Farmers face a long road into cities
By Chen Xiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-10-25 09:55
But this has been a difficult process.
In recent years, farmers-turned-workers started as "blind migrants" loathed
by some city dwellers and are now still limited to manual work that their city
counterparts are unwilling to do. Their wages are low and always defaulted.
Their work safety cannot be guaranteed and living conditions are poor. Husbands
and wives have to separate and their children, usually excluded from urban
schools due to high fees, are left at home.
While the living conditions of migrant workers are not optimistic, the
contingent is becoming bigger year by year. This shows farmers' pursuit of the
well-off civic life and the irresistibility of economic social development.
The migrant workers' hardships and the 10 issues stressed at the conference
are really provocative.
What is the hard nut for China's modernization? Everyone may have his or her
own understanding, but no one can deny that a huge rural population and low
urbanization level are the crux of it.
Since the land contract and responsibility system was implemented, farmers
began looking for job opportunities outside their home land. Thus there appeared
township enterprises and a large influx of rural labourers into towns and
cities.
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