Anna Jiang's Response to Meeting with Bradley Gardner

On July 13, 2017 Bradley Gardner, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and a Foreign Service Officer with the US State Department, discussed his novel "China's Great Migration: How the Poor Built a Prosperous Nation". The Summer Institute students were able to meet with him and talk about the impact the migration had on China's economy. Below is a student's reflection on meeting with Bradley Gardner and their opinion on the migration. 

This week’s meeting on the issue of internal migration in China was definitely one of the most interesting so far. The speaker was extremely knowledgeable, as he had lived in China researching this topic for many years, and it was clear that he sought to address aspects of the topic not usually discussed. Primarily, I was shocked at the massive impact migration has had on the Chinese economy. While I could see how more people moving into urban areas would create a larger labor force, I thought that would be balanced out with less productivity in rural areas. However, it appears that China’s large population meant that there were still ample people in the countryside producing agricultural goods for the rest of the nation.

During the fishbowl discussion, one of the main negatives to the Great Migration was the lack of governmental support. Because of the HuKou system, migrants were unable to access social services such as healthcare and education for their children. Despite this, there were still countless people fleeing the countryside for the supposed access to opportunities available in cities. Much like the American Dream, rural Chinese sought a better life for themselves and their families. To migrants cities meant jobs, although they might not have known about the horrific conditions and low compensation offered at the factories and sectors they could find work in.
Many people brought up how migration also led to overpopulation in cities, causing already lacking resources to become even more strained, as well as environmental issues. Someone brought up how it might be better for the Chinese government to simply focus resources on improving rural areas so that less people want to migrate. However, I feel that idea is flawed in a few ways. While it is important to increase the standard of living across the country, and infrastructure improvements will definitely have a positive effect on rural communities, it isn’t enough to stop internal migration. There will always be more opportunities and more resources put into urban centers, which means that they will always see themselves as the more modern and educated citizens.
Additionally, China wants to be seen as a world power; a developed nation. That is the main reason why cities are cleansing themselves of small migrant businesses and spending fortunes on landscaping and improvement projects. The Chinese government will not funnel that money back into rural communities, simply because they want to seem powerful and advanced in our global society.  Thus, while that is an ideal course of action, the probability of it occurring in the real world on a large, widespread scale is rather minuscule.

- Anna Jiang