At the teeming central railway station in Beijing, the world’s largest annual human migration is under way, as millions of workers head back to their ancestral towns and villages to celebrate the Chinese New Year festival.
These are the people who have provided the muscle for China’s decades-long economic boom, and it is their decision to seek a better life in the country’s cities that is expected to drive growth for decades to come.
The problem is that most of these people are merely temporary urban residents. When they lose their job in a factory or on a construction site, or can no longer bear the stress of city life, their enduring ties to the countryside inevitably draw them back to their rural birthplaces.
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