INTRODUCTION:

What place will ethnic minorities occupy in China’s future?

At the time of the 2000 census, 131 million Chinese people were living away from their officially registered place of residence. The 2005 China Human Development Report suggests that the number has since risen to 150 million and projects that by 2010 it may rise to 250 million people—the overwhelming majority of them farmers leaving the land for work in manufacturing or service industries.

The staggering scale of this migration both illustrates and underlines the profound social and economic transformation under way in China. At the turn of the century, for the first time in their “5,000 years of continuous history,” more Chinese people were employed in manufacturing and service industries than in agriculture. Although there are plenty of farmers left, earnings from their tiny plots are generally low, and so too is the relative productivity of the sector. (By 2004, the 46.9% of the population still employed in agriculture were producing only 15.2% of GDP. ) Conditions therefore appear set for a continued drain out of agriculture. Farming is likely to become a part-time activity for many families, while some of the most remote and resource-poor areas are likely to be substantially de-populated. Further, rapid urbanisation seems inevitable.

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