中国城市化进程的变化与挑战

China's rise has been accompanied by a grand process of urbanization. According to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics, about 480 million people were living in Chinese cities by 2001. That figure now stands at roughly 690 million, over half the country's entire population.

The major force for urbanization is migrant workers. These workers come from impoverished regions to more urban and prosperous environments in search of work and a better wellbeing.

Zhang Xiaoshan, professor with the Rural Development Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that in this process, the key challenge is how to protect migrant workers' rights and benefits.

'Cities should increase the chances for migrant workers to be absorbed by the urban labor markets and society in general, especially the urban social security network, so that they can benefit from sustainable development.'

It is estimated that China has over 200 million migrant workers. Professor Zhang says that such workers usually work in labor-intensive sectors, receive wages lower than the regional average and are mostly unable to afford the cost of urban life. Migrant workers often move from city to city without securing a stable job, ultimately sharing less social and economic resources than urban residents.

Deputies at the ongoing 5th session of the National People's Congress, or NPC, have intimated that this has something to do with China's Hukou system, or the household registration system, which divides people into urban and rural citizens. The system implies different levels of eligibility and benefits related to employment, education, and social security.

Zhang Zhao'an, an NPC deputy from Shanghai points out that reforming the Hukou system would help equalize rights and benefits between rural migrants and urban residents.

'It's important for us to share. Migrant workers need to share the social and economic resources in the cities where they work and live in the aspects of education, housing, and social security. Actually, this is what we have been doing all over China.'

Back in the countryside, the issue of 'left-behind children' is one of the government's biggest concerns. The term refers to those children for whom one or both of their parents work far away from their hometown; thus they rarely get to spend time with one another.

Zhang Qiong, deputy Head of Wufeng County in central China's Hubei province, says their local government has devised a new way for taking care of these children.

"We established a publicly-financed care center for left-behind children in our county. It's like a boarding school where teachers will take care of the students' education and daily life."

Zhang, who is also an NPC deputy, emphasizes that there should be no discrimination towards the children of migrant workers within cities.

"Migrant students should have equal access to education as local students, so that they shouldn't have to pay higher fees, or bear the label of 'outsiders'."
 
Urbanization is a drawn out process which presents a number of complicated problems. Efforts from both the urban and rural sectors are called for in order to better integrate domestic migrants, rather than marginalize them.

For CRI, I'm Zheng Chenguang.