Zhao Yang

Research Report No 146, 2001

The massive migration of Chinese farmers into urban areas to look for jobs since the country’s initiation of reforms is not the permanent migration of population along with the change of their registered permanent residences. Instead, it is a typical kind of temporary migration, a term we will use in this article.1 Because it produces multi-layer effects on the development of both rural and urban areas, this phenomenon has drawn high attention from many scholars and departments concerned in recent years. Quite a few scholars have used the data from the four population censuses carried out in China between 1982 and 1995 to study the issue of migration from the countryside to the urban areas,2 and there have also been quite a lot of data gathered directly from wide-range surveys.3 These have made it possible for us to get a comparatively full understanding of and to evaluate the massive temporary migration of China’s rural laborers since the 1990s. At the same time, various scholars have given their explanations to the cause of such migration from different angles, and quite a few of them have made special studies of the influences of such migration on Chinese farmers and on the development of China’s rural areas.4 In addition, the issue of the return of farmers, who have temporarily migrated, to their homeland to start various kinds of undertakings, a move that has been surging across China in recent years, and the influence of the trend on the development of China’s rural areas have aroused special attention.5

Summarizing the pertinent achievements of studies made so far at home and broad, this paper tries to review some of the basic issues concerning the process of such temporary migration and relevant policies. Particularly, this paper presents the author’s personal views on some issues in dispute in the hope of having them proved and tested in future studies.

I. Scale of Temporary migration.

It is a task of considerable complexity to estimate the scale of the temporary migration of China’s rural population into the urban areas because the lines followed in the compilation of statistics and the methods of estimate are somewhat different apart from the availability of data,

According to the officially authentic figures published in China Yearbook of Statistics (1990,1993 and 1996), the number of people that migrated temporarily (who left their original land of residence for more than half a year) in 1982, 1990 and 1995 stood at 11.33 million, 29.52 million and 53.60 million respectively. According to the conclusion reached by Duan Chengrong (1999) on the basis of the data from the population censuses conducted in China since 1982 and the data from a sample survey of 1% of the Chinese population, however, China’s migratory population in 1982, 1990 and 1995 reached 6.57 million, 21.35 million and 70.73 million respectively.

Yang Hong (1999) held, meanwhile, that there was some unconformity in the definitions and the coverage of these statistics. In terms of the definition of the population on migration, it was agreed in 1995 that those leaving their original land of residence for more than half a year would be counted as having migrated. In the 1982 and 1990 statistics, however, only those away from their original land of residence for more than one year were treated as having migrated, thus narrowing the approaches of statistics. As for the definition of the range of migration, the county was taken as the minimum unit in the 1982 and the 1990 population censuses. In the sample survey conducted in 1995, however, the township was used as the lowest-level unit. Exactly for this reason, the officially published figures for 1982 and 1990 were bigger than the latter, while those for 1995 were smaller than the latter. As a result of unconformity in the definitions and figures, the data have become less comparable and should be revised when used.

Using the residual model of estimated net migrants, Wu, H. (1994) and Chan, K.W. estimated respectively that Chinese population who migrated from their hometown for more than one year was 28.20 million and 43.80 million between 1978 and 1993. A key issue of this method lies in the definitions of "urban areas" and "urban population". The difference between the estimates is that Wu based his estimate on registered "non-agricultural population" in the urban areas, while Chan used the officially delimited boundaries of cities as the basis.

Using the data from the above-mentioned sample survey for simple extrapolation, Li Pan (1994) concluded that a total of 51.3966 million people from China’s rural areas left their hometown to look for jobs in 1993. The number of samples used in this survey is extremely large because it covered 12,673 valid rural households in 442 counties in 26 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. A problem in the method of sampling adopted in the survey is that if only 30 households were picked out in each of these counties, how much influence would the rules governing the sampling have on the representativeness of the figures? Further, this method is particularly sensitive to the size of the sample, the coverage of the survey, and the extrapolated method.

A general opinion about this figure is that it should be around 50-70 million (as pointed out by Chen Li,1999; Zhen Ze,1993; the Policy Research Center of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, 1994; Luo Yousheng and Liu Jianwen, 1994; and the Ad Hoc Research Group for Issues of Farmers Looking for Jobs in Urban Areas under the Ministry of Agriculture). Only a very few people agree that the figure should stand between 80-120 million (as viewed by He Jing, 1994; Pan Shengzhou, 1994, Shi Shusi, 1995; and the Ad Hoc Research Group of Absorption of Rural Laborers into Urban Areas, 1996).

The author holds that the documents available so far have basically relied on three kinds of estimates: a) national population censuses or sample surveys with a census character, b) statistical models based on the quantitative relationship of the population, and c) simple extrapolation on the basis of certain regional data or data from certain circles. Because of the complexity of the issue and the existence of the following three factors, however, it is so far difficult to reach any consensus on the estimated number of population on temporary migration. Firstly, the figures obtained would be inevitably different or even contradictory to each other because of different perception and understanding of temporary migration and different definition of time of migration. Secondly, the standards followed in the compilation of statistics vary, such as the standards for the compilation of statistics of the population in cities or towns. Lastly, there lies some difference between the methods used for the compilation and treatment of statistics. All these issues call for further discussion and study.

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