Subcontractors receive some of the money that has been withheld for years by the developer of a construction project in Putian, Fujian province, on Jan 21. Wei Peiquan / Xinhua

Missing bosses

For nearly two years, Wang Guihai, a native of East China's Anhui province, has been demanding wages owned to him and 110 fellow workers at a furniture plant in Shanghai.

Their boss fled in April 2014, owing 1.1 million yuan. Toward the end of the year, the workers reported the case to the authorities in Shanghai's Qingpu district, where the plant was located. The boss was detained by police in August on suspicion of intentionally avoiding paying his debts.

The boss, surnamed Wang, insisted he was innocent. "I ran away because I had no money," he said during a period of 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 Chinese New Year. Wang Guihai may need to appear in court as a witness. "All we care about is when we will get the money we deserve, not whether the boss is thrown in jail," he said.

According to Zhang Zhiqing, a police officer in Qingpu, it is not easy for the courts to decide whether employers have deliberately refused to pay their employees: "They may have transferred all their assets beforehand, and then claim to be penniless."

From January to November last year, Shanghai's labor and social security authorities handled 2,353 cases concerning nonpayment of wages, and helped 133,000 workers obtain 430 million yuan of unpaid wages.

Fifty-four unsolved cases, involving 28.8 million yuan, were passed over to the public security authorities, Zhang said.

Across China, labor and social security authorities are helping migrant workers recoup unpaid wages through negotiations with employers, or even via coercive measures.

In the past six months, authorities in North China's Hebei province have helped 243,000 workers get 2.4 billion yuan of unpaid wages.

When his teacher asked Wang Ziming to write a letter to his parents, who work in Guangdong province, the 13-year-old wrote: "Dear Mom and Dad, I dream of becoming 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 ..."

The straight-A student at a rural school in Guizhou pro-vince, Southwest China, said the annual reunion with his parents was often "bittersweet".

"I miss them and long to spend more time with them. But they resent their bosses, and they are often irritable and sometimes discipline me over small matters," he said.