Inequality and Internal Migration in China

The economic reforms that began in China in the early 1980s triggered one of the largest population movements in human history. Since they began, in each decade, tens of millions of rural people have left the land to seek higher incomes by working or trading in urban areas. The census in 2000 found that there were more than 120 million migrant workers in Chinese cities. More-recent estimates go as high as 200 million. This massive internal migration has appeared especially dramatic from a Chinese perspective because mobility was severely restricted in Maoist times, making it almost impossible for rural people […]