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To: TobagoJack who wrote (41171)	11/9/2003 6:10:08 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Chinese workers transform fortunes of home towns By James Kynge in Beijing Published: November 9 2003 21:54 \| Last Updated: November 9 2003 21:54 <<This is an example of what I call "spreading the money more evenly". Taking from qhere there is too much and tranferring to whwre there is little. No need for interference of govenrments. Just people and the market.>> The money that about 100m migrant Chinese workers are sending back to their impoverished home towns is transforming the country's rural economy, sowing the seeds of a consumer society in farming backwaters left out of the past 25 years of progress. The cash is transferred in small monthly post office remittances by workers in the "workshop of the world" to their families in villages across China. When multiplied by tens of millions, such trickles become a flood and are in some provinces exceeding fiscal revenues. Huang Xiaoxiang, vice-governor of Sichuan, a province of 86m in south west China, said funds transferred home by about 15m Sichuanese migrant workers last year amounted to an estimated Rmb 45bn ($5.4bn). This compared with the province's fiscal revenues of Rmb 29.18bn in the same year. Mr Huang said almost all of the migrants were once among the province's 68m peasants. The money they sent back from wealthier coastal areas such as Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang and Beijing mostly ended up in Sichuan's most needy areas. "The income sent home by migrant workers has become the main source of income in the countryside," Mr Huang said. "You can tell that the people building houses and buying machinery [are likely to be] the ones with relatives sending money back from factories along the coast." Mr Huang and Shao Qiwei, vice-governor of the southwestern province of Yunnan, said the trend of exporting rural labour to fuel China's export-oriented manufacturing machine should be encouraged. Workers not only sent money home, they said, but on their return, would bring an influx of skills and ideas. "They want to be the bosses of small businesses when they come back," said Mr Shao. "Many of them have worked in modern factories or good hotels and they have learned a lot about management and industry. They have also built up enough capital to start small businesses when they come back." Yunnan, which encompasses some of China's poorest areas, has exported about 900,000 migrant workers, Mr Shao said. Unlike those from Sichuan, they tend to be involved in the service sector partly because Yunnan's large ethnic minority populations find it relatively easy to get jobs as singers or dancers in other parts of China. Official statistics on migrant labour and its impact on rural economies are either very rough or non-existent. But researchers at the ministry of agriculture in Beijing said that about 94m people were classed as migrant workers. If each of them sent home Rmb 3,000 a year, the cumulative amount would be Rmb 282bn, they said. Such a figure, roughly double Beijing's Rmb 140bn fiscal stimulus package this year, shows how dependent China is on its export- oriented manufacturing base. Over half of China's exports are generated by companies that have foreign investment.