Migrant Workers: Urban Underclass

ACCORDING to official statistics, there are now 130 million (equivalent to half the American population) migrant workers in Chinese cities. This means that China has more migrant than urban workers, and that they constitute the main Chinese industrial workforce. To those familiar with China, this phenomenon is an important signal for social change. The term farmer carries quite different connotations in China from what it does in the West, where farming is a profession taken up by well-educated people and involves large-scale mechanical production. Also known as agricultural industrial workers, fanners have a social status equal to that of urban dwellers. In China, being a fanner is synonymous with low social status. Chinese fanners have a comparatively poor education and live on a small patch of farmland (per capita farmland is less than 1 mu, 1 mu = 1/15 hectare). Some farmers work in non-agricultural industries, or go to cities as migrant workers, but do not enjoy the same political rights and social