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Migrant Workers' Children and China's Future: The Educational Divide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Holly H. Ming
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According to official figures published by China's National Bureau of Statistics, there were 252.78 million internal migrant workers in China at the end of 2011 – one-third of the country's labor force and its fastest growing sector. These workers, mainly rural migrants to cities and periurban areas, have contributed to China's impressive economic growth, helping generate over two trillion U.S. dollars' worth of exports in 2012. But there is also a less felicitous side to their rise. At the bottom of the Chinese urban hierarchy, migrant workers have formed a new underclass, caught in the urban-rural divide as the country undergoes rapid growth and urbanization. While these internal migrants' cheap labor has fueled urban and industrial growth over the last 30 years, their rural residency permits (hukou) prevent them and their children from accessing the social services that urban governments provide to local city dwellers. Those services include public education.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 9 , March 2014 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2014

References

Notes

1 National Bureau of Statistics of China (2012)

2 More recent statistics on the number of migrant children are not available, but it is probably safe to assume that the current number is larger than 20 million.

3 One 1997 study estimates that 20% of migrant workers' children aged under 5 were local-born. (Duan and Zhou, 2001)

4 Reitz, Zhang, and Hawkins (2012) provides international evidence for children of Chinese immigrants outperforming their local peers, confirming the pattern which has long been commonly observed across countries receiving Chinese immigrants.

5 For recent development in Beijing, see the Beijing News (2012) and Jinghua Times (2012).

6 During interviews with school principals, I heard that the facilities requirements for licensing include an athletic running track for a primary school, and even fully equipped science laboratories for a middle school.

7 In a non-profit, licensed migrant children's school, I met a middle school teacher with a new college degree from a teachers' college outside of Beijing earning 800RMB a month. This is a lower salary than what her students, fresh out of ninth grade, make as a security guard in Beijing.

8 Data on the percentage of migrant students enrolled in public schools is highly speculative, and are mostly researchers/newspaper columnists' ballpark estimates. The numbers are also changing very fast – mostly increasing over time. Particularly in Shanghai, many policies have taken effect since 2008 to promote the enrolment of migrant students in public schools. In the same article that gave the Shanghai figure, it was suggested that the figure was less than 50 per cent two years ago. See Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (2007) and Zhongguo Jiaoyu Bao (2002).

9 For further reading on this, see Han (2001), Xu (2001), and Tian and Wu (2009)