. Nothing changed for them.
I kept in touch with some of them over these few years. Two hundred of the men are now dead and another 300 are fated to follow them soon. Their families can do little to relieve their suffering and cannot afford to pay their medical bills.
The worst problem facing their widows is trying to find the money to pay for their children's education. China's heavily taxed poor must shoulder all such costs out of their meager earnings, in this area an average annual income of a little less than 1,600 yuan ($200). Primary school education costs close to 320 yuan ($40) a year. For older children in higher education, the cost can be as much as 9,700 yuan ($1,200). Unless they get outside help, more than 900 children will be condemned to suffer for their fathers' misfortune.
Recently I tried to contact the family of Zhu Longshen, whose house I visited while he was still alive. He died a year later, leaving behind four children, two of whom are now grown. But the family has disappeared.
One of his neighbors put me in touch with Chen Aihua, whose eldest son died six years ago at the age of 31 and left behind two sons. His widow abandoned the children a year after his death and married another man.
"She left because we are so very poor," said Chen Aihua. "We have no income at all." The aged grandparents are now left to raise their two grandchildren—age eight and five—by themselves. "We have managed to earn enough to pay for one grandson to attend school, but it costs one hundred yuan ($12) a term," she told me.
During a good year, the couple may harvest a surplus of grain and sell it. But in a bad year when there is a drought, they are left with little to eat. Both grandparents are well into their sixties and suffer from high blood pressure, yet they must still work in the fields every day. Even necessities like clothing and bedding are out of their reach, and they worry about what will happen to the children if they fall ill or die. "They are innocent children. What will become of them if we cannot work anymore?"
Most of the other families we met are in the same position. They complain that the government promised compensation, including free education for their children, but the promises have never been honored. And finding the two million yuan ($250,000) a year needed to educate the 900 left destitute by silicosis also seems a near impossible task.
(Editor's Note) To learn more about the children of Xiushui's silicosis victims and how you can help, go to www.childrenofxiushui.com.
