According to a report of the Ningbo port authority, the reason that port companies use these
temporary labor contract workers is that there are a large number of dirty, tiring, dangerous jobs at the port,
creating a need for a huge pool of workers with strong physiques who are willing to bear hardships (Gu
2006). The second is that these temporary labor contract workers cost 19,000 RMB per capita per year to
employ, which is only 27 percent of the cost of hiring formal fixed workers (Liu 2006).