Migration and Urbanization in China

Lincoln H. Day, Ma Xia, Ma Xia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781315484075
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziale Klassen & wirtschaftliche Ungleichheit

Based upon an analysis of a national survey of migration conducted in late 1986 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, this book provides analyses of the volume and direction of movement, the characteristics and motivation of those who move, and the consequences of their moving.

Chapter 1

THE SURVEY: OBJECTIVES AND ORGANIZATION

Ma Xia

INTRODUCTION

The economy of China before the establishment of the People’s Republic was largely agricultural. Modern industry accounted for less than a tenth of the national product. There was some city-ward migration in response to industrial development, but most of the migration at the time was either to overseas destinations or from one rural area to another – primarily out of the more densely populated central provinces and into the less densely populated border provinces. The traditional routes consisted of peasants from Shandong, Hebei and Anhui travelling across the Bohai Sea to the Northeast; farmers from Hebei and Shanxi going to Neimenggu and the Great Bend of the Yellow River; farmers from the Central Plains going to border areas like Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia to reclaim wasteland; and peasants leaving Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi to take up employment in the plantations of Southeast Asia.

The establishment of New China brought marked changes in both the volume and direction of migration. Hundreds of thousands of the rural population were absorbed into the cities through industrialization, and in the border areas there were large outflows of people in response to natural disasters as well as large inflows of people to reclaim wasteland.

Government policy on migration was one of essentially free movement until the introduction of extensive controls in the mid-1950s, initially to relieve pressure on grain supplies. In order to limit and control the movement of population out of rural areas, permission for any permanent change of residence – whether between two rural areas, a rural and an urban area or two urban areas – must now be obtained from the authorities of the household registration system. Cities and rural areas have thus become two essentially closed entities.

As a result of this change in policy, records of in- and out-migration have been maintained at all levels of household registration since the mid-1950s. Theoretically, this should have provided a considerable amount of information about migratory movements. But because the central government relied solely on calculations carried out by hand, only a portion of the information collected during the period from 1954 to 1984 has actually been published. This has, of course, restricted research and theoretical discussion, but it has not prevented it completely. Some of what has been done along these lines in academic circles and government agencies has, in fact, been of great value. However, the reforms and the relaxation of restrictions on mobility that took place in the 1980s have raised a number of problems and contradictions concerning migration and urbanization. Will the closed settlement pattern in urban and rural communities hamper social and economic development? Will the policy of controlling migration and city population growth fit in with the development of a planned commodity economy? What are the essential features and ideal patterns of migration under a socialist system? How will migration affect urbanization under the socialist system? There is no shortage of major issues, each requiring basic scientific research and in-depth discussion concerning a variety of practical, theoretical and policy considerations. The decision to undertake the large-scale survey of internal migration reported on here was made precisely because it was thought that the kinds of data necessary to address such issues could be obtained only by means of an inquiry of some size and breadth.

OBJECTIVES OF THE SURVEY

The Survey was designed to:

(a) provide comprehensive and detailed information about contemporary migratory movements within China;

(b) permit summarizing the movements of the past 30 years in a manner appropriate to drawing lessons applicable to the present day;

(c) provide data necessary to the formulation of theoretical generalizations about the relation of population movement to social and economic institutions, historical events and regulations associated with a socialist system; and

(d) provide a basis for making strategic policy suggestions pertaining to internal migration and the development of cities.

To this end, the Survey collected information in five areas of interest: (a) the volume of movement to cities and towns, (b) the direction of this movement, (c) the characteristics of the movers, (d) the motivations of the movers and (e) the consequences of this movement.

ORGANIZATION

In recognition of both its practical and its theoretical significance, the Survey project was designated for the period of the Seventh Five-Year Plan as one of the “State-controlled Key Projects” of research in philosophy and social science. With partial financial support provided by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), it began as a collaborative effort of the Academy of Social Sciences’ population research institutes in Shanghai, Shandong, Guangdong and Shaanxi, each of which established a field station for the purpose. Later, agreement was reached for joint conduct of the Survey with 16 institutes of population research (12 population research institutes or units of provincial academies of social science, one population research institute directly under the jurisdiction of a provincial administration and three university institutes). This broad participation permitted extension of the Survey’s coverage to the 74 cities and towns in 16 provinces in which it was finally undertaken.

Three training workshops – on migration theory, techniques of survey sampling and methods of data processing and analysis – were conducted for key personnel taking part in the Survey. The instruction in these workshops was provided by UNFPA personnel and leading academics from both China and overseas.

Responsibility for designing and printing the questionnaire rested with the Academy of Social Sciences’ Population Research Institute. For convenience with both computer and manual tabulation, the questionnaire was divided into five sections relating, respectively, to: (a) a household’s original members, (b) those who had moved into the household on a permanent basis, (c) those who had moved away from the household but were still legally members of it, (d) those who had been in the household less than one year and had not become legal members of it and (e) those who had permanently ceased to be members of the household. Following completion of the training program, the questionnaire and survey procedures were pre-tested in pilot surveys conducted in Shanghai, Guangdong, Shaanxi, Shandong, Henan, Neimenggu and Liaoning. On the basis of the results of these pre-tests, changes were then introduced, where necessary, into the overall design and plan of the Survey.

The computer center of the State Commission of Planning, in Beijing, had ultimate responsibility for data processing. There were two stages. First, the data were put onto magnetic disks in the respective individual computer centers of the provinces, cities and autonomous regions participating in the Survey. Following this, the 16 magnetic tapes containing the data were transferred to the State Commission of Planning to be reassembled, programmed and worked into tables. All together, 15,800 tables were created: 200 each, for the 74 cities and towns in the Survey, plus an additional 1,000 summary tables based on a five-part categorization of these 74 geographic units by population size. From this large number of tables, 448 were selected for publication in book form – a 365-page English-Chinese bilingual publication, entitled China: Migration of 74 Cities and Towns Sampling Survey Data (1986) – so as to provide a convenient reference for Chinese policy-makers, as well as for academics both in China and elsewhere.

POPULATION INTERVIEWED

The Survey was conducted on a population of 43.5 million people in 74 localities consisting of: 15 “extra-large” cities, 6 “large” cities, 12 “medium-sized” cities, 10 “small” cities and 31 towns. From this universe, information was obtained on a total of 100,267 persons (see Table 1.1) distributed among 23,895 family households and 1,643 collective households.

TABLE 1.1: Sampling rates by locality population size

Number of households in locality	Sampling rate (%)
Less than 9,000	2.00
10,000 - 44,000	0.80
45,000 - 99,000	0.40
100,000 - 199,000	0.20
200,000 - 299,000	0.13
300,000+	0.10

The basic sampling unit was the household: those interviewed amounting to 0.2 per cent of the total of households in the cities and towns surveyed. The proportion of households chosen varied with different locality sizes, ranging from 20 per thousand in the smallest localities down to one per thousand in the largest (Table 1.2).

For selection purposes, cities in the “large” and “extra-large” size categories were subdivided in terms of either age or dominant function: their sectors differentiated either according to whether they were “new,” “old,” or of mixed age, or according to whether they were largely residential, commercial, cultural, indu...