Chinese cities and towns are expected to absorb about 300
million people from rural areas within 20 years if the urbanization
drive maintains a growth of 1 percent annually.
The massive migration of rural workers will contribute greatly
to the development of cities, Liu He, vice minister of the Office
of the Central Leading Group of Financial and Economic Affairs,
said yesterday.
The urbanization rate currently stands at 1.4 percent which
means that about 20 million farmers become urban residents each
year.
Statistics from Liu's office indicate that nearly 40 percent of
farmers' annual per capita income last year, about 3,200 yuan
(US$395), was earned in cities.
But China faces many problems in its urbanization drive such as
low wages and a lack of social security for migrant laborers, Liu
told the 2006 China Development Forum organized by the State
Council Development and Research Center.
To protect the rights of migrant workers, barriers such as the
household registration system (or hukou) must be removed, suggested
Justin Yifu Lin, an economics professor at Peking University.
Liu said China would adopt a step-by-step reform of its
decades-old hukou system but suggested that the ‘green card’ system
practiced in Shanghai and some other cities which enables long-term
inhabitants to obtain urban hukou be adopted in more cities.
In 2003, about 110 million surplus laborers left the farming
sector and 61 percent of the migrant workers, or 69.1 million,
worked in cities, Liu said.
In Wuxi of east China's
Jiangsu Province, for example, about 1.5 million of its 6
million population are from elsewhere. And 100,000-150,000
newcomers settle down in the city each year, he said.
The maximum population the city can accommodate is 8 million,
Liu pointed out, "It faces huge pressures on environment,
resources, especially water, in the next 10 years."
(China Daily March 21, 2006)