A long march: Employment of people with disabilities in China

I attended a seminar today organised by the Inno Community Development Organisation, a NGO based in Guangzhou, on employment of people with disabilities in China. It is part of a programme funded by the British Consulate General Guangzhou and there were NGOs and media representatives at the seminar. It’s not a big scale one, and around 15 people attended the seminar (I should say it is more like a roundtable) as employment of people with disabilities is a comparatively new topics in China. The organiser tried to invite more NGOs to join but there are not many NGOs interested in the topics. Nevertheless, this is an emerging topic which causes potential social issues. According to statistics, there are around 83 million people with certain disabilities in China, in which 32 million of them are at the age of employment. However, more than 1.26 million of them are unemployed. There are lots of reasons behind, in spite of the Chinese government’s regulation on 1.5% of the total job openings of an entity should reserved for people with disabilities. One of the major reasons is the lack of enforcement on the policy for employment of disabilities, and even on anti-discrimination.

To be frank, I am not an expert on this topic but the organiser believes there is no other choice in China who can speak on what companies can do on encouraging employment of disabilities. Therefore I were there J Showing the business case of multi-national corporations on hiring people with disabilities, managing diversity and inclusion, bla-bla-bla is easy, and people tend to like to listen to those so-called business cases. However, in the Chinese setting, do these successful business case work? In China, workplace diversity is still a very very advanced topic and NGOs are still working on non-discrimination rather than encouraging companies to manage their workplace diversity like what European countries do. It may not be so realistic to talk urge Chinese companies to understand the business incentives behind before the government strengthening its enforcement on certain regulations. However, maybe NGOs in the future can persuade companies to hire more people with disabilities by using those business cases I shared today. Like what Julia, the consul of politics at the Consulate General of UK in Guangzhou, said no matter in UK and China, and no matter what kind of laws, acts and regulations are in place for encouraging employment of people with disabilities, the social attitude towards people with disabilities still determine whether their employment is successful and workplace diversity and inclusion are managed successfully by employers.

After having the seminar on the topic, Inno the NGO will work on a hotline for people with disabilities who want to look for a job and provide them free consultation. In addition a job engine for employment of people with disabilities will be launched (and I have seen that some employers have put job ad on already) so that people can upload their resumes and search suitable job opening. Inno has a quite realistic and mild target – to help 1500 people with disabilities to find a job. It will be a big step for the long march in China.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blog in English: brianckho.blogspot.com
Blog in Chinese: blog.sina.com.cn/brianho
Twitter: @brianckho
Chinese Weibo: @何智权Brian
Email: brian.ck.ho@gmail.com