China’s economic success has been built upon the huge migration of rural labour into the cities which has kept labour costs remarkably low, made the country a highly attractive destination for foreign investment, and enabled Chinese manufacturing exports to be highly competitive on the global market. This has been the basic engine of China’s transformation. As a model it remains far from exhausted. Around half the population still lives in the countryside, so the supply of relatively impoverished rural labour to swell the ranks of the urban labour force is set to continue for at least two
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