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Rural Roots of Current Migrant Labor Shortage in China: Development and Labor Empowerment in a Situation of Incomplete Proletarianization

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Abstract

This paper challenges and complements the view, widely held in sociological labor studies, that incomplete proletarianization weakens labor’s bargaining power in the city by allowing capital to externalize the costs of labor reproduction to the countryside. The authors argue instead that the preservation of migrant workers’ links to the rural economy plus rural development measures can, under certain circumstances, empower labor by increasing their marketplace bargaining power. Beginning with the puzzle of migrant labor shortages in China, and based on national data and a case study, the authors show that access to land and pro-rural state policies in the first decade of the twenty-first century together stimulated rural development in hinterland China and created more employment opportunities in agricultural and local nonfarm sectors. As a consequence, rural (migrant) laborers in China were able to rely on rural employment and choose not to participate in labor migration, thus contributing to the labor shortage and pressing employers in the city to increase wage rates and improve working and living conditions.

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Notes

  1. Hukou refers to household registration in China. For a detailed discussion, see Wang (2005).

  2. Rural development in this paper refers to rural economic development that leads to the growth of rural economy and the creation of more employment opportunities.

  3. Provincial units refer to jurisdictional units directly governed by the central government, and include provinces, ethnic autonomous regions and municipalities (i.e., Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing).

  4. The National Bureau of Statistics of China has adjusted the total number of rural laborers in 2009 to 425.1 million based on the newest census (NBSC 2011a: Chapter 4-2). This adjustment does not alter the general picture of the Chinese rural labor force that we present here, however.

  5. The Bureau adopts a broad definition for migrant workers. Rural laborers are seen as migrant workers if they work outside their townships for 1 month or longer.

  6. The calculation is based on data from The Ministry of Agriculture of China (2003: 9). The values of gross output are adjusted for inflation based on the industrial goods price index in The National Committee of Development and Reform of China (2005).

  7. For detailed analysis of how TVEs changed the Chinese rural economy, please see Oi (1999).

  8. A 1995 national survey showed that 97 % of rural households derived some of their income from agriculture (Knight and Song 2003).

  9. The number is estimated based on the available data of the two sources on labor migration between 2002 and 2006. The Ministry of Agriculture reported that the number of rural migrant workers had increased from 94,000,000 in 2002 to 115,000,000 in 2006, whereas the National Bureau of Statistics reported that it increased from 105,000,000 to 132,000,000 for the same period (Han et al. 2009: 7). Thus, we estimate that the number of migrant workers in the definition of the Ministry of Agriculture was 125,000,000 in 2009.

  10. NBSC (2011b: 14–17).

  11. The real names of count, townships, and villages are replaced with roman capital letters.

  12. One hectare equals 15 mu.

  13. A village team consists of 20–30 households, and a village usually has a few to a dozen of village teams.

  14. Household interview, April 8, 2006.

  15. We see rural laborers who work outside H county for at least 3 months a year as migrant workers. This definition is narrower than official definitions, which see rural laborers as migrant workers as long as they work outside their townships.

  16. Household interview, April 7, 2006.

  17. In village D, where there was rural industry, the situation was better because rural laborers could still derive their income from making fireworks, which was comparable to that of migration.

  18. Household interview, March 21, 2006.

  19. Mr. Zhang was born in 1965 and his wife in 1963. We interviewed them on March 10, 2011.

  20. The drought did not have as great an impact on village D because peasants in the village relied on the industry of fireworks manufacture for their main source of income.

  21. It is worth noting that our definition of migration is narrower than official statistics and only includes people who leave the county in search of employment for at least 3 months a year.

  22. Household interview, September 15, 2005.

  23. Household interview, March 23, 2006.

  24. Local official interview, July 17, 2008.

  25. Household interview, July 22, 2008.

  26. Local official interview, September 20, 2005.

  27. Local official interview, July 17, 2008.

  28. Household interview, March 6, 2011.

  29. The land system is now falling apart in many parts of China as local governments take land from peasants and give it to large agrarian companies or urban real estate developers. The land grab has also occurred in H county, but has so far remained small scale.

  30. Arrighi et al. (2010) argues that the dispossession of agricultural producers from the land in South Africa had lowered the quality of the labor force and reduced welfare for the majority of the population.

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Acknowledgement

Our research was partly funded by the Institute for Global Studies at the Johns Hopkins University and a National Science Foundation (USA) Dissertation Improvement grant. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 34th PEWS (The Political Economy of the World System) Annual Conference, Florida Atlantic University, April 22–24, 2010, and the 106th ASA Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, August 20–23, 2011. We thank Joel Andreas, Giovanni Arrighi, Ho-fung Hung, Kellee Tsai, Alice Wiemers and other JHU colleagues for their comments and suggestions. Special thanks are due to Beverly Silver for shepherding this paper at various stages. We also benefited enormously from SCID editors and three anonymous reviewers in the final round of revision.

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  1. Sociology Department, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    Shaohua Zhan & Lingli Huang

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  1. Shaohua Zhan
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Correspondence to Shaohua Zhan.

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Zhan, S., Huang, L. Rural Roots of Current Migrant Labor Shortage in China: Development and Labor Empowerment in a Situation of Incomplete Proletarianization. St Comp Int Dev 48, 81–111 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-012-9124-5

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