“Rural-Urban Migration in China” (Iwanami-shoten, 2009)

Yan Shanping (Professor, Faculty of Economics,Momoyama Gakuin University)

I feel deeply honored to receive the Masayoshi Ohira Special Prize for my book, Rural-Urban Migration in China. I am moved very much also, because it’s my second award from the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. I would like to appreciate from my true heart to the Foundation, the selection committee, and the staff for their kind consideration. It is very delightful for me as a researcher that you evaluated me having devoted myself to the same theme and the simple surveillance study in a long time.
As known widely that there is a peculiar household registration (hukou) system in China. All of the people are given a hukou of agriculture or non-agriculture as a born thing, and the hukou conversion from agriculture to non-agriculture is restricted severely. For the past 30 years, although agricultural hukou population fell from 84% of the whole to 67%, those who have an agricultural hukou still went up to 880 million people. On the other hand, in the demographic statistics based on the place of residence, there are only 720 million people in the rural. What are called the peasant migrant workers (nongmingong) and their families who are living in the urban areas have no less than 160 million (2008).
In the last 30 years, Because of abundant and cheap labor force which has been supplied continually from the village, China realized a high growth, and became a factory of the world. However, since the hukou can’t be transferred between regions nevertheless the people moved, various problems also exist. For example, the youth with high education flow out of the village, children, women, and elderly people are left behind by the countryside, and rural desolation is progressing. The peasant migrant workers and their children without the hukou of living place receive system discrimination in job-hunting, employment, wage, social security, education, etc., and the dual structure by urban residents and migrants is formed in large cities.
However, Reform of policies in connection with migrants has been performed after Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao Administration inauguration, and the basic rights of peasant migrants are improved greatly. Although the supply of labor from village became less unlimited for a background, as the present government which hangs up realization of harmonic society over basic philosophy, it is a natural result.
I tried to draw a dynamic drama such that in my book, and from now on, I would like to continue the theoretical and empirical research on this issue which has a very big influence on Chinese society and economy, for this award on encouragement.

Profile
I was born in 1963 in Anhui, China. I graduated from the department of agricultural economics, Nanjing Agricultural University in 1984. I came to Japan, and entered the graduate school of Kyoto University in 1985, as a Chinese government scholarship student. I finished the doctoral course in 1991, and the doctor of agriculture was granted at the same time. I was installed as the present post in 2000, and participate in some projects conducted in Toyo Bunko and Waseda University as a joint researcher also now. I have won the Society Prize of The Association for Regional Agricultural & Forestry Economics (1994), the Encouragement Prize of The Agricultural Economics Society of Japan (1998) and the Japanese Agriculture Progress Prize (2002).