Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
War on poverty needs change of heart toward rural migrants
By Ni Tao |
December 5, 2011, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FOR all the inequality it has engendered, growth is often credited with lifting millions out of poverty in China.
Foreign kudos for China's contribution to global poverty reduction sometimes lulls us to complacency. A string of media reports earlier this year about severe malnutrition afflicting many rural children is a poignant reminder that our fight against poverty is far from over.
This is one message from the national meeting on poverty alleviation last Tuesday, at which the top leadership dramatically redrew China's poverty line. The new poverty threshold has been raised to 2,300 yuan (US$361) annual income per person, up 92 percent from the standard set in 2009.
The statistics resulting from the adjustment are eye-popping. The number of people recognized as poor has jumped by 128 million, making up nearly 8 percent of the national population.
Despite critics' complaint that the new standard is still too low, the government's bold take on poverty deserves some credit. Just consider the fiscal challenge an 8 percent increase in poverty levels will bring about.
Yet for poverty eradication to work, it has to involve not just the government, but society as a whole. For instance, the public can help by monitoring how national aid to poverty-stricken areas is used and exposing possible wrongdoing.
Apart from practicing vigilance, the public needs to be more tolerant of rural poor migrating to cities, where disparagement of these newcomers is pervasive.
Such snobbery can be ascribed to delusion of superiority among urban dwellers and migrants' status as disenfranchised outsiders. Except a few "imported" professionals, most migrants2 are excluded from cities' social welfare system.
Although China has a national health care insurance program targeting the rural population, who was previously left uncovered, the program falls short of addressing the long-standing difficulty of migrants seeking medical treatment in cities. Even if they enjoy insurance, they have to travel back home to be reimbursed for medical services.
As for education, migrants don't have much of a choice either. They can send their children to suburban schools, which few city folks deign to attend and whose quality is often poor by urban standards. Worse still, education authorities are closing down some of them on safety grounds, without supplanting them with safer schools.
Without equal access to health care, education and housing, migrants are but guest workers in cities and don't feel they belong, to say nothing of the hosts' contempt for them for overstaying their welcome.
At present there are 128 million migrants "wandering about at the doorway of cities," Xinhua reported on Wednesday, meaning that they are yet to be accepted as real urbanites.
It may be sheer coincidence that these migrants number roughly the same as people newly categorized as poor, but it's not a coincidence that they often tend to be underdogs.
The influx of unwanted newcomers into cities has called into question the quality of China's much-touted urbanization, which officially reached 46.6 percent last year and is growing at 0.9 percent a year. Urbanization may, however, lose steam or even derail over the accumulated anger of migrants, especially the younger generation, at being given the cold shoulder, observers warn.
Exclusion
Aware of the danger of exclusion, authorities are trying to revamp the rigid social welfare system and make it more flexible. For instance, Sha Zhongfei, deputy director of Shanghai's Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, said in May that studies are being carried out on how to shelter migrants under the city's health care network; Beijing's education commission, meanwhile, said last year that in the next three to five years, migrants' children would enjoy the same right to schooling as locals.
While efforts are being made to turn cities into a place migrants can truly call home, many wish for the day they are no longer called "peasant workers," an oxymoronic term indicating their paradoxical identity - they may be living in cities, but bound by hukou, or household registration, they are farmers by birth.
In an interview with Xinhua, Professor Ye Yumin of Renmin University in Beijing compared the urban-rural dichotomy to a "sieve," which "leaves cities with glamour and fortune but the countryside with destitution, unemployment and the elderly."
China's urbanization can only be humanized if it is accompanied by better treatment of migrants, who contribute to cities' development but miss out on its fruits.
It's heartening to know the government is working hard to free every last Chinese from poverty, but to carry on the unfinished war against it, it's imperative to first campaign against prejudice and discrimination.
Foreign kudos for China's contribution to global poverty reduction sometimes lulls us to complacency. A string of media reports earlier this year about severe malnutrition afflicting many rural children is a poignant reminder that our fight against poverty is far from over.
This is one message from the national meeting on poverty alleviation last Tuesday, at which the top leadership dramatically redrew China's poverty line. The new poverty threshold has been raised to 2,300 yuan (US$361) annual income per person, up 92 percent from the standard set in 2009.
The statistics resulting from the adjustment are eye-popping. The number of people recognized as poor has jumped by 128 million, making up nearly 8 percent of the national population.
Despite critics' complaint that the new standard is still too low, the government's bold take on poverty deserves some credit. Just consider the fiscal challenge an 8 percent increase in poverty levels will bring about.
Yet for poverty eradication to work, it has to involve not just the government, but society as a whole. For instance, the public can help by monitoring how national aid to poverty-stricken areas is used and exposing possible wrongdoing.
Apart from practicing vigilance, the public needs to be more tolerant of rural poor migrating to cities, where disparagement of these newcomers is pervasive.
Such snobbery can be ascribed to delusion of superiority among urban dwellers and migrants' status as disenfranchised outsiders. Except a few "imported" professionals, most migrants2 are excluded from cities' social welfare system.
Although China has a national health care insurance program targeting the rural population, who was previously left uncovered, the program falls short of addressing the long-standing difficulty of migrants seeking medical treatment in cities. Even if they enjoy insurance, they have to travel back home to be reimbursed for medical services.
As for education, migrants don't have much of a choice either. They can send their children to suburban schools, which few city folks deign to attend and whose quality is often poor by urban standards. Worse still, education authorities are closing down some of them on safety grounds, without supplanting them with safer schools.
Without equal access to health care, education and housing, migrants are but guest workers in cities and don't feel they belong, to say nothing of the hosts' contempt for them for overstaying their welcome.
At present there are 128 million migrants "wandering about at the doorway of cities," Xinhua reported on Wednesday, meaning that they are yet to be accepted as real urbanites.
It may be sheer coincidence that these migrants number roughly the same as people newly categorized as poor, but it's not a coincidence that they often tend to be underdogs.
The influx of unwanted newcomers into cities has called into question the quality of China's much-touted urbanization, which officially reached 46.6 percent last year and is growing at 0.9 percent a year. Urbanization may, however, lose steam or even derail over the accumulated anger of migrants, especially the younger generation, at being given the cold shoulder, observers warn.
Exclusion
Aware of the danger of exclusion, authorities are trying to revamp the rigid social welfare system and make it more flexible. For instance, Sha Zhongfei, deputy director of Shanghai's Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, said in May that studies are being carried out on how to shelter migrants under the city's health care network; Beijing's education commission, meanwhile, said last year that in the next three to five years, migrants' children would enjoy the same right to schooling as locals.
While efforts are being made to turn cities into a place migrants can truly call home, many wish for the day they are no longer called "peasant workers," an oxymoronic term indicating their paradoxical identity - they may be living in cities, but bound by hukou, or household registration, they are farmers by birth.
In an interview with Xinhua, Professor Ye Yumin of Renmin University in Beijing compared the urban-rural dichotomy to a "sieve," which "leaves cities with glamour and fortune but the countryside with destitution, unemployment and the elderly."
China's urbanization can only be humanized if it is accompanied by better treatment of migrants, who contribute to cities' development but miss out on its fruits.
It's heartening to know the government is working hard to free every last Chinese from poverty, but to carry on the unfinished war against it, it's imperative to first campaign against prejudice and discrimination.
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