Figure 2 represents the change in average and marginal product in the industrial sector attracts labor from the countryside to the city. ‘Wa’ represents the sustenance wage level.
Figure 3 and 4 demonstrates the effect of the industrial sector reinvesting its profits back into the industry. Figure 4 is the graph of the total production of the sector which increases each time the profits are reinvested. Figure 4 is the graph of the labor market of the industrial sector. The real wage stays constant despite constant increase in labor because of the constant reinvestment as represented by the 3 demand lines.
In the article, it mentioned that China’s “economic wonder” was largely attributed to the “Cheap and sufficient” migrant laborers.
Urban society coming too soon for China
Updated: 2011-10-12 08:00
By Shan Juan and Huo Yan (China Daily)
NANNING - China may not be ready for a society dominated by cities, experts warned onTuesday, citing the country's quick urbanization.
Nearly half of China's population works and lives in urban areas, said senior researcher ZhengZhenzhen on Tuesday.
But it's not real urbanization as most of the migrants, particularly those from the countryside,still find it hard to integrate into urban life and be treated fairly, said the expert with the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences at the China-ASEAN Forum on Population and FamilyDevelopment.
Despite the nation's economic wonder realized largely by cheap and sufficient labor, "destination cities are still struggling to assure migrant workers of basic supports like affordableand decent housing, fair provision of public services in healthcare, education, old age care,and community management," said Zhang Chunsheng, a senior official of the NationalPopulation and Family Planning Commission.
According to the latest report issued by the commission, migrants lagged far behind locals interms of quality of life, and nearly 42 percent of China's 221 million migrants felt seriouslystrained by high rent in cities.
A plasterer surnamed Song who left his home village in Anhui province five years ago for abetter paying job in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, told China Daily that the pace of risingincomes always falls behind living costs.
"I feel always like an outsider and without health insurance, I don't even dare go to the hospitalwhen I'm sick," he said.
Gu Baochang, professor of demography at Renmin University of China, blamed the GDP-oriented urbanization in the past decades for the plight migrants are suffering today.
Despite a long span of urbanization starting in the late 1980s, "basic yet important questionslike how to treat migrants in cities have yet to be answered," he said.
The scale of urbanization has kept surging but rights and interests of migrants have beenlargely neglected, he said.
Meanwhile, the government has yet to integrate the factor of urbanization - the social andeconomic impacts of which are too significant to be ignored -into country's overall developmentplan, he added.
Lu Jiehua, a sociology professor at Peking University, said when the government speaks aboutthe migrant population, it mainly concerns itself with social security and stability.
"A huge gap in public service access between local urbanites and migrants made migrantsseriously marginalized and posed a challenge for social stability," he explained.
Like the 2005 Paris riots mainly involving the second generation of discontented immigrants, "we are now more concerned about China's younger generation of migrant workers who wereimmersed with city culture but maintained a status of farmers," he said.
Tewodros Melesse, director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, saidthe migrant population played important roles in boosting the country's economy and should betreated fairly and equally.
To recognize that, the government began to issue human-centered measures and policiesproviding rural migrant workers access to basic public services like medical care in cities, saidCui Li, deputy chief of the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
Huang Zhaohua contributed to this story.
China Daily