Economic Reform, Mobility Strategies, and National Integration in China

Abstract

An important means by which Chinese peasants search for individual fulfillment and liberty is physical mobility, the dramatic rise of which has been one of the major effects of the post-Mao economic reform in China. Since 1987 China has been flooded by a yearly tidal wave of migrant laborers (mingong chao) occurring immediately before and after the traditional Chinese new year holidays in the spring. In 1988 and 1989, the number of these migrants, who came mostly from the countryside, reached 50 million.1 The number of sojourners in major Chinese cities was reported to have amounted to 80 million by 1990.2 Years before, individual peasants with an entrepreneurial bent had already ventured out of their villages looking for an alternate way of life. It is these trailblazers who are the focus of our attention here. Compared with the movement for intellectual freedom among the educated, the rise in the physical mobility of rural Chinese has affected more people and its impact on society is just as significant. This article analyzes the multifaceted dynamics of mobility in China after 1980 and its political, social, and economic implications. It covers the push and pull forces in the background, the facilitating agents, the pattern and strategies of mobility of various provinces, and the effects on China's development and national integration.