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Urbanization has become synonymous with China's modernization. The country's urban population will reach 52 percent in 2015 and grow to 65 percent by 2030, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' annual urban development report, issued last week. By the end of last year, the urbanization rate had already reached 46.6 percent, with 620 million people living in urban areas.
A pro-active urbanization strategy has become popular both in academic and policymaking domains, because theoretically, it reduces farmers' population and prompts them to produce on larger scales and earn more.
But the government-driven urbanization could create a situation in which the countryside would be exploited further and the younger generation would become more dependent on their parents and elders, says He Xuefeng, director of China Rural Governance Research Center, affiliated to Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan. What He is referring to is the migration of rural workers to urban areas, which is draining rural areas of their valuable human resources.
He travels between urban and rural areas in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, and visits other provinces, too, for his research on urbanization. He divides rural workers into two categories: those who migrated to cities in the 1990s and the next generation that followed them in the new century. What separates them is their aspirations.
The first-generation workers went to cities only to earn a decent living. They sent a big part of their income home, saved money to build new houses and buy home appliances, and thus helped the rural economy prosper.
These people served as flowing transmitters of China's fast-growing economy, He says. But this city-to-countryside material flow may peter out because of the waning willingness of the second-generation workers to return home. Most of these people have left home after graduating from middle school. As a result, they have less emotional attachment to their homes and are more attracted to urban life. The truth, however, is that only a few of them can manage to stay in cities because of the low salary they earn.
Since a majority of the first-generation workers have returned home, about 150 million of today's rural workers - or 70 percent of the total - belong to the second generation. But except for a few who occupy important posts in some companies or have married well-to-do men, it will be difficult for them to lead a successful life in urban areas.
Most of the second-generation workers are employed in the processing, textile, manufacturing, construction and catering industries. With their wages ranging from several hundred to 2,000 yuan, they can't afford to raise a family in big cities, where a house can cost up to tens of thousands of yuan per square meter.
In contrast, the 50,000 to 100,000 yuan that migrant workers can save after years of toil would comprise a large part of the money, if not the entire amount, needed to buy a new house in their home counties or towns.
But some second-generation workers seek money from their parents to buy a house, get married or even to pay for their children's education back home. This trend is growing, He says, based on his research in several counties of Henan province.
Local governments' policies tend to ban or discourage people from building houses in the countryside, but encourage rural workers to buy houses in counties and towns. Towns in Henan that He and his team visited have populations ranging from 20,000 to 25,000. But since new houses and buildings are still being constructed there, these places could accommodate more than 30,000 people each.
In the short term, such workers would boost the economies of counties and towns by buying houses and settling down there. They would raise local governments' income, too. In return, their children would get better education and avail of better infrastructure than in the countryside.
But a string of problems are likely to pop up once the second-generation workers have settled down in such towns or counties, He warns.
At present, at least on the surface, urbanization is spreading with rural workers using their personal and family savings to buy more homes in counties and towns. But since jobs are still few in these places, and the pay still low, more and more rural workers are moving to cities.
So, the second-generation rural workers in counties and towns have to do with lower incomes compared to those working in cities. Their daily expenses will increase, nevertheless, and they will face greater problems in running their families and bringing up a child.
The jobs available to rural workers in counties and towns offer about less than 1,000 yuan a month, He says. With such a low income, they cannot become a sustainable supporting factor for urbanization and economic development of these counties and towns.
Most of the young people who move to urban areas leave their parents behind to work in fields. And regardless of their advancing age, their parents do so to support not only themselves, but also their children working in urban areas.
He and his team have visited six villages in Henan, each with about 200 old people. But fewer than 10 people in each village have more than 10,000 yuan as savings in banks. These people should have saved at least 5,000 yuan a year by working in the fields, but couldn't because they had to give their children money to buy houses in counties or towns, or to get married. Thus the resource drain continues and the pressure on old people keeps growing.
Compare this to the situation when the first-generation migrant workers brought money and materials back to rural areas. Isn't the urbanization of counties depleting the countryside of its human and natural resources?
But He still thinks that if the government shifts its development strategy from east to central and west China, rural people in the vast inland areas will have more job opportunities and be better paid, and hence can take better care of their families in counties.
The strategy has to be shifted because the government has improved infrastructure in inland areas immensely and industries in the coastal areas need to be upgraded, He says. Besides, the government's favorable policy toward the countryside will serve as an incentive for more people to return to the fields, wand perhaps modernize agriculture.
