Gov begins to integrate 100 mln migrants

 

The government wants to settle next-gen migrants in second tier cities. CFP Photo

 

By Chu Meng

The central government is rolling out new plans to support next-gen migrant workers according to its “No. 1 Central Document” last Sunday.

The next-gen workers, whose population now numbers 100 million, migrate to urban areas to escape the income gap that separates villages from cities.

The rights and concerns of laborers have been a central government discussion point for the last seven years, but this year marks the first time their children were addressed directly in the first yearly document.

“This group refers to those born in the 1980s and 1990s to parents who abandoned their  farmlads for work in the city,” Tang Renjian, deputy director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, said at a press conference Monday.

The central government has made it a top priority to help these men and women become urban residents, according to the document. The government plans to move more farmers to the cities to receive housing, insurance, social security, education and other benefits that urban residents enjoy.

“They are bettr educated than their parents but have limited knowledge of farming and little interest in it. They want to become part of the city and embrace that life, but at the same time the cities don’t want to accept them,” Tansaid.

“This is an important issue concerning the social structure in China’s rural areas and, indeed, in the entire country,” Huang Xu, director of the Urban Studies Office at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciencesaid Wednesday.

The new generation migrants differ from their parents in that these men and women are not willing to be the passive victims of discrimination, Huang said.

The problem is that modern society has given them simple but blind ideas about equality and democracy, he said. They lack the comprehensive education of city residents while clinging to the perspectives of their rural parents.

The new group most wants to be treated the same as urban residents in employment and public services, he said.

Huang said small- and mid-sized cities are the ideal locations for this generation to make the transition. “Life in the smaller cities will make their drams more achievable at their income levels,” he said.

He also suggested that hukou, or household registration system, in small- and mid-sized cities should open, and more effort is needed to accelerate the economic development of townships.