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| China-Japan-Koreas | ||
| Great Chinese migration reversed by financial crisis | ||
| 2008-12-30 | ||
THE biggest migration in human history has gone into reverse. China's ocean of blue-collar workers is streaming back to the country's farming hinterland, bringing thwarted aspirations and rising discontent in tow as their city jobs, their paths out of poverty, fall victim to the global economic crisis.
Hundreds of weary passengers, some of whom stand through the entire journey because seats are sold out, straggle into the grey light of the Chengdu winter and an uncertain future. 'Lots of factories have closed. Mine shut about three months ago. There was nothing to do, so I came home,' said Mr Wu Hao, 21, sporting a stylish striped sweater and a sleek metal suitcase. After a year spent making circuit boards in Guangzhou, he was heading back to his family's patch of farmland, a full month before the Chinese new year when he would usually visit home. Officials estimate that more than 10 million migrant labourers have already returned to the countryside as thousands of companies have been dragged under by weak global demand for everything from clothes to cars. The government, always concerned about social instability, is now on high alert, fearful of the consequences of a huge mass of jobless, disappointed, rootless young men. Beijing has urged firms to avoid cutting jobs despite falling profits, and many bosses have obliged by retaining workers but giving them unpaid leave.
Known as China's 'floating population', labourers rarely settle permanently where they work - effectively prohibited from doing so by residency rules - and return in droves to their hometowns for the Chinese lunar new year. State media have put the best possible gloss on the in-bound tide of migrants under way: they are simply returning home early, one month ahead of the Year of the Ox which begins on Jan 26. But China is heading into uncharted territory and the picture could deteriorate quickly. Many economists forecast growth next year of less than 7.5 per cent, the country's lowest since 1990 and a level that would swell the ranks of the jobless. 'The redistribution of wealth through theft and robbery could dramatically increase and menaces to social stability will grow,' Mr Zhou Tianyong, a leading Communist Party scholar, wrote this month in a newspaper issued by a state think-tank. Workers and officials alike hope the migration reversal is only temporary, but the numbers are too vast to ignore. The social security ministry says 10 per cent of all migrants have already gone back to the countryside. China, in the short term at least, is pinning its hopes on a smooth absorption of the returnees. 'We expect that there will be a big change early next year, probably in March or April,' said Mr Wang Min, a director at the Yuhui Labour Market in Chengdu. 'A lot of people will stay here in Sichuan to look for work and not go to other provinces.' If so, they could be redrawing China's economic map. Coastal provinces have long been the wealthiest in China and the main destination for migrants. But they have borne the brunt of falling exports, while the country's poorer hinterland is more closely tied to domestic fortunes that could rise on the back of a hefty government stimulus spending. Unveiling its rural policy priorities for next year, the government said on Sunday that it will encourage unemployed people who return home to start their own businesses. Officials in Chongqing and Henan, two big sources of migrants, have already pledged to lend seed money. Reconstruction after the devastating earthquake centred on Sichuan this year has also created a huge need for labour that will sop up some of the floating population. | ||
| Posted by:lotp |
| #7 Responding to an unusually lucid JM comment, there is no way that a Chinese man would take an African bride - uh-huh. They regard Africans as little better than beasts. More to the point, there is no shortage of women in urban areas. The shortages are in farm country - nobody wants to marry a farmer with a postage sized plot (1.66 acres, on average). Men with the savvy to survive in Africa would have no problem getting Chinese wives. It's the farmers who are having to kidnap women from Vietnam and/or other provinces to get hitched. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-12-30 15:40 |
| #6 How do you keep the folks down on the farm? Three little words says it al - depression, depression, depression. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-12-30 10:34 |
| #5 Not only are they jobless, disappointed, rootless young men, they are also nookie-less young men. Ticking time-bomb. |
| Posted by: Spot 2008-12-30 08:23 |
| #4 And the Chinese male/female population imbalance could just as easily be solved by marrying literally boat loads of Filipinos - but it goes back to that cultural 'inferiority' thingy. In the US, the government erects laws to inhibit such marriages when the culture is open to it. |
| Posted by: P2k on holiday 2008-12-30 08:16 |
| #3 Responding to an unusually lucid JM comment, there is no way that a Chinese man would take an African bride - uh-huh. They regard Africans as little better than beasts. |
| Posted by: gromky 2008-12-30 01:22 |
| #2 1. Resettling them back home won't work, local government officials will simply steal any money allocated for development. 2. The workers can come back any time, and indeed will when business picks up again. 3. China passed a new labor law this year that prevents factories from firing workers en masse. This was supposed to prevent this sort of thing happening. However, the law is only enforced against foreign companies, Chinese companies are largely exempt. |
| Posted by: gromky 2008-12-30 01:20 |
| #1 OTOH CHINESE MIL FORUM > CHINA'S NEW EXPORT: FARMERS [Africa]. Besides of course farmin', includ $$$ remittances back to Chin, many of China's 30Milyuhn Bachelor whom choose to go to Africa for said farm work can also have the picks of any willing local African Babes for marriage + that baby carriage. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-12-30 00:07 |