Peasants Migrated To Cities

Since the 1980's, China has entered into a fast speed social transformation period. The most spectacular phenomena taken place in the vast Chinese rural area was many peasants migrated to cities and towns, also with the agricultural employment population decreased continually. What are the structural reasons behind this grand historical event? How did those rural migrants live in the cities? What changes had been arising in their personality? How to help them realize the transformation from tradition to modernity? These issues lead us to probe into the history, the actuality and the future of the rural migrants panoramically.The history of peasants' migrating to cities was actually a changing history of the institution about the free migration and employment rights as well as other rights of the rural population. Based on the degree of restrictions of the institutions and policies of peasant migration, the history of peasants' migrating to cities can be divided as four periods by the large. The first period is from1949 to 1957, a great deal of rural population swarmed into cities because of institutional absence in this period. The second period is from 1958 to 1979, rural population was rigidly restricted to migrate to cities due to the household register system established in 1958. The third period is from 1980 to 1991, with the reform of the ownership pattern and the economy system, together with the household register system becoming flexible, a part of rural population were allowed to migrate to cities and towns. The fourth period is from 1992 to now, in this period the government's policies toward rural migrants had changed. Peasants were not so strictly confined to migrate to cities, the functions of government policies on rural migrants were mainly proper control and providing services.Under the restriction of institutions, there were two aspects we can discuss on the reasons why rural population migrated to cities. By macro thinking, push forces from the rural area and the pull forces from the cities were taken into account. Push forces from the rural area comes from three sides. Firstly, the benefit from agriculture was quite low, and the earnings of peasants were few and increased slowly. Secondly, the surplus labor forces in the rural area was huge, many peasants were unemployed or in a quasi-unemployment condition. Thirdly, the rural families had to pay a lot of taxes and most families were hard to make a living. Pull forces from the cities were also composed by three parts. The first one was that better incomes attracted peasants migrating to cities. The second one was that plenty of occupations pulled peasants migrating to cities. The third one was that luxuriant material and cultural life beckoned peasants migrating to cities. By micro thinking, rationality choice and sensibility choice played two important roles. The migration decision was not made totally by rational choice. Sensible choice also had its place. That is, the migration decision-making was...