Analysis And Study Of Henan Rural Surplus Labor Force Way Out

"China will not become truly prosperous unless its farmers are really rich." For such a populous country like China, whose 900 million are farmers, to solve the issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers and to improve farmer's income have become the requirement not only of the rapid development of agriculture and rural areas, but also of the macro-goal to build a well-off society in an all-round way. The core of the issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers is that of the farmers, and the core of the issue concerning farmers is how to improve their income, the core of which is farmers' employment. Than is to say, the fundamental measure for issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers is to transform rural surplus laborers. Premier Wen Jiabao was quoted as saying in his Government Work Report on March 5th, 2004, "...We will improve the employment environment for rural workers in cities, provide them with more and better training and create more jobs for them in various ways..." which has become the emphasis of the government's work this year.Henan is a developing populous agricultural province, and surplus labor in the rural areas has always been a fundamental matter during the transformation of its economy. On the one hand, farming people take a greater part of Henan's population, which has an absolutely large base. Although strict policy of family-planning has been adopted, a large quantity of new laborers are being added with the year because of the inertial increase of population, and that has posed a contradiction with the decreasing arable land. On the other hand, in recent years township enterprises' capacity to take in surplus labor is declining for those enterprises are transforming from labor-based to capital- or tech-based. At the same time, the increase in urban unemployment has made job-hunting worse and worse, and migrant rural workers confront many restrictions when seeking a job. Transforming of rural laborers in Henan is relatively sluggish and backward compared with other provinces, due to certain systematic restrictions (e.g. employment regulations in cities, and residence registration system) and immature labor force market. This has not only resulted in the poverty problem which cannot be solved thoroughly for most Henanese farmers but also affected the process of industrialization, urbanization and modernization in Henan.The transforming of rural surplus labor is a subject that has great theoretical and realistic significance, the study of which has become the focus of the academic circle. But it must be pointed out that most of the researchers tend to study the subject from the one-sided point of view of urban development, thus exaggerating the negative influence of the transforming; while some of them from the angle of the rural areas, undoubtedly exaggerating the positive influence. What's more, up to now no experts have studied the transforming thoroughly and systematically in Henan. The writer of this article thinks that, in order to solve the problem radically, we must consider it from a strategic angle in the National Economy to find out the root of the problem and thoughts and ways as well to deal with it for a balanced development of the urban and rural areas.Based on field research and experiences on transforming surplus labor in some villages collected via modern information and technology, this article explores how to tackle the problem of rural surplus labor, and is divided into three parts, beginning with the present situation of the rural surplus labor in Henan province, the features and the great effect of the transforming, analyzing the current environment that restricts the transforming of laborers in the province and problems with the laborers themselves, the level of urbanization and the workforce market, the slow reform of residence registration system and the imperfection of rural social security network and finally putting forward the following five interlocking countermeasures taken at the same time for relevant experts' refer...