China: from rural to industry and return

Up to 26 million rural migrants now jobless

by S. C.

Chinese Government announced that 26 million of rural people are unemployed. About 20% of the migrant workersm, estimented in 130 million.

Beijing warned of "possibly the toughest year" this decade and called for development of rural areas to offset the economic fallout.

"The government should not sit idly and disappoint the farmers - said Liu Shanying, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - If they are unemployed for a long time, it will be a time bomb.”

The severity of the situation will become clearer in the weeks ahead, as workers eager to test their prospects return from spending the Lunar New Year with their families in the countryside.

Throughout the years of China's long economic boom, migrant work provided a sort of social pressure release valve, allowing millions of farmers to escape to factory jobs in better developed coastal regions.