Feng Qiang, the contractor who owes Chen his wages, claimed to be a victim himself. "The development company was supposed to pay me 17 million yuan by August, but until the end of last year, only 1.5 million yuan was paid," Feng said.
He eventually put his apartment in Zhengzhou and a car on mortgage and got 3 million yuan in loans to cover the migrants' wages.
Phone calls to Zhang Zhipeng, the chief executive of the development company, were unanswered.
ARM OF THE LAW
For nearly two years, Wang Guihai, a native of east China's Anhui Province, has been demanding his and 110 fellow workers' unpaid wages at a furniture plant in Shanghai.
Their boss fled in April 2014, still owing 1.1 million yuan in total.
Towards the end of 2014, the workers reported the case to local authorities in Shanghai's Qingpu district, where the plant was located. The boss was detained by police last August on suspicion of intentionally eluding debts.
The boss, surnamed Wang, insisted he was innocent. "I ran away because I had no money," he said in an interview with Xinhua Tuesday while in detention in Shanghai. "I'll pay them when I can, but who knows when I can earn a million?"
He shrugged off the workers' grievances with a light-hearted "so what". "Who has never been in debt? It's just natural to owe someone some money when you're really in trouble."
He will stand trial before the Chinese New Year, and Wang Guihai may need to appear in court as a witness. "But all we care is when we can get the money we deserve, not whether the boss is thrown in jail."
Zhang Zhiqing, a police officer in Shanghai's Qingpu District, said it was not easy for courts to decide whether an employer had deliberately refused to pay his employees. "They may have transferred all their assets beforehand and claim to be penniless."
Shanghai's labor and social security authorities handled 2,353 cases concerning non-payment of wages from January to November last year and settled 430 million yuan of wages in arrears for 133,000 workers.
Fifty-four unsolved cases were passed over to public security authorities, involving 28.8 million yuan, said Zhang.
Across China, labor and social security authorities are helping migrant workers get unpaid wages through negotiations with employers or coercive measures.
In north China's Hebei Province, authorities have helped 243,000 workers get 2.4 billion yuan of unpaid wages over the past six months.
When asked by his teacher to write a letter to his parents who worked in Guangdong Province, 13-year-old Wang Ziming wrote, "Dear Mom and Dad, I dream to become a lawyer so I can help you in lawsuits demanding wages in arrears. You can never imagine how sad I am when you finally come home at the end of the year, exhausted, disappointed and without getting paid..."
Wang, a straight-A student at a rural school in southwest China's Guizhou Province, said the annual reunion with his parents was often "bittersweet."
"I miss them and long to spend more time with them. But with resentment for their bosses, they are often irritable and sometimes discipline me up over small matters."
