Chinese migrant laborers rest at a gas station after riding motorcycles in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, China, on January 25, 2019. Getty Images News | Getty Images Wang He BEIJING, China — China’s migrant laborers are returning home after years of attempting to make a living in cities. An elderly population, high living costs, and innovative companies such as livestreaming e-commerce are all contributing to the reversal of China’s economic boom over the last few decades, which has been marked by a rush to big cities. According to government data, millions of Chinese residents did not return to metropolitan regions for employment after the coronavirus outbreak last year. According to the statistics agency, there were still 2.46 million fewer foreign workers at the end of March than there were at the same time last year. “Rural-urban migration had already slowed before covid and had its first decline in 2020,” according to Dan Wang, head economist at Hang Seng China in Shanghai. “In the future years, reverse migration will pick up steam, partially because [the employees] cannot afford city housing and do not have access to city healthcare,” Wang said. She cited aging as a major cause, noting that the number of migrant workers over 50 has more than doubled in the last 12 years, reaching 26%. More migrant workers are sticking closer to home, inside the same province, rather than migrating to China’s largest cities, such as Beijing or Shanghai, according to data. The movement has also been aided by government policies. As the government’s grip on the economy relaxed in recent decades, tens of millions of Chinese people sought work in major cities like Beijing and Shenzhen. To promote growth, local governments developed subways and other urban infrastructure. Many migrants, on the other hand, encountered difficult working conditions as factory workers or, more lately, couriers for China’s e-commerce behemoths. Migrants were denied access to public health care and schools, as well as the ability to acquire property in their place of employment, due to a strict residency system known as “hukou.” As a result of the influx of people, local resources were depleted, causing authorities to evict refugees. Smaller towns, such as Xi’an, have attempted to attract highly skilled or educated workers by providing incentives such as residence status. Staying at home and watching livestreams Other forms of urbanization, such as infrastructure development in rural regions, have been tried in China. These measures aided Beijing’s goal of eradicating extreme poverty, which it claimed to have achieved last year. According to official estimates, 1.6 million more people returned to the countryside in 2018 than in 2019, aided by subsidies, to start companies. According to an official report, slightly more than half of the entrepreneurial ideas centered on leveraging livestreaming and other online techniques to sell things. Many people outside of major cities are working in the so-called digital economy, where they can work from home for organizations that are still situated in city centers. According to Qingtuanshe, a job search portal within the Alipay mobile app, there has been a considerable surge in postings for livestream hosts and associated positions in the recent year. The percentage of workers for these professions coming from tier three and tier four cities has increased, according to the business. Among the flood of small businesses that have sprung up in the industry, Beijing-based public relations agency Vyoung claims it has been receiving calls from 20 to 30 people per day — increasingly from smaller cities — to discuss influencer relationships with big fashion brands. According to reports from government-related institutions, the digital economy now accounts for more than a third of overall GDP, and more than 50 million individuals in rural areas became internet users last year. While it is difficult for newbies to the livestreaming sector to become stars, more influencers in the “middle” category are needed, according to Jialu Shan, an economist and scholar in Asian and emerging markets at the International Institute for Management Development. According to Shan, the tremendous expansion of livestreaming last year was accompanied by numerous complaints about bogus products and a high return rate. She believes that the industry may now evolve into a more healthy state while still providing untapped prospects in specialised areas like services. Greater economic difficulties However, how much the digital economy can contribute to growth is still unknown. Retail sales have risen more slowly than projected, and the share of internet purchases has remained unchanged, raising concerns in an economy that is attempting to rely more on individual consumption. According to a poll by Ant Group and the center for household finance at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, consumer optimism climbed across all income levels in the first quarter, but a measure of increased spending remained subdued. Chinese policymakers have warned of a skills shortage in high-value tech businesses like semiconductors, and China’s top Tsinghua University even opened a chip-focused college in April. Because of the labor scarcity, a specific segment of high-tech talent “simply wants to move around numerous different firms,” according to Yin Zheng, head of product marketing at Moka, a recruitment-focused human resources firm. The majority of the company’s corporate clients, according to the company, are larger corporations and prominent technology organizations. Misalignment of workers Moving to a smaller city or back to the countryside can lower living costs for the majority of workers who are less educated. Salaries, on the other hand, are lower, contributing to China’s widening income disparity. In a research released this month, analysts from Chinese investment bank CICC stated that since the epidemic, both the jobless rate and the job-seeking rate have increased in the low-end labor market, indicating a divergence between businesses and employees. Official data showed that, while the unemployment rate fell to 5% in May based on a survey of solely city inhabitants, cities had produced 230,000 fewer jobs in the first half of the year than in the same period in 2020. At its most recent press briefing this month, the statistics agency did not release an updated data on migrant labor. Continue reading
