The World Bank recommended yesterday that China ease rules against people moving from its poor countryside into booming cities as part of efforts to fight poverty.
The proposal came in a report on ways to reduce the growing gap between China's rich and poor -- an issue that communist leaders worry could fuel unrest. It is a key focus of the government of President Hu Jintao (
The report comes amid official efforts to spread prosperity to the countryside -- where 800 million Chinese live -- and debate over rules that bar Chinese from living in new areas without permission. Millions of rural people move to cities in search of work every year, but many are detained and sent home.
Easing such restrictions would let some rural Chinese find better jobs in cities while others could benefit by taking over farmland left behind, said Hana Brixi, an economist in the World Bank's Beijing office who wrote the report.
Rural incomes could rise by up to 16 percent as farms get bigger and more efficient, Brixi said at a news conference. That estimate is a striking contrast to projections that farmers would see incomes fall following China's entry in the WTO as Beijing allows in cheaper foreign farm goods.
"If we allow for free migration, farmers will benefit most," Brixi said. "The increase in their wages is quite significant."
China's city-countryside wealth gap is already huge. The economic output of Shanghai, its business capital, passed 40,000 yuan (US$5,000) per person last year. Meanwhile, in some remote areas, farm families get by on 600 yuan (US$70) a year.
Violent protests are reported regularly in farming areas over high taxes and stagnant incomes.
Some in the leadership worry that such unrest could spread, possibly threatening communist rule. Others appear genuinely distressed that a country whose 1949 revolution was based on liberating peasants still has so many people living in poverty.
China's government announced new rules on the treatment of migrant workers in June following the beating death of a man detained in the southern city of Guangzhou for lacking a residence permit.
But despite ordering local officials to crack down on the mistreatment of detained migrants, the government gave no indication it was scrapping the registration system.
Brixi said relaxing current rules could lead to 20 million additional people migrating by 2007, though she said she did not have her own estimate of the total. Chinese officials say the country has as many as 100 million migrants.
The World Bank report comes amid sweeping changes in priorities by Hu's months-old government, which is trying to spread prosperity to rural areas and China's remote west after two decades of reform that made eastern cities into export powerhouses.
The report also called for more spending on schools in poor areas and job training for migrants in order to increase their job prospects.
"Migration is the most important factor, but also ... a higher growth in skilled labor will facilitate migration," Brixi said.
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