7 Billion Humans | National Geographic Magazine: China Migration From Rural Areas to Be Servant Class for New Wealth

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Urbanization | China Migration From Rural Areas to Be Servant Class for New Wealth

Women Learn to be Cooks and Maids for Newly Wealthy Chuppies

Girls from rural countryside learn to be maids for the newly wealthy comfort class at the Fuping Vocational Skills Training School. Since opening up its economy in 1978 and moving toward a market economy, China has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty, but this has led to wide income inequalities that the Communist Party is trying to address through its notion of a “harmonious society” that has a more even distribution of the benefits in recent decades of speedy economic growth. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China is now experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years.