Occupational attainments of rural to urban temporary economic migrants in China, 1985-1990

Since the inauguration of reform in 1978, a large number of Chinese peasants were released from agricultural production and became "surplus labor." Because a large proportion of rural-urban population mobility assumes the form of temporary movement, attention to such movement is therefore essential to any assessment of social, economic and political changes in urban and rural China and of the overall urbanization process. The present study uses the 1 percent sample of the 1990 census data of China to study long-term rural to urban temporary economic migrants, the provincial pattern and variation of these migrants, and their economic activities represented by the occupational attainments in cities in comparison with urban residents.