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The 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has set the creation of an all-round well-off society as the country's primary goal.
To realize the set target, "surplus rural labor moving to non-agricultural industries and to cities and towns is an inevitable trend in industrialization and modernizations," the Party report asserted.
The rural area has undergone spectacular changes since it embarked on reforms more than two decades ago.
The introduction of the household contract responsibility system and the emergence of the township enterprises nationwide are identified as two milestone innovations churned out by farmers themselves, two initiatives that have greatly changed the rural landscape. And it also demonstrates how farmers' creativity and initiative can be unleashed.
In the mid 1980s, a plethora of rural farmers spontaneously swarmed to cities seeking employment, the prelude to the later "rural labor flood" involving millions of migrant farmers moving around the country.
This is another significant initiative taken by farmers.
The massive flow of migrant workers has significant bearing on not only farmers but the entire country. In the process, migrant workers raised their income and also became more informed and capable.
For the country as a whole, such flow has solved the problem of inadequate labor supply in relatively developed regions while at the same time easing the pressure on less developed areas.
More importantly, the movement of the farmer-laborers has contributed to the birth of a mechanism in which labor resources are allocated according to market demands.
In the early 1990s, a large number of migrant workers started to set up their own businesses making use of their experiences as migrant workers.
If the transition from farmer to migrant worker is the first leap forward for farmers, then the change from a migrant worker to an entrepreneur could be seen as the second leap.
The status change has not only reflected their career success but also meant their contribution to society is now much bigger than before by creating jobs for other workers.
We do not know the exact number of migrant workers floating around the country, neither the number of successful migrant workers-turned-entrepreneurs.
However, this is, without doubt, a group that we should pay more attention to and their success story deserves our careful study.
Their emergence is an inevitable outcome of the "rural labor flood," and it should serve as the new economic development force driving the rural economy in relatively backward central and western regions.
The cross-regional movement of rural redundant farmers has existed for years, evolving from an inordinate flow to a gradually orderly one.
The flow of rural farmers entered a new stage in 1995, a stage marked in the following ways.
First, the movement of rural farmers, although still large scale, is stable.
Farmers, however, are encountering increasing difficulties in seeking jobs in cities.
The demand in cities for migrant workers has declined in recent years as the widespread State-owned enterprise reform led to massive job cuts in State sectors. Some cities have drafted restrictive policies on migrant workers seeking jobs.
Second, their movement is more organized than before.
Third, their negative impact on urban social order has reduced markedly.
In the past, the transportation system, especially the rail service, was always strained by the vast number of migrant workers during the time of Spring Festival.
Due to both an enlargement in transportation capacities and the better organized movement of migrant workers, the problem has been virtually resolved.
And the strain migrant workers put on public utilities, which used to be the primary concern for many city dwellers, has also been allayed due to the continued economic boom.
Instead of exerting a heavy strain on cities, the massive number of migrant workers are now regarded as contributing to a boost in domestic demand.
Forth, the phenomenon of many migrant workers starting their own businesses has gradually become a rising tide.
Though such phenomenon was first noticed almost a decade ago, it is only in recent years that it has gained steam.
For example, there are 400,000 migrant workers who have returned to their hometown to start businesses in Southwest China's Sichuan Province alone.
And their local government has encouraged the move by offering them preferential policies.
Nonetheless, expanding employment is and will remain a pressing and arduous task for the government for the time being and in the future as the country strives to build a well-off society in an all-round way.
So it is recommended that when pushing and guiding the surplus of migrant workers to non-agricultural sectors or to cities and towns, more attention and emphasis should be paid to help those who start their own businesses because of their ability to create further employment opportunities.
The author is chairman of the Beijing-based China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, a non-government organization dedicated to shaking off poverty in the country.
(China Daily March 21, 2003)
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