Abstract
Urbanization has created a positive feedback loop. By providing cheap labor for industry, rural migrants have helped turn metropolises like Dongguan into industrial centers. The huge shift of labor from the countryside to cities, where it could much more productively employed in factories as opposed to small farms, has long been seen as a key driving force in China’s rapid economic development following 1979.
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Notes
- 1.
The China Labor Bulletin notes that even now, “The aging problem (among rural migrant workers) is particularly severe in the construction industry, where in some cases it is virtually impossible to find any workers under 30 years old.”
- 2.
A 2014 survey of migrant workers done by National Bureau of Statistics of the P.R. China (2015b) found that just 21% of rural migrant workers had moved as a whole family when relocating to cities.
- 3.
See Footnote 1.
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Wang, H., Miao, L. (2019). Effects of Shifting Migration Patterns and Urbanization on China’s Economy and Society. In: China’s Domestic and International Migration Development. International Talent Development in China. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6256-9_1
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