Table of Contents

Part one: Those left behind

Part two: Under the same blue sky? Rural migrant children in urban China

Part three: The government's response

Part four: Conclusions and recommendations

China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.

As China’s government struggles to reform its broken hukou system, millions of migrant children suffer the consequences of the anachronistic laws.
Release Date: 05/07/2009

The uneven economic development of rural and urban areas combined with a large pool of surplus labour has been the main driving force behind the world's largest internal migration of rural residents to the cities in China. Nearly half of its more than 130 million migrant workers are employed in the southern coastal province of Guangdong. And a major supplier of labour is the inland province of Henan, which exports more than 21 million migrants in all to other parts of China.

The children of migrant workers in China’s cities grow up facing daily exploitation, discrimination and social exclusion. In the second part of CLB’s three-part study on migrant workers’ children, we examine the deleterious impact of this environment on children’s education and physical and psychological health and its profound consequences for the future workforce of China. Photograph of migrant children's school by Ashengrove.

There are 110 million migrant workers in China aged between 16 and 40 years old.  They left home in the hope of building a better life for themselves and their family, yet when they start a family of their own, they are faced with a stark choice; either take their children to the cities and subject them to institutionalized discrimination, or leave them behind in the countryside in the uncertain care of relatives.

THE Chinese government's response to the increasing number of labour disputes across the country has been twofold; on the one hand it has sought to protect workers' rights through new laws and regu . . .

China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.China's Migrants Face Discrimination, Amnesty Says (Upda . . .

By Michael ZhangDelegates to the fourth plenary session of the 10th National People's Congress, which closed in Beijing on 14 March, have proposed drafting new legislation to protect the rig . . .

[Broadcast on 21 October 2004]At around 10 pm on 20 October, a deadly gas explosion took place at Daping Coalmine, a mine owned by Zhengzhou Coal Industry Grou . . .

At the recent 28th International Congress of Psychology in Beijing, Chinese experts appealed for more attention to psychologically vulnerable groups as China's urbanization gathers momentum. < . . .