China Fears Restive Migrants As Jobs Disappear in Cities

SHUANGFU VILLAGE, China -- Fan Junchao has spent most of the past five years living hundreds of miles from his small family farm here. Encouraged by the local government, he leased out his meager plot and worked on construction crews in big cities, making several times what he could have earned on crops.

Laid off migrant workers across China are returning home to villages like Shuangfu, above.

Now his construction project has been halted, and Mr. Fan has returned home. "Right now, I don't have a plan," he says. "I'm just taking it one step at a time."

Mr. Fan is among hundreds of thousands of China's 130 million migrant workers -- known as the "floating population" -- being cast out of urban jobs in factories and at construction sites.

China's roaring industrial economy has been abruptly quieted by the effects of the global financial crisis. Rural provinces that supplied much of China's factory manpower are watching the beginnings of a wave of reverse migration that has the potential to shake the stability of the world's most populous nation.

Fast-rising unemployment has led to an unusual series of strikes and protests. Normally cautious government officials have offered quick concessions and talk openly of their worries about social unrest. Laid-off factory workers in Dongguan overturned patrol cars and clashed with police last Tuesday, and hundreds of taxis parked in front of a government office in nearby Chaozhou over the weekend, one of a series of driver protests.

On Wednesday, workers let go from a liquor factory in northern China mounted a protest in Beijing, at the parent company's headquarters. In the latest sign of economic stress, China's currency fell Monday by its single largest margin on record against the dollar, on expectations the central bank might devalue it to prop up sagging growth.

As the government tries to calm tensions in the cities, it also fears that newly unemployed migrants returning home could upend the already-strained social system in the countryside.

For the rest of the article go on:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122816637753369999.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us#

Comment:
China was not the economically wealthiest country before the boom started. This boom mostly has happened in urban areas. Although rural areas have not directly profited from this boom, rural citizens saw the opportunities in the big cities and migrated. The result was that these citizens from rural areas also gained indirectly a piece of that big cake.
Since China is not immune to recession the bad economy also affects China. The former rural citizens migrate back to the their homes, which will have also have an affect on China's economy. It will be interesting to follow how China will hold up.


Oezguer (Oscar).