Labor Calls for Mass Inter-Provincial Migration in China

In a recent issue of the Economist, a map was published that displays the inter-provincial migration of people in China from 1990-2005. It shows that the bulk of migration is coming out of central inland such as Sichuan and moving to coastal regions such as Guangdong. The overall migration, within this time frame, was around 80 million people. The bulk of these migrants are out searching for work. About 12% of China’s rural population works away from their home. Since inland China has weak connections to world trade, the best place for people to find work was the coast. This turned many inland provinces into labor exporting counties, where their best way to make money is to sell their labor. This mass labor migration has separated millions of families from one another. In the most common case, these are the men of the families who go off in search of work, leaving their wives, children, and elders back in the rural countryside. This could very well impact the construct of rural family structure, in that the wife may now gain certain powers in the absence of the husband. Though, it is more likely that the family authority would transfer to an elder first.

However, do to rising wages of coastal jobs, many companies are looking for cheaper places to build facilities and goods; the cheapest places being inland, where the bulk of their cheap labor already came from. The use of rivers will allow for companies to move further inland, thus bringing jobs closer to home for some of these labor migrants.

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/02/chinas-changing-migration-patterns/