RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-2.jpg
A truck transports migrant workers in China that are often people from impoverished regions of the country that have moved to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work.
An estimated 230 million Chinese in 2010, have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years with about 13 million more joining them every year. Many migrants are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories. Men often get construction jobs while women work in cheap-labor factories.
So many migrants leave their homes looking for work that the rail system is overburdened. In the Hunan province, 52 people were trampled to death in the late 1990s when 10,000 migrants were herded onto a freight train. To stem the flow of migrants, officials in Hunan and Sichuan have placed restrictions on the use of trains and buses by rural people. In some cities, the migrants almost outnumber the residents.
- Copyright
- Randy Olson
- Image Size
- 8736x5824 / 14.2MB
- Keywords
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trucks, migrants, transportation, building exteriors, chinese architecture and art, chinese culture, city streets, color image, commercial structures, continental architecture and art, exterior views (of buildings), high rises, hotels, hotels and resorts, housing, intercontinental architecture and art, lighting, lights, lights and lighting, modern architecture and art, modern style, night, office buildings, outdoors, people's republic of china, photography, architecture, roads, structures
- Contained in galleries
- China's Bling Dynasty_National Geographic Magazine 5/2008
