1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,629 The following is part of Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture 2 00:00:03,629 --> 00:00:07,757 Series under the Cornell East Asia Program. The arguments and viewpoints 3 00:00:07,757 --> 00:00:10,134 of this talk belong solely to the speaker. 4 00:00:10,134 --> 00:00:11,549 We hope you enjoy. 5 00:00:11,549 --> 00:00:16,473 >> So welcome to the new season of the Cornell Contemporary China Initiative. 6 00:00:16,473 --> 00:00:21,686 My name is Nick Admussen. I'm a professor in the Department of Asian Studies. 7 00:00:21,686 --> 00:00:26,357 And I'm here representing the East Asia Program. The Contemporary China Initiative 8 00:00:26,357 --> 00:00:31,028 is a function of the East Asia Program. So weekly lecture series that's for 9 00:00:31,028 --> 00:00:33,905 the Cornell community and the larger community if you're seeing this 10 00:00:33,905 --> 00:00:40,203 on the internet. Because this is the first lecture of the season I'd like to thank 11 00:00:40,203 --> 00:00:44,873 the people who made it possible - Robin McNeal who founded the initiative, 12 00:00:44,873 --> 00:00:50,336 who's not with us, he's on leave this semester; Josh Young, who's here; 13 00:00:50,336 --> 00:00:59,219 Amala Lane; Nancy Liang - who make this reasonably complicated situation hopefully 14 00:00:59,219 --> 00:01:05,516 very easy for the speakers and for me. I'm also really honored to introduce 15 00:01:05,516 --> 00:01:09,395 our first speaker of the semester, Professor Kam Wing Chan 16 00:01:09,395 --> 00:01:13,982 from the University of Washington. Professor Chan is the author of two books. 17 00:01:13,982 --> 00:01:17,152 He's a professor of geography at the University of Washington. He's the author 18 00:01:17,152 --> 00:01:20,613 of two books. The first one, and it's a long title so I'm gonna get it exactly right, 19 00:01:20,613 --> 00:01:25,617 "Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinterpreting Urbanization in Post-1949 China." 20 00:01:25,617 --> 00:01:30,372 And also the volume "Urbanization with Chinese Characteristics" which came out, 21 00:01:30,372 --> 00:01:39,671 is now out, 2018. So it's brand new. He's written I think literally one million articles 22 00:01:39,671 --> 00:01:44,301 I won't list for you, you can quote me he has a million articles in press, 23 00:01:44,301 --> 00:01:48,763 and has also consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United 24 00:01:48,763 --> 00:01:55,143 Nations. And I think his research has been used in policy in many different ways. 25 00:01:55,143 --> 00:01:58,229 So I'm very excited to see what he has to tell us today. 26 00:01:58,229 --> 00:02:01,315 And I hope that you can all join me in welcoming him to Cornell. 27 00:02:08,572 --> 00:02:13,034 >> Good afternoon everybody. It's really a delight to come to visit this campus. 28 00:02:13,034 --> 00:02:20,416 I have heard of Cornell since, what, 1980s. I was even thinking of coming here, 29 00:02:20,416 --> 00:02:25,003 ended up somebody gave me some more money in Canada so I went to Toronto. 30 00:02:25,003 --> 00:02:29,966 So I miss this place. But finally this is my first time to come to Cornell 31 00:02:29,966 --> 00:02:38,431 so it's really a delight. And thanks to the East Asia Program, and Nick and Amala 32 00:02:38,431 --> 00:02:44,478 both work really hard to make things look very easy, somewhat easy to me. 33 00:02:44,478 --> 00:02:54,571 I woke up 4 o'clock this morning to catch the bus to come here. But I have a couple 34 00:02:54,571 --> 00:02:59,950 cups of coffee, three cups, one on the bus, which is really nice - that you reminded me 35 00:02:59,950 --> 00:03:06,623 I almost forgot about that - nice bus. I'm okay. I can debate with you all kinds 36 00:03:06,623 --> 00:03:11,043 of stuff. But since the first part is being taped so I'll be a little bit cautious. 37 00:03:11,043 --> 00:03:15,923 The real thing's at the end after it's not being taped. 38 00:03:15,923 --> 00:03:19,676 But let me do my presentation today. 39 00:03:19,676 --> 00:03:25,598 I think this is an issue, a very very large issue to me. 40 00:03:25,598 --> 00:03:32,854 I might need to try not to argue. And as I look at this in the last several years more, 41 00:03:32,854 --> 00:03:37,692 I mean, you will notice that urbanization is my baby for a long time. 42 00:03:37,692 --> 00:03:44,406 So this is something I started doing in the 80s, and all along I'm a single-subject 43 00:03:44,406 --> 00:03:49,536 professor, I just work on one thing. Urbanization. So I really, millions of things 44 00:03:49,536 --> 00:03:55,708 as Nick said, but that's not quite true. But in any case the children issue started 45 00:03:55,708 --> 00:04:02,088 to really appear on my radar screen more so. And I was just telling Nick 46 00:04:02,088 --> 00:04:08,886 that as I done this more, increasingly there is actually some connection 47 00:04:08,886 --> 00:04:13,473 even to my past history, to my history of my growing up. And so actually I wrote 48 00:04:13,473 --> 00:04:17,393 a piece. I'll send you to see that piece if you're interested. It's more of my 49 00:04:17,393 --> 00:04:23,315 personal journey, which has relevance to this, but today is not talking about 50 00:04:23,315 --> 00:04:26,318 my personal journey. It's not the occasion to talk about this. 51 00:04:26,318 --> 00:04:32,740 So today I will talk about more the larger picture of children in China. 52 00:04:32,740 --> 00:04:39,830 So what I would like to begin here is to show you some picture 53 00:04:39,830 --> 00:04:46,711 I went to in 2015. I'm going to visit this school again next month, 54 00:04:46,711 --> 00:04:51,590 I'll be in Shanghai in a month. And this is really my school that I have 55 00:04:51,590 --> 00:04:58,388 been going to a few times already. This is a migrant school in Pudong 56 00:04:58,388 --> 00:05:03,059 in Shanghai, September 2015, around this time. Actually it was around 57 00:05:03,059 --> 00:05:08,146 the Mid-Autumn Festival. Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival day. All Chinese 58 00:05:08,146 --> 00:05:14,235 celebrate this. The school actually looks pretty nice. It has about 500 students 59 00:05:14,235 --> 00:05:19,750 around that time, I think since then it has declined, from Grade 1 to 5. 60 00:05:19,750 --> 00:05:25,453 In Shanghai the elementary school covers only 1 to 5. Grade 6 is middle school. 61 00:05:25,453 --> 00:05:31,417 And that's very special. Actually elsewhere in China is 1 to 6, that's the elementary 62 00:05:31,417 --> 00:05:39,174 school. But in Shanghai there's something special. The students here are all migrant 63 00:05:39,174 --> 00:05:43,636 students. Around that time there's about 500 of them from Grade 1 to 5. 64 00:05:43,636 --> 00:05:48,230 And the migrant children of course is a special category of children in China. 65 00:05:48,230 --> 00:05:53,812 They come here with their parents from other provinces. In this particular case 66 00:05:53,820 --> 00:06:02,236 most of them, as I talked with them, I think 70% came from Anhui, 67 00:06:02,236 --> 00:06:05,155 which is the province not too far away from Shanghai. 68 00:06:06,740 --> 00:06:10,868 They do not have Shanghai house of registration status. They do not have 69 00:06:10,868 --> 00:06:19,459 Shanghai hukou. That's the most important distinction, that they come here without 70 00:06:19,459 --> 00:06:24,505 Shanghai's hukou, or house of registration. It's a kind of residential permit or status, 71 00:06:24,505 --> 00:06:30,010 and I'll explain this a little more. So I consider the migrant children, 72 00:06:30,050 --> 00:06:36,266 in my bigger scheme of work, I think they are the luckier children of the children 73 00:06:36,266 --> 00:06:41,145 of migrants. We'll talk about another category, which, not so lucky. 74 00:06:41,145 --> 00:06:48,318 And in this particular school especially, even luckier I would say. This is political. 75 00:06:48,318 --> 00:06:55,032 The school receives support from an NGO which I like a lot, it's called 76 00:06:55,032 --> 00:06:59,202 Stepping Stones, you can Google Stepping Stones you can find out about their work, 77 00:06:59,202 --> 00:07:04,540 which provides native English speaker volunteer to teach English in this school. 78 00:07:04,540 --> 00:07:07,460 So I was visiting on that day, I think it was a Friday, 79 00:07:07,460 --> 00:07:12,130 that these volunteer came to help. So what is happening, 80 00:07:12,130 --> 00:07:21,347 there is each class, 1 through 5. Sometimes there are two classes 81 00:07:21,347 --> 00:07:25,851 for each grade, sometimes three, depends. It's roughly two to three classes 82 00:07:25,851 --> 00:07:32,023 for each grade. I went to each of them. You can see that it's well supported, 83 00:07:32,023 --> 00:07:36,443 the volunteers are very energetic, very thoughtful, very careful. 84 00:07:36,443 --> 00:07:40,489 And when I reflect, I was sitting in the class at the back, I was watching some, 85 00:07:40,489 --> 00:07:45,702 I see that the English they are receiving around that time's definitely better 86 00:07:45,702 --> 00:07:50,372 than the English teacher that I had around the same grade. I grew up in Hong Kong 87 00:07:50,372 --> 00:07:56,044 I learned English in elementary school but I was only exposed 88 00:07:56,044 --> 00:08:02,258 to native speaker when I was in high school. We only have some 89 00:08:02,258 --> 00:08:09,222 Chinese English teacher that teach. I still actually connect with my 90 00:08:09,222 --> 00:08:13,142 Grade 1 English teacher. He was the one who really opened the door for me 91 00:08:13,142 --> 00:08:18,522 to all this whole new world. Without him probably today I was in China. 92 00:08:18,522 --> 00:08:22,692 I was a kid, I move to China. 93 00:08:22,692 --> 00:08:28,114 So this is what is happening. You can see that this is another volunteer teacher 94 00:08:28,114 --> 00:08:34,578 using props and all kinds of things, get children interested. During recess time 95 00:08:34,578 --> 00:08:39,249 you can see that these are the kids. They ran around in the hallway, 96 00:08:39,249 --> 00:08:45,629 they scream, they even got little bit rowdy I would say. Just like many other kids, 97 00:08:45,629 --> 00:08:50,842 normal kids would do. After sitting in the class for 40 minutes or so, 98 00:08:50,842 --> 00:08:57,473 they came out and run around elsewhere. As the principal of the school later told me, 99 00:08:57,473 --> 00:09:01,185 we had lunch together, talk about all the things that I saw and so on, 100 00:09:01,185 --> 00:09:06,022 these are very rough kids, tough kids. Maybe tough kids, that's the right word, 101 00:09:06,022 --> 00:09:13,404 not rough. Tough kids, from the countryside. From Shanghai, local kids. The examples 102 00:09:13,404 --> 00:09:16,573 she gave me was that these countryside kids coming from the countryside 103 00:09:16,573 --> 00:09:21,202 are more adventurous. They run, they do lots of things, they jump up and down more 104 00:09:21,202 --> 00:09:25,289 than the local kids a lot more. And the Shanghai kids tend to sit more straight 105 00:09:25,289 --> 00:09:34,839 and behave, so to speak. Sometimes they trip, they fall down, they get up immediately, 106 00:09:34,839 --> 00:09:41,345 they seldom cry. Which is quite different than the local kids who cry once they 107 00:09:41,345 --> 00:09:46,558 fell down. And even if they get hurt, have some scrapes, scratches, something, 108 00:09:46,558 --> 00:09:50,311 she said they just wipe it off and say hey, it's nothing. 109 00:09:50,311 --> 00:09:54,732 That's what most of the Anhui kids are doing. 110 00:09:56,567 --> 00:10:00,862 And they're also very happy. You can see. I think they at least look happy to me. 111 00:10:00,862 --> 00:10:04,365 When I try to take a picture of them they make all these things. 112 00:10:04,365 --> 00:10:09,953 So I think these are the more, I'll argue that maybe even more normal 113 00:10:09,953 --> 00:10:14,874 than the local kids in some way. Because the local kids sit straight 114 00:10:14,874 --> 00:10:17,210 and the teacher was worried that they will get hurt, 115 00:10:17,210 --> 00:10:21,672 and sometimes I heard that they were not even allowed 116 00:10:21,672 --> 00:10:24,842 to get out of the classroom because they're gonna get themselves in trouble. 117 00:10:24,842 --> 00:10:29,888 They don't want to, that teacher. These kids grew up in this case. 118 00:10:29,888 --> 00:10:33,710 Not in Anhui back in the hometown there, in Shanghai in these nice schools 119 00:10:33,710 --> 00:10:39,730 and being able to do all these things, and having really very good English lessons 120 00:10:39,730 --> 00:10:43,608 which was much better than my English teacher. So you can imagine that one day 121 00:10:43,608 --> 00:10:46,890 if they start from there and having something similar to mine, they have 122 00:10:46,890 --> 00:10:51,573 a better foundation than my foundation, you can see that definitely. 'Cause they will 123 00:10:51,573 --> 00:10:56,036 be able to hear English at a much earlier age. I still miss when there's a lot of words 124 00:10:56,036 --> 00:11:03,542 even after being in North America for 30 years. Because if you don't learn something 125 00:11:03,542 --> 00:11:10,799 when you're young, you're never going to learn unfortunately. So use your time 126 00:11:10,799 --> 00:11:13,885 when you are young to learn is very very important. 127 00:11:14,635 --> 00:11:19,807 Well on this I think I need to really also tell you the other picture. This is really 128 00:11:19,807 --> 00:11:26,145 the unfortunate case, unfortunately, that I've been paying a lot of attention to. 129 00:11:27,438 --> 00:11:31,066 And there are actually a very close connection with the other kids, 130 00:11:31,066 --> 00:11:36,071 the other migrant kids. And we actually in the last several years we have read a lot 131 00:11:36,071 --> 00:11:39,657 of stories. There are thousands of stories on this, and some of them are very tragic 132 00:11:39,657 --> 00:11:45,579 that make them sell in the headlines, international headlines. CNN, BBC, 133 00:11:45,579 --> 00:11:49,708 all these major news talk about this, report all this. But it may not have caught 134 00:11:49,708 --> 00:11:59,258 your attention. And here are two of the most tragic ones. One was in 2015, 135 00:11:59,258 --> 00:12:08,599 just three months before I visit that school out there. Four children were found dead 136 00:12:08,599 --> 00:12:16,815 in their home in Guizhou Province. The one boy and his three sisters 137 00:12:16,815 --> 00:12:24,780 were left behind in the poor village without a lot of proper care. They decided 138 00:12:24,780 --> 00:12:30,660 that they're going to end their life. So the eldest, the boy, started the whole thing. 139 00:12:30,660 --> 00:12:36,499 and they committed suicide together by drinking pesticide. So they killed 140 00:12:36,499 --> 00:12:42,379 themselves. The oldest boy was only 13 years old and his youngest sister was 5. 141 00:12:42,379 --> 00:12:48,343 So all these four kids belong to one family, decide to take their life by drinking pesticide. 142 00:12:50,900 --> 00:12:57,017 Also equally tragedy, just not too long ago in 2012, almost in the same location, 143 00:12:57,017 --> 00:13:02,855 same village. Another bunch of kids, five of them, five boys, was playing 144 00:13:02,855 --> 00:13:07,526 in the wintertime. They got themselves in a dumpster. They found that the dumpster 145 00:13:07,526 --> 00:13:16,993 was warmer. It was cold in winter. They got poisoned by the poisonous gas 146 00:13:16,993 --> 00:13:22,581 in the dumpster and they all got killed. So we can see that these are some 147 00:13:22,620 --> 00:13:28,628 very very tragic, the extreme side of all these. And these really draw the media 148 00:13:28,628 --> 00:13:32,882 and actually there are a lot of outcry, lot of very angry after this happen in China. 149 00:13:32,882 --> 00:13:36,844 in the last several years in some of these. So some of the things been doing 150 00:13:36,844 --> 00:13:40,180 to deal with these, I will talk about some of these and talk about the causes 151 00:13:40,180 --> 00:13:44,225 and talk about some of my research and so on. And maybe you will be interested 152 00:13:44,225 --> 00:13:49,897 in doing something, learning more about this. So what I want to draw here 153 00:13:49,897 --> 00:13:55,986 is talk about the China economic success story briefly. The China economic success 154 00:13:55,986 --> 00:14:01,866 story in the last 40 years in the nutshell in a very simplified form is that it's really 155 00:14:01,866 --> 00:14:07,704 China being able to become the world's factory. Made in China, you know, 156 00:14:07,704 --> 00:14:12,959 becoming the world's factory like this. And one of the crucial elements 157 00:14:12,959 --> 00:14:18,464 in making this work for all these is that, so these are migrants. This is a map 158 00:14:18,464 --> 00:14:25,762 that I drew on the major flow of migrants coming from the inland provinces 159 00:14:25,762 --> 00:14:31,100 to the coastal area here to work. During Chinese New Year they go back home 160 00:14:31,100 --> 00:14:41,400 and the most powerful thing that get this is that we have 170 million cheap 161 00:14:41,400 --> 00:14:47,990 and mobile labor in China that really make the China world's factory take. Of all these 162 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:53,911 I said the most powerful potent component of this is the China price. There's one thing 163 00:14:53,911 --> 00:14:58,374 called the China price. If you cannot beat the China price there's no way that you 164 00:14:58,374 --> 00:15:02,419 can survive. If you want to do anything you do with reference to the China price. 165 00:15:02,419 --> 00:15:08,800 China price sets the bottom out there and create the massive important thing. 166 00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:13,095 So I think this is quite familiar to all of us in the United States. 167 00:15:14,388 --> 00:15:21,019 So what I want to relate to this is that to talk about the China price we need to also 168 00:15:21,019 --> 00:15:27,274 talk about the Chinese urbanization. The Chinese urbanization here is very 169 00:15:27,310 --> 00:15:31,820 interesting because normally when we talk about urbanization, talk about urban 170 00:15:31,820 --> 00:15:36,074 population growth, we only have one line, Just this line. And this is what is happening 171 00:15:36,074 --> 00:15:45,540 in China. China's urban population used to be around 200 million, here, 180, 172 00:15:45,540 --> 00:15:57,342 but it move up to about I think around 800 million at the end of last year. 173 00:15:57,342 --> 00:16:02,305 So this is the typical story. But important thing is that the Chinese urbanization 174 00:16:02,305 --> 00:16:08,644 is not just one line. Not the first line, the top line actually, there's also 175 00:16:08,644 --> 00:16:15,858 the dotted line. The red line here also shows that, this line here, shows that 176 00:16:15,858 --> 00:16:20,071 you also actually have two types of population. One is called the urban 177 00:16:20,071 --> 00:16:24,366 population that people who live in the city, even the migrants. You also can 178 00:16:24,366 --> 00:16:28,828 differentiate this, actually another class of population is called people who have 179 00:16:28,828 --> 00:16:33,749 hukou. So you can see that the hukou population is actually much smaller. 180 00:16:33,749 --> 00:16:42,340 It's only around 600 million around this time. And in between you have about 220 million, 181 00:16:42,340 --> 00:16:46,636 the migrant population, people who do not have hukou. So this is what we're talking 182 00:16:46,636 --> 00:16:50,764 about. And along with the Chinese economic success, you can see that 183 00:16:50,800 --> 00:16:56,394 this part is really growing. This is what's happening along this line. So this is the time 184 00:16:56,394 --> 00:17:00,773 when China start to open. You can see that this is opening, but at the same time 185 00:17:00,773 --> 00:17:06,236 this is widening because you have all these cheap labor because the way it is done 186 00:17:06,236 --> 00:17:12,367 through the hukou system. So what is the hukou system? 187 00:17:12,367 --> 00:17:19,039 Here let me briefly go over this. So basically this is something that China 188 00:17:19,039 --> 00:17:23,710 set up in 1958. It's something China modeled after the Soviet system. 189 00:17:23,710 --> 00:17:29,048 And you created two systems, two societies, one is for the rural, one is for the urban. 190 00:17:29,048 --> 00:17:33,969 The urban class has the basic social welfare, basic services, security, 191 00:17:33,969 --> 00:17:37,847 while the other class will not have. So it created two populations and they are 192 00:17:37,847 --> 00:17:43,310 treated differently. This hukou system is the one whose served mainly as a system 193 00:17:43,340 --> 00:17:48,565 that prevent people from moving from the rural to urban. So hukou system 194 00:17:48,565 --> 00:17:52,527 created this, and of course things got changed and complicated in between. 195 00:17:52,527 --> 00:17:56,822 Finally, I think, it evolved into a system that is largely talking about whether you 196 00:17:56,822 --> 00:18:02,869 have local hukou or not local hukou citizen. So the local hukou mostly are urban 197 00:18:02,869 --> 00:18:08,457 population. The one that's hukou outside are non-local population or rural population. 198 00:18:08,457 --> 00:18:13,420 So the major structure remain. This is still remaining. It's largely pretty much working 199 00:18:13,420 --> 00:18:20,385 along this whole thing. So what does that mean really when we talk about having 200 00:18:20,385 --> 00:18:26,390 a hukou without having a local hukou? So I think it lists all the main things here. 201 00:18:28,558 --> 00:18:35,898 Legally, you don't have a local hukou, it means that you're not supposed to be 202 00:18:35,898 --> 00:18:41,069 living here forever. You can come here to work, but you get old, you need to go home. 203 00:18:41,069 --> 00:18:46,032 A lot of jobs actually are not open to you. Even though you're a Chinese citizen, 204 00:18:46,241 --> 00:18:51,704 if you don't have local hukou you are not allowed to access a lot of social benefits, 205 00:18:51,704 --> 00:18:55,832 unemployment insurance, retirement benefits. And then also very limited 206 00:18:55,832 --> 00:19:00,920 education opportunity to children. We'll talk about this more. There is no 207 00:19:00,920 --> 00:19:05,174 political rights, and other rights are limited. Political rights perhaps is not the most 208 00:19:05,174 --> 00:19:11,555 important right in China at the moment. So this is not too important. So you can 209 00:19:11,555 --> 00:19:14,516 come here to work, but I'm sorry you cannot use the social services. 210 00:19:14,516 --> 00:19:19,311 So that's why the labor can be cheapened in this way, because you just pay them 211 00:19:19,311 --> 00:19:24,066 the wages but not all the other things. They don't have access to them. 212 00:19:24,066 --> 00:19:28,653 In the Shanghai propaganda brochure you see that they say that all children 213 00:19:28,653 --> 00:19:32,907 are our children. They said it very upfront on the brochure. 214 00:19:32,907 --> 00:19:38,620 In reality, that's not quite true. Migrant kids, you don't belong here. 215 00:19:38,620 --> 00:19:44,542 That's what is really happening. And this is something that I want to delve into here 216 00:19:44,542 --> 00:19:51,298 a little bit here. In the bigger picture, this is a little op-ed I wrote some years 217 00:19:51,298 --> 00:19:56,886 ago, that's six or seven years ago now. It's called "In the City, but Not of the City." 218 00:19:56,886 --> 00:20:03,434 I talk about this Chinese urbanization. When this came out later also 219 00:20:03,434 --> 00:20:06,186 in the South China Morning Post, a major newspaper in Hong Kong, 220 00:20:06,186 --> 00:20:13,150 English newspaper. I think they put a really nice, what it's called, art. You can see that 221 00:20:13,150 --> 00:20:18,238 the one with hukou will be living here, the one without hukou will be in a basement, 222 00:20:18,238 --> 00:20:22,575 dark, maybe even no windows, and so on. And literally this is what is happening, 223 00:20:22,575 --> 00:20:27,413 like in Beijing even today. I think some estimate puts that there's about 224 00:20:27,413 --> 00:20:33,377 still a million people who live mostly in very substandard basement. A lot of these 225 00:20:33,377 --> 00:20:39,590 are air raid shelters. There are no windows, no facilities, and they live there. 226 00:20:39,590 --> 00:20:42,843 There's about a million people. Most of them are migrant workers 227 00:20:42,843 --> 00:20:48,807 in Beijing today. I get to know someone who's working on this subject. 228 00:20:48,807 --> 00:20:55,438 So when it come to the policy on the migrant children, this is what is happening, 229 00:20:55,438 --> 00:21:02,777 just a brief sum up here. The migrant children, as I've said, those who accompany 230 00:21:02,777 --> 00:21:10,367 the parents to the city. There are about 170 millions workers in the city 231 00:21:10,367 --> 00:21:16,831 according to I think a reasonable estimate they have done. And the 2000 census 232 00:21:16,831 --> 00:21:25,256 shows that there were about 35 million migrant children and about same in 2015 233 00:21:25,256 --> 00:21:30,468 bi-census or the mini-census. So they have not changed very much. 234 00:21:30,468 --> 00:21:34,680 But you can see, for those of you who are a little more demographic, you can see 235 00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:38,642 that the number here actually appears to be really small compared to 170 million 236 00:21:38,642 --> 00:21:44,689 workers because most of them, like 80%, 70%, married, you expect that at least, 237 00:21:44,689 --> 00:21:50,611 if they're just having one kid, you will be easily having at least 80 million kids. 238 00:21:50,611 --> 00:21:56,950 Like a couple, you know, you divide this by two you have 85 million. So in fact 239 00:21:56,950 --> 00:22:02,580 it worked out. You will see that, as I'll show you, we'll know that these 170 million 240 00:22:02,580 --> 00:22:07,292 migrant workers have a total of about 100 million children. So the question is 241 00:22:07,292 --> 00:22:14,340 that only about 35, or 1/3 of them, are able to come to the city. The other 2/3 242 00:22:14,340 --> 00:22:17,009 are left behind the countryside not with their parents. 243 00:22:17,009 --> 00:22:19,261 So this is what we have happening. 244 00:22:19,261 --> 00:22:25,225 So the Chinese education policy. '85, the mandatory nine-year, Grade 1 to 9 for all, 245 00:22:25,225 --> 00:22:30,438 that's in the Constitution. Education Law, 1995, says that everybody should have 246 00:22:30,438 --> 00:22:36,276 equal opportunity, that's also in the Education Law. 2001, they also here, 247 00:22:36,276 --> 00:22:45,076 migrant children cannot go to public school in the city. They can only go to makeshift 248 00:22:45,076 --> 00:22:48,954 migrant school. So what does a makeshift migrant school look like? 249 00:22:48,954 --> 00:22:56,044 I think this is a real picture in Beijing. So migrants in the 1990s in Beijing 250 00:22:56,044 --> 00:23:01,173 went to construction site and have a little stool as the desk. That's the way how they 251 00:23:01,173 --> 00:23:08,596 operate education in 1990s. This is a real picture of Beijing on this. Very very bad 252 00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:14,935 obviously, we can see that. So starting from 2001, a new policy now came out. 253 00:23:14,935 --> 00:23:20,815 The government mandated that from the Grade 1 to 9, these kids, migrant kids, 254 00:23:20,815 --> 00:23:27,405 should be educated in the place where their parents work. And this was not 255 00:23:27,405 --> 00:23:32,242 immediately implemented. It took a few years for the local government to implement 256 00:23:32,242 --> 00:23:38,498 some of it, not even not all of it. So this is gradually done. And it's very interesting. 257 00:23:38,498 --> 00:23:43,502 And if you look at Beijing, I noticed that while this was gradually implemented, 258 00:23:43,502 --> 00:23:49,007 partly because the great Beijing populace itself was aging rapidly, they will have 259 00:23:49,007 --> 00:23:53,344 not enough kids to go to public school. So on the one hand they're closing 260 00:23:53,344 --> 00:23:56,931 the public schools because there's not enough kids, but on the other hand 261 00:23:56,931 --> 00:24:01,351 the migrant kids was doing their school on the construction site. So you can see 262 00:24:01,351 --> 00:24:05,897 how ironic this happen. So there were teachers who were very angry, and partly 263 00:24:05,897 --> 00:24:10,276 because they want to protect their job too. There is a fight fought for the migrants. 264 00:24:10,276 --> 00:24:13,695 And so finally they were able to get into some of the schools. Open up a little bit 265 00:24:13,695 --> 00:24:18,199 public school or allow some migrant school to survive. So in the place 266 00:24:18,199 --> 00:24:23,037 where I have done more research in Shanghai, I estimated about 70 to 80% 267 00:24:23,037 --> 00:24:29,042 of existing migrant children actually was able to go to public schools, 268 00:24:29,042 --> 00:24:34,255 including some migrant school, Grade 1 to 9, and still have lot of problem. 269 00:24:34,255 --> 00:24:40,135 It's still even if they go to school, there's still lots of problems. For example, 270 00:24:40,135 --> 00:24:44,889 there were separate school for locals and migrants, like the school that I show you 271 00:24:44,889 --> 00:24:50,227 is totally, if you'd like to use the U.S. term, this is called segregation. 272 00:24:50,227 --> 00:24:55,482 Totally just migrants. Migrants go to one school, locals go to another school. 273 00:24:55,482 --> 00:24:58,693 So in that school, even though that I think it's good school, I think in my opinion 274 00:24:58,693 --> 00:25:04,657 it's good school. But even some of them work in the same school they also have 275 00:25:04,657 --> 00:25:09,661 lot of problems. For example, Professor Lan in Taiwan has done some really interesting 276 00:25:09,669 --> 00:25:13,540 work on this subject. This is based on her paper in The China Quarterly looking at 277 00:25:13,540 --> 00:25:19,128 this subject. In the school is very much still, in the same they actually were divided. 278 00:25:19,128 --> 00:25:26,551 So the migrants' children go to this section. The local go to this section. 279 00:25:26,551 --> 00:25:30,596 And they have no playground on this side. And there's actually a wall or fence 280 00:25:30,596 --> 00:25:36,268 that separate them. This is where you can see that. So this is what Professor Lan 281 00:25:36,268 --> 00:25:41,523 said, apartheid model of migrant schools, its integration. 282 00:25:41,523 --> 00:25:46,902 So you can see that this reminds us here, for people who understand U.S. history, 283 00:25:46,902 --> 00:25:51,156 will be the Jim Crow kind of thing that's going on here. 284 00:25:51,156 --> 00:25:56,744 And this is still very much, in fact I just read a news two weeks ago on this, 285 00:25:56,744 --> 00:26:02,082 this is happening in Jiangsu, in Suzhou exactly. There's big news on this subject 286 00:26:02,082 --> 00:26:08,338 about migrants being integrated in some of this form. And then the local parents 287 00:26:08,338 --> 00:26:13,634 rebel against this. They didn't like this and so on. So you can see they still face 288 00:26:13,634 --> 00:26:18,680 a lot of problems. But this is not the end of this. This is only one part of this. 289 00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:22,433 Actually one of the more important parts, and sometimes this is overlooked, 290 00:26:22,433 --> 00:26:29,648 is that even though they provide some limited opening for them to go to 1 to 9, 291 00:26:29,648 --> 00:26:35,403 they are totally off limits when they go to beyond 9. So beyond 9 you have to go 292 00:26:35,429 --> 00:26:40,783 back home. So this is really where the tricks and the impact really start to come out. 293 00:26:40,783 --> 00:26:46,496 So to continue they have to go back home. And also, in order to study in their home, 294 00:26:46,496 --> 00:26:54,253 like Anhui's exam. Anhui's exams for high school, because if you want to test into 295 00:26:54,253 --> 00:27:02,427 high school you have to go through an exam called Zhongkao. The curriculum, 296 00:27:02,427 --> 00:27:07,473 going into the high school, called Zhongkao, and also college, in different provinces 297 00:27:07,473 --> 00:27:13,312 are different. So there's no way that you finish your Grade 9 in Shanghai, 298 00:27:13,312 --> 00:27:18,358 lucky if you can finish all that because it's not easy even to get into Grade 6 through 9, 299 00:27:18,358 --> 00:27:22,111 is very hard actually in Shanghai for migrant, increasingly very very hard. 300 00:27:22,111 --> 00:27:28,960 So even if you can do that you cannot really finish Grade 9 and jump back to go 301 00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:34,997 to Grade 10 in Anhui. Because you had to go through that test. The test has different 302 00:27:34,997 --> 00:27:40,127 things, the curriculum, Anhui's different, Guangxi has a different curriculum 303 00:27:40,127 --> 00:27:43,546 every province is a different thing. So you don't do that. You actually have to leave 304 00:27:43,546 --> 00:27:49,093 much earlier. You have to maybe start Grade 10 at least out there. And then grades 305 00:27:49,093 --> 00:27:53,263 through Grade 11, and then you can do your test Grade 12. So you can see 306 00:27:53,263 --> 00:27:58,518 there are all kinds of odd complications out there, even though on paper you can 307 00:27:58,518 --> 00:28:05,107 go through 1 through 9, reality you cannot. And there's a really interesting Malala 308 00:28:05,107 --> 00:28:13,656 in China that was not drawing the same kind of attention of Malala elsewhere. 309 00:28:15,283 --> 00:28:26,019 This girl Zhan Haite, that's her name here, was actually born in Shenzhen when their 310 00:28:26,019 --> 00:28:31,213 parents was a migrant in Shenzhen. I think she originally was from Jiangxi. 311 00:28:31,213 --> 00:28:37,302 And they moved to Shanghai, she was able to actually finish Grade 1 through 9. 312 00:28:37,302 --> 00:28:41,764 And then suddenly, you know, she said that she could not continue. 313 00:28:41,764 --> 00:28:47,353 So she came out and wrote a long article. And it's interesting this got published 314 00:28:47,353 --> 00:28:53,066 in the People's Daily on this subject. So it generate tons of attention. 315 00:28:53,070 --> 00:28:59,697 And during this time, this is 2012, on this side of fighting. And you can see 316 00:28:59,697 --> 00:29:06,619 that she was featured in an international newspaper on this fighting, right here 317 00:29:06,619 --> 00:29:14,168 I think this is her, about education justice and about this right here equal testing 318 00:29:14,168 --> 00:29:19,673 on this and draw on and really pick a fight. I think she finally could not really go on 319 00:29:19,673 --> 00:29:23,426 even though despite all these attention, people supported her, of course the local 320 00:29:23,426 --> 00:29:27,846 was very much against her. The locals said you don't belong here. You belong 321 00:29:27,846 --> 00:29:30,766 somewhere else, go back home, that sort of thing. There was a lot of things 322 00:29:30,766 --> 00:29:37,438 being said. So this drawn a lot of attention. And if I'm not mistaken, I think the latest 323 00:29:37,438 --> 00:29:41,317 news I heard last year that she was finally admitted to a top college, 324 00:29:41,317 --> 00:29:45,404 because by the time she's now in college, into the United States. Last year, I think. 325 00:29:45,404 --> 00:29:50,283 I'm not 100% sure but I think that's something that, because of that fight, 326 00:29:50,283 --> 00:29:55,037 she was able to go to some school and finally got into the top college. 327 00:29:55,955 --> 00:30:01,293 So what is happening here. If we can go down to the little numbers I can show you 328 00:30:01,293 --> 00:30:05,046 because I love numbers, I love the population number. You can see that here 329 00:30:05,046 --> 00:30:12,803 I show you, using the census data of 2010, this is Chinese Sixth Census, 2010, 330 00:30:12,803 --> 00:30:18,391 and show you the age structure, or what it collected is shown in the census data. 331 00:30:18,391 --> 00:30:22,645 So what is happening. You can see that here the darker color here shows 332 00:30:22,645 --> 00:30:29,442 the people without hukou, and the lighter color here shows those kids with the local 333 00:30:29,442 --> 00:30:33,696 hukou. You can see that if you look at it, the eighth year, this is eight, baby here, 334 00:30:33,696 --> 00:30:37,866 all the way through 17, lot of kids. You can see that here is more or less 335 00:30:37,866 --> 00:30:43,496 a more stable kind of style, which shows there's some little ups and down affecting 336 00:30:43,496 --> 00:30:48,959 each year a little variation in policy of the one-child policy, sometimes a little more 337 00:30:48,959 --> 00:30:52,754 stringent. Sometimes I think maybe there is a good year, this is maybe 338 00:30:52,754 --> 00:30:56,967 the Year of the Dragon. The parents want them born Dragon. So it will show up 339 00:30:56,967 --> 00:31:00,261 a little bit more. But this you can see went up by a large amount, 340 00:31:00,261 --> 00:31:05,849 fluctuating around 80,000 a year, around there something. But if you look at the 341 00:31:05,849 --> 00:31:10,061 migrant children the picture is quite different. You can see that they came here 342 00:31:10,061 --> 00:31:14,023 a lot more earlier. Like when they're young they'll go with their parents, usually 343 00:31:14,023 --> 00:31:18,194 they're in Shanghai. But they started to be dropping. And of course then you get into, 344 00:31:18,194 --> 00:31:22,656 more drop, this is halfway, into the middle school year, is dropping even more 345 00:31:22,656 --> 00:31:26,910 and more. And then suddenly when you come to age 14 there are really very few. 346 00:31:26,910 --> 00:31:29,912 So you can see that then this suddenly go up again because some of them, 347 00:31:29,912 --> 00:31:33,457 they are now coming here to work. They become workers. So suddenly then 348 00:31:33,457 --> 00:31:36,793 they come back here. You can see that this is what is happening. You can see 349 00:31:36,793 --> 00:31:43,132 this is quite true. So this is also correlate very well with the enrollment data. 350 00:31:43,132 --> 00:31:47,344 This is enrollment of migrant. Here around the same time you see that in Grade 1 351 00:31:47,344 --> 00:31:51,348 they have a lot of them. And then they started dropping, and here after 352 00:31:51,348 --> 00:31:55,935 Grade 6, Grade 7 drops very rapidly. So you can do some numbers, 353 00:31:55,935 --> 00:31:59,063 you can calculate some numbers. I did some of this in some of my articles. 354 00:31:59,063 --> 00:32:05,402 But the big picture I want to show you then. The result of all these is create 355 00:32:05,402 --> 00:32:11,949 a very very extraordinary model, in my view. Because when you are seeing a very large 356 00:32:11,949 --> 00:32:15,494 population like Shanghai, Shanghai is around 24 million people, this is like 357 00:32:15,494 --> 00:32:22,000 whole California almost, you never see a structure that look like this. 358 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:26,212 How will you describe this shape? Anyone? 359 00:32:27,046 --> 00:32:27,880 Yes? 360 00:32:28,339 --> 00:32:32,300 Anyone want, is there anyone? 361 00:32:32,759 --> 00:32:34,511 >> It looks like an upside down top. 362 00:32:34,511 --> 00:32:37,513 >> Ok that's good. I want something a little more elegant. 363 00:32:37,597 --> 00:32:39,140 >> A spade. >> Is it a spade? 364 00:32:39,140 --> 00:32:41,267 >> Spade, yeah. That's good. Anyone? 365 00:32:41,392 --> 00:32:43,310 >> Upside down pyramid. >> A tree. 366 00:32:43,310 --> 00:32:47,314 >> Yeah, that's true. That is right. This is pyramid, this is a bit typical. 367 00:32:47,314 --> 00:32:48,440 But what is this? 368 00:32:48,731 --> 00:32:49,566 >> A Christmas tree. 369 00:32:49,566 --> 00:32:53,319 >> Christmas tree. Did you heard me before? No? 370 00:32:53,319 --> 00:32:54,904 >> I just don't know how no one said that. 371 00:32:54,904 --> 00:32:59,407 >> Okay, yeah. This is a Christmas tree. Yeah exactly. This is a Christmas tree. 372 00:32:59,407 --> 00:33:04,120 In fact my colleague who specialized in demography was stunned. She said 373 00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:08,290 this is a Christmas tree. And you have never seen that large population 374 00:33:08,290 --> 00:33:12,294 at this level, like more than ten million, will show up as a Christmas tree. 375 00:33:12,294 --> 00:33:16,589 So you can see that this is amazing because you can see that it's all the adults 376 00:33:16,589 --> 00:33:21,010 here. When it come to the kid it's really very little, very few. And this comes up 377 00:33:21,010 --> 00:33:24,555 from two reasons. One, of course, the local, in fact I have some data 378 00:33:24,555 --> 00:33:29,350 that breaks down the data, but we're not getting too complicated. 379 00:33:29,350 --> 00:33:33,813 Actually the local kids also are shrinking because of one-child policy of all the law. 380 00:33:33,813 --> 00:33:40,277 So they are shrinking. The nonlocal, the migrants, are not allowed or barred 381 00:33:40,277 --> 00:33:45,573 indirectly from coming. So the quantities very weird, I think in a way, and very 382 00:33:45,573 --> 00:33:51,578 unsustainable, you can see. This is not going to be sustainable. You can see 383 00:33:51,578 --> 00:33:55,749 that this is Beijing, the same. This is Shanghai, this is Beijing. 384 00:33:55,749 --> 00:34:01,712 It shows the same. I wrote a piece on this in the South China Morning Post called 385 00:34:01,712 --> 00:34:08,176 "China's Missing Children." So you ask, where do they go, the missing children. 386 00:34:09,636 --> 00:34:14,891 And you can see that you can also put a comparison. I think I put a comparison 387 00:34:14,909 --> 00:34:19,728 here. You can see this is Shanghai. This is Hong Kong. So Hong Kong is aging 388 00:34:19,728 --> 00:34:25,066 even more rapidly. This is Japan, which is also aging rapidly. But you will never see 389 00:34:25,066 --> 00:34:29,820 something like this at this end. In fact I calculated that if you look at what 390 00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:37,202 happened in Shanghai, the percentage of children, meaning people who are 391 00:34:37,202 --> 00:34:46,877 below age 18, like 0 to 17, is only about 10% of population. Hong Kong still has 16%. 392 00:34:46,877 --> 00:34:54,133 Japan has 17%. So you can see that this is a far more precarious, far more aging 393 00:34:54,133 --> 00:34:59,096 in the situation. So you obviously want to ask where do these kids go. 394 00:34:59,096 --> 00:35:04,809 Like they should be there with the parents but then they're not. Obviously the answer 395 00:35:04,809 --> 00:35:08,271 is pretty simple because they are left behind. They are left behind. 396 00:35:08,271 --> 00:35:12,566 And you can see this is actually a more refined picture of them. You see the locals. 397 00:35:12,566 --> 00:35:16,320 This is local population, those who have hukou, they are shrinking too. 398 00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:23,826 But the migrants is predominantly just young adults here in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 399 00:35:23,826 --> 00:35:29,706 and then very few, very few. So these are the left-behind children. 400 00:35:29,706 --> 00:35:35,878 And the left-behind children, that I already alluded to earlier on, is now running 401 00:35:35,878 --> 00:35:46,179 somewhere around about 2/3 of 100 million. Because all the migrant workers 402 00:35:46,179 --> 00:35:50,475 is about 170 million, we're talking about workers. All of them you can expect 403 00:35:50,475 --> 00:35:55,145 that there are about 100 million children. 1/3 of them ended up in a city with their 404 00:35:55,145 --> 00:35:59,149 parents. 2/3 of them end up in the countryside. So this is what is happening, 405 00:35:59,149 --> 00:36:06,113 some of the figures. In the most extreme case about two million, for example, 406 00:36:06,113 --> 00:36:10,826 using the 2010 census, show that two million of them live alone with no parents 407 00:36:10,826 --> 00:36:16,206 at all, no relatives at all. Most of them live with relatives, with their grandparents. 408 00:36:20,334 --> 00:36:23,420 There's some figure that shows that they don't see their parents very much, 409 00:36:23,420 --> 00:36:29,384 only once a year, so on so forth. I did some calculation, it shows that Shanghai 410 00:36:29,384 --> 00:36:35,472 alone itself created roughly about two to three million left-behind children. 411 00:36:35,472 --> 00:36:38,934 So depending also on assumption that you use, but I can really pin this down 412 00:36:38,934 --> 00:36:44,564 to be quite accurate to be around two to three million here. So this is another picture 413 00:36:44,564 --> 00:36:48,067 of the snapshot of this is coming up on CNN. 414 00:36:49,985 --> 00:36:56,282 Using the 2010 census can give you an idea about what this is all about. 415 00:36:56,282 --> 00:37:03,747 About half the children live with one parent. Mostly the man, the father. 416 00:37:03,747 --> 00:37:08,585 There are also some mothers too who have left. But there's a one-parent family, 417 00:37:08,585 --> 00:37:13,214 about half of them. And then another 1/3 of them live with grandparents. 418 00:37:13,214 --> 00:37:18,427 And then another 10% live with relatives. And then a small percentage that basically 419 00:37:18,427 --> 00:37:23,598 just alone. Usually these are a little bit older, these are usually teenager, here. 420 00:37:23,598 --> 00:37:29,729 Some even are very early teenager, like 10, 12 years. And there are some 421 00:37:29,729 --> 00:37:33,357 of the numbers there, obviously have all kinds of issues. 422 00:37:34,430 --> 00:37:41,739 The 2015 mini-census, China carry out a national 1% survey on this, 423 00:37:41,739 --> 00:37:47,202 and this is a report that's published last year based on the same kind of criteria. 424 00:37:47,202 --> 00:37:50,288 This give you some sense of what is happening. So you can see that 425 00:37:50,288 --> 00:37:59,046 this is 2015. What was happening, as I've shown, these are the left-behind children. 426 00:37:59,046 --> 00:38:03,842 And these are migrant children on the right side. 427 00:38:06,803 --> 00:38:09,889 So this is migrant children. This is the left-behind children. You can see that 428 00:38:09,889 --> 00:38:13,600 it has not changed very much over there. This is what is happening. 429 00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:16,269 If you're interested we can come back and look at this. 430 00:38:18,438 --> 00:38:22,150 This is something just freshly done just about two weeks ago 431 00:38:22,150 --> 00:38:26,195 to give you some sense of what is happening in terms of bigger picture. 432 00:38:26,195 --> 00:38:31,575 You can see that we can look at more modern kind. You can see that 433 00:38:31,575 --> 00:38:38,164 this start to grow along with the large increasing migrant population. 434 00:38:38,164 --> 00:38:42,042 Look at them all because here you can see that in 2000 you have only about 435 00:38:42,042 --> 00:38:46,087 100 million but now it's gone to about 170 million. Of course their children that are 436 00:38:46,087 --> 00:38:50,341 going with them are rising. But most of time actually you can see that the left-behind 437 00:38:50,341 --> 00:38:56,529 children is doubled right here from 30 million to about 70 million so altogether 438 00:38:56,529 --> 00:39:02,852 they make up about 100 million children of migrant and this is about 1/3 of all 439 00:39:02,852 --> 00:39:10,400 the children in China. So 1/3 of children in China is in that category. As a percentage 440 00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:15,822 of all children you can see that it's 40%, 38%. Look at this, if you can count this. 441 00:39:15,822 --> 00:39:22,036 So you can look at the various indicator, it will give you the major trend. 442 00:39:22,036 --> 00:39:27,499 So what is going on here. You can see they're increasing, but the increasing 443 00:39:27,499 --> 00:39:30,668 are mostly happen in the left-behind children. So increasingly there are more 444 00:39:30,700 --> 00:39:34,922 left behind. Even though they're doing this. 445 00:39:36,173 --> 00:39:44,138 The left behind children, as you can expect, face a lot of issues. The more extreme 446 00:39:44,138 --> 00:39:49,518 case, there are many many, there's scores of all these. This is a newspaper that I 447 00:39:49,518 --> 00:39:54,720 happened to be reading on the day that I arrived in Beijing in the 1930s. 448 00:39:54,720 --> 00:40:00,778 This is on the China Daily on the front page. They talk about, as you can expect, 449 00:40:00,778 --> 00:40:06,825 sex offenders that prey on the children left behind. And sometimes most scary 450 00:40:06,849 --> 00:40:12,955 some of these actually are teachers. So in some province, if I remember 451 00:40:12,955 --> 00:40:19,044 correctly, in one province, likely Henan, they even now have taken a very draconian 452 00:40:19,044 --> 00:40:24,757 measure that in the girls' dormitory, because a lot of girls now actually are 453 00:40:24,757 --> 00:40:29,428 going in the boarding school. This is another interesting part of the left-behind children 454 00:40:29,428 --> 00:40:35,934 that because of the consolidation of the schools. Rural schools are being closed 455 00:40:35,934 --> 00:40:41,480 down because depopulation. So they consolidate the school into towns, 456 00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:47,235 or into some small major centers. And this will create a really long distance 457 00:40:47,235 --> 00:40:52,031 they cannot do the daily commute back home, so they have to go boarding school. 458 00:40:52,031 --> 00:40:56,494 Boarding school create all kinds of issues, including issue of sex abuse. 459 00:40:56,494 --> 00:41:00,539 Because when they stay overnight, there will be times that people can take them 460 00:41:00,539 --> 00:41:03,250 out of there. And some of these unfortunately, it's upsetting, are teachers. 461 00:41:03,250 --> 00:41:09,630 So now in one place, they even make a very draconian measure that the girls' 462 00:41:09,630 --> 00:41:14,718 dormitory, no matter what reason, no matter what time of day, the male person, 463 00:41:14,718 --> 00:41:19,139 either a boy or teacher whatever cannot go into the dormitory, to prevent this from 464 00:41:19,139 --> 00:41:25,186 happening. No any excuse. So you can see the seriousness of this. So there will be 465 00:41:25,186 --> 00:41:28,647 things like this that's more on the more serious side. There are things that are 466 00:41:28,647 --> 00:41:33,860 less serious but still very troublesome, of very great concern. There are all kinds 467 00:41:33,860 --> 00:41:36,279 of accidents that happen to them when the parents are not around. 468 00:41:36,279 --> 00:41:41,742 Like the kids I talk about that got themselves into a dumpster got killed by accident. 469 00:41:41,742 --> 00:41:46,538 So there are, as I said, there are tons of these all the time, anytime. If you 470 00:41:46,538 --> 00:41:51,751 followed it closely you'll see that that's all kinds of stuff like this all the time. 471 00:41:51,751 --> 00:41:57,547 Some that's very very heartbreaking to hear some of these. And even those 472 00:41:57,547 --> 00:42:01,551 who don't seem to get into accidents and things, but they also suffer more. 473 00:42:01,551 --> 00:42:05,513 There are study of study that shows that they suffer from psychological 474 00:42:05,513 --> 00:42:11,101 separation stress. They have all kinds of issues. Maybe sometimes they have 475 00:42:11,140 --> 00:42:17,815 a little more money compared to the children with parents around. 476 00:42:17,815 --> 00:42:21,902 The migrant parent tend to have a little bit money because they are working outside, 477 00:42:21,902 --> 00:42:25,906 they send money. They have a little more pocket money to use. But they suffer 478 00:42:25,906 --> 00:42:30,159 from a lot of things. They miss their parents, they function do not social very 479 00:42:30,159 --> 00:42:35,581 well, they are all kinds of do this. There is actually a very good video 480 00:42:35,581 --> 00:42:38,291 on The Wall Street Journal website, if you like you can go on and watch this. 481 00:42:38,291 --> 00:42:44,547 It's talking about some unordinary kid. How she, being a six or seven year old, 482 00:42:44,547 --> 00:42:50,677 do the daily chore as an adult, cooking, everything, and becoming more or less 483 00:42:50,677 --> 00:42:57,225 an adult. This is actually a very good girl. She did well in school. That was featured 484 00:42:57,225 --> 00:43:04,356 in The Wall Street Journal on the video on this. So what I want to then do, 485 00:43:04,356 --> 00:43:11,070 this is some of my latest research on this subject there. Recently, this is the last few 486 00:43:11,070 --> 00:43:21,288 months, I examine the Chinese census and also the mini-census data that are 487 00:43:21,288 --> 00:43:25,750 following, 2015 mini-census. So there are a lot of samples that you can play with. 488 00:43:25,750 --> 00:43:31,880 So we can do some geography, look at some geography of all these different 489 00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:36,593 type of children. So here I show you one picture. You can see that if we look at 490 00:43:36,593 --> 00:43:41,722 the percentage term about each province, Beijing being a province in the Chinese 491 00:43:41,722 --> 00:43:47,227 administrative classification, you can see that this give you some sense of, 492 00:43:47,227 --> 00:43:53,691 the color here shows the children of non-migrants. So these are the children 493 00:43:53,691 --> 00:43:58,487 of non-migrants. But these are children of migrants. So you can see that these 494 00:43:58,487 --> 00:44:04,159 provinces here, like Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Sichuan, are the heaviest. 495 00:44:04,159 --> 00:44:10,289 You can see that more than half the children that were surveyed in the 2015 496 00:44:10,289 --> 00:44:16,711 mini-census are actually children of migrants. So you can see that this is 497 00:44:16,711 --> 00:44:23,092 very very prominent. So half of the kids in these provinces are actually the children 498 00:44:23,092 --> 00:44:27,679 of migrant. And then even in the very extreme here there are very few of them, 499 00:44:27,679 --> 00:44:33,476 they still have like 25%. So this is almost universal, point I'm trying to make. 500 00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:40,359 And obviously this is also somewhat expected because this is the parent's 501 00:44:40,359 --> 00:44:45,987 pattern that I show you. This is coming up on the 2015 mini-census. So they move 502 00:44:45,987 --> 00:44:49,615 from the inland to the coastal areas. As we all know, these are the major 503 00:44:49,615 --> 00:44:57,122 migratory flow. And here I do some mapping of where they are in terms of the numbers. 504 00:44:57,122 --> 00:45:00,333 So the major concentration here is in Guangdong, as you can expect, 505 00:45:00,333 --> 00:45:05,588 migrant children. Fujian, Jiangsu, Shanghai, and then here Shandong 506 00:45:05,588 --> 00:45:11,218 and Beijing. And then the left-behind children actually are obviously in the inland. 507 00:45:11,218 --> 00:45:17,682 Sichuan, here Anhui, and so on, Jiangxi. These are the major ones 508 00:45:17,682 --> 00:45:23,520 that has color. So you can see that this pattern here of course is very much 509 00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:30,860 resembling the parents' geography while the other one is showing where 510 00:45:30,860 --> 00:45:31,611 they come from. 511 00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:39,951 And then I also did another exercise here trying to do a little bit of measuring 512 00:45:39,951 --> 00:45:47,875 how many migrant children, or trying to generate how many left-behind children 513 00:45:47,875 --> 00:45:52,712 each province created by comparing some of the figures. So what I try to do 514 00:45:52,712 --> 00:46:01,720 is that I take the migrant adult population here in each province and then multiply 515 00:46:01,720 --> 00:46:11,854 with a national percentage, roughly about 0.45 ratio, 45%, meaning that each migrant 516 00:46:11,854 --> 00:46:18,986 should create about 0.45 kid. So I can generate how many kids this migrant era 517 00:46:18,986 --> 00:46:24,240 will have. And then compare how many actually with them in the destination. 518 00:46:24,240 --> 00:46:31,997 So from here then you can generate finally the migrant children that are left behind, 519 00:46:31,997 --> 00:46:35,041 the number of migrant children that are left behind that's created, 520 00:46:35,041 --> 00:46:40,338 and then you can work out the percentage. So this is doing a little math, playing 521 00:46:40,338 --> 00:46:44,466 with this. And then we can then generate some result and look at which province 522 00:46:44,466 --> 00:46:49,804 is doing bad, which province is nastier to migrant children so that they have to 523 00:46:49,804 --> 00:46:54,141 keep the kids. Because either through the school system or through the household 524 00:46:54,141 --> 00:46:58,770 registration system, the local has a lot of latitude and they implement it differently 525 00:46:58,770 --> 00:47:03,650 in different provinces. So what I'm trying to do here is try to look at the degree 526 00:47:03,650 --> 00:47:09,030 of deterrence in each province by measuring the percentage of their kids 527 00:47:09,030 --> 00:47:13,075 that weren't able to make it to the destination. So this is the math. 528 00:47:13,075 --> 00:47:18,329 And then we can create a chart of this. So this is creating a chart of the left-behind 529 00:47:18,329 --> 00:47:24,210 children generated by each province. So you can see that on the top year 530 00:47:24,210 --> 00:47:31,299 all of the migrants that end up in Tianjin, about 85% of them actually are left behind. 531 00:47:31,299 --> 00:47:36,929 So only 15% of the children of migrants was able to make it to Tianjin with their 532 00:47:36,929 --> 00:47:43,268 parents. The other 85% were left behind elsewhere, for migrants whose destination 533 00:47:43,268 --> 00:47:47,188 was Tianjin. And this is not surprising. You can see Beijing is at the top here. 534 00:47:47,188 --> 00:47:54,820 Beijing is about 80%, Shanghai is about 80%, only 20% was able with them. 535 00:47:54,820 --> 00:47:58,865 And you can do this and then you can do all the provinces. Guizhou, Henan, Hebei 536 00:47:58,865 --> 00:48:03,411 actually turn out to be the more friendlier. They have a high percentage of about 537 00:48:03,411 --> 00:48:06,497 half of them being able to go with them, still half of them were left behind 538 00:48:06,497 --> 00:48:11,209 in the countryside. But even Guizhou here, considered to be actually more lenient, 539 00:48:11,209 --> 00:48:14,740 you can see that still half of them, but elsewhere you can see that there are 540 00:48:14,740 --> 00:48:20,384 a lot of them, about easily on average about 2/3 of them, are left behind. 541 00:48:20,384 --> 00:48:25,513 But in a more extreme case, Tianjin, you have about 85% those that are left behind. 542 00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:35,606 So these are the places, here, here, these six or seven places here are really 543 00:48:35,606 --> 00:48:42,195 the most deterrent, most unfriendly to migrant children. So that's why 544 00:48:42,195 --> 00:48:47,116 they have to end up having their kids in the countryside. Because things are making 545 00:48:47,116 --> 00:48:48,700 very hard for them right there. 546 00:48:50,118 --> 00:48:55,540 It's also very interesting, I also want to make a note here that while I was doing this 547 00:48:55,540 --> 00:49:03,589 I was looking at also some other research that was evaluating the provincial policy 548 00:49:03,589 --> 00:49:09,052 friendliness to children. It was very interesting. The Beijing Normal University, 549 00:49:09,052 --> 00:49:11,888 they published a report, in fact they've been doing this for many years, 550 00:49:11,888 --> 00:49:17,726 they published the report. I looked at their 2017 report on this and they identified 551 00:49:17,726 --> 00:49:22,605 five provinces, five or six provinces that are considered the best, top provinces, 552 00:49:22,605 --> 00:49:31,029 to children in China. They have a rating on this. Guess what? Those five provinces 553 00:49:31,029 --> 00:49:37,869 are the top right here. This is so amazing. So it must be either their data is wrong, 554 00:49:37,869 --> 00:49:41,163 because on mine the way that I've been doing the data works. 555 00:49:41,163 --> 00:49:48,044 But on their chart they came up to be the best in terms of children-friendly policy 556 00:49:48,044 --> 00:49:54,508 in those provinces. But I also think that their data are probably right. It's a step. 557 00:49:54,508 --> 00:49:58,079 The way that, however, they look at it is that they are looking at only the local 558 00:49:58,079 --> 00:50:01,431 children. They are not concerned about migrant children at all. Migrant children 559 00:50:01,431 --> 00:50:08,521 is not really in their purview. Not at all. So we can see that in fact this speak to 560 00:50:08,521 --> 00:50:13,650 a very different two worlds. The places here that are considered the best 561 00:50:13,650 --> 00:50:17,112 for all the children are in fact the worst places for migrant children. 562 00:50:17,112 --> 00:50:24,159 This is really very two different worlds that we're looking at. I was quite amazed. 563 00:50:24,159 --> 00:50:29,039 Later when I find out this, this is later when I look at comparative study, 564 00:50:29,039 --> 00:50:32,542 I thought they will be somewhat similar, but it was not it was really totally opposite. 565 00:50:33,418 --> 00:50:38,464 So I did something similar but I'm not gonna get into, I think we don't have time 566 00:50:38,464 --> 00:50:41,425 to really get into this table, which it just shows similar result. 567 00:50:42,425 --> 00:50:45,720 So what is happening here? Let me conclude here briefly. 568 00:50:49,056 --> 00:50:52,393 Well China actually has started doing something on the migrant children. 569 00:50:52,393 --> 00:50:57,856 In fact Li Keqiang said that the government is going to do the utmost to protect 570 00:50:57,856 --> 00:51:01,400 all the migrant children, left-behind children. They are our children too. 571 00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:06,071 Talk about some of these here. In reality, particularly when the policy 572 00:51:06,071 --> 00:51:10,033 that was being implemented at the local level, they are not actually not very friendly, 573 00:51:10,033 --> 00:51:16,580 particularly in the very large city like Shanghai, Beijing. In Beijing, in I think 574 00:51:16,580 --> 00:51:24,170 2015-2016, there was all the children that was demonstrating in the Bureau 575 00:51:24,170 --> 00:51:29,091 of Education in Beijing, just right in front of the bureau for a month protesting. 576 00:51:29,091 --> 00:51:33,220 And you can see there they have something very simple. They want to go to school. 577 00:51:33,220 --> 00:51:37,349 But they were not. So the migrant kids were there for almost a month with their 578 00:51:37,350 --> 00:51:46,857 parents. They were protesting. And this went on. This is not just happening 579 00:51:46,857 --> 00:51:50,193 in Beijing, elsewhere too. In some of the provinces you can see that this is all 580 00:51:50,193 --> 00:51:55,406 happening. This is in Zhejiang, the same thing that's happening. In one very 581 00:51:55,406 --> 00:52:02,287 extreme case, this father, after numerous attempt, the family stay in Beijing 582 00:52:02,287 --> 00:52:05,874 for many many year but they miss one period of one of the documents. 583 00:52:05,874 --> 00:52:12,713 So on the final day, I think this is late May, when the result of whether his daughter 584 00:52:12,713 --> 00:52:16,633 was able to get into school or not, public school, after numerous attempt, 585 00:52:16,633 --> 00:52:24,307 numerous months, weeks of running around different bureaucracy, he was told 586 00:52:24,307 --> 00:52:33,148 that his daughter cannot go to school. In that rage he poured kerosene on himself 587 00:52:33,148 --> 00:52:40,613 and lit a fire and burned himself in a serious injury. He did not die in that. 588 00:52:40,613 --> 00:52:45,992 So you can see that things occurring were that extreme, into that sort of thing, 2016. 589 00:52:45,992 --> 00:52:52,582 This is even reported in the Chinese newspaper. He was seriously burned. 590 00:52:52,582 --> 00:53:00,714 At the end of the Chinese New Year you also started to see some of these, 591 00:53:00,714 --> 00:53:03,591 and this was captured by some of the most sympathetic reporters. 592 00:53:03,591 --> 00:53:07,720 This is at the end of Chinese New Year when the parents are returning to their work, 593 00:53:07,720 --> 00:53:13,809 and the kid would not want the parent to go. And this boy screamed loudly 594 00:53:13,809 --> 00:53:20,606 "你们不能这样对我," you cannot do this to me. I want my mother to be with me. 595 00:53:20,606 --> 00:53:28,405 You cannot just go. And this will be captured in this picture. I think we are 596 00:53:28,405 --> 00:53:32,658 also something like this here when we talk about the separation of the parents 597 00:53:32,658 --> 00:53:37,037 from the illegal immigrants, so-called, here not too long ago. 598 00:53:37,037 --> 00:53:42,417 One other point that I want to make here is that of course we know that now China 599 00:53:42,417 --> 00:53:46,337 really allow children and China ended the one-child policy two years ago. 600 00:53:46,337 --> 00:53:47,797 They want a lot of children. 601 00:53:49,632 --> 00:53:53,218 When you think about this, isn't it ironic that if you want more children, they are now 602 00:53:53,218 --> 00:53:58,014 trying to increase the fertility rate. They want Shanghai women to have three 603 00:53:58,014 --> 00:54:04,478 kids even, not just two. They want more kids because they need these kids. 604 00:54:04,478 --> 00:54:09,024 But isn't it ironic that there are always about 100 million kids out there 605 00:54:09,024 --> 00:54:12,944 that should be taken better care of. Why don't they divert the resources, 606 00:54:12,944 --> 00:54:15,529 these are the immediate future of China. 607 00:54:15,529 --> 00:54:17,990 Really raise the children. But they're not doing it. 608 00:54:17,990 --> 00:54:22,494 There are actually many things I think it may actually works for them. 609 00:54:22,494 --> 00:54:26,623 Isn't it really quite ironic that on one hand we want more children 610 00:54:26,623 --> 00:54:30,660 want to have this, which of course is very important, China is aging rapidly, 611 00:54:30,660 --> 00:54:33,879 but at the same time is doing this. 612 00:54:35,088 --> 00:54:40,385 So if we still have five minutes we can run through a video of this. 613 00:54:40,385 --> 00:54:47,433 And before I end this, I will play the video, but also I want to show you this is my 614 00:54:47,433 --> 00:54:53,605 website, I encourage you to see that. And on the top here I put an article. 615 00:54:53,605 --> 00:54:59,193 This is talking about my own experience of being, I almost became a left-behind 616 00:54:59,193 --> 00:55:04,030 child. But my mother did some great thing in that process. There was a migration 617 00:55:04,030 --> 00:55:07,408 that's going on as I reflect on this. So this came out on Mother's Day this year. 618 00:55:07,408 --> 00:55:11,954 For those of you who can read Chinese you may be interested. When I was doing 619 00:55:11,954 --> 00:55:16,041 this I suddenly realized that it was that connection to that 跑民 [migrants] 620 00:55:16,041 --> 00:55:19,169 that is why I got on to all this. 621 00:55:20,462 --> 00:55:23,464 So I'll play the video. 622 00:55:32,389 --> 00:55:38,477 In China not that long ago most people lived in the countryside 623 00:55:38,477 --> 00:55:42,272 looking after their animals and growing their own food. 624 00:55:46,985 --> 00:55:53,616 Life was hard and people were poor. 625 00:55:56,785 --> 00:55:59,913 And then everything started to change. 626 00:56:06,127 --> 00:56:12,424 Factories sprang up to make things that people all over the world wanted to buy, 627 00:56:13,967 --> 00:56:20,139 and suddenly millions of people were on the move from the countryside 628 00:56:20,139 --> 00:56:27,687 to huge new cities where they could get money by working in the factories. 629 00:56:29,439 --> 00:56:35,027 But when the adults moved away they were not allowed to take 630 00:56:35,027 --> 00:56:36,820 their children with them. 631 00:56:40,907 --> 00:56:45,495 Millions of them were left behind in the countryside. 632 00:56:48,497 --> 00:56:52,543 They are now known as the left-behind children. 633 00:56:56,838 --> 00:56:59,340 This is the story of one of them. 634 00:57:07,264 --> 00:57:14,896 My name is Tang Yuwen and I'm 11 years old. I live here with my grandmother, 635 00:57:14,896 --> 00:57:21,526 my brother, and two cousins. My parents don't live here. They work in another city 636 00:57:21,526 --> 00:57:26,572 called Chengdu. They both work in factories making clothes. 637 00:57:29,158 --> 00:57:34,913 My parents don't earn much and they don't get to spend much time with us. 638 00:57:34,913 --> 00:57:39,751 But thanks to their hard work, we are not down and out. 639 00:57:49,092 --> 00:57:57,016 When mom and dad come back to visit, I run to meet them. I run a very long way 640 00:57:57,016 --> 00:58:00,519 because I can't wait to be close to them. 641 00:58:05,231 --> 00:58:12,696 What I love most is to go fishing with them. On my own I can only catch one or two fish, 642 00:58:12,696 --> 00:58:19,953 three at most. But when mom and dad are here, we catch lots of fish. 643 00:58:22,140 --> 00:58:29,253 During Chinese New Year mom and dad visits for longer. We set off fireworks 644 00:58:29,253 --> 00:58:36,884 to celebrate. They start out small with not much light, but then they fly high 645 00:58:36,910 --> 00:58:44,808 into the sky and explode suddenly. They are bright and colorful and very beautiful. 646 00:58:51,689 --> 00:58:57,903 It's not easy for mom and dad to come back to visit us. 647 00:59:02,699 --> 00:59:08,037 They can only stay for a few days before they have to leave again. 648 00:59:10,205 --> 00:59:16,336 I wish they could take me with them. I don't want to be separated from them. 649 00:59:16,336 --> 00:59:23,634 I know it's hard for mom and dad to earn money. I don't want to cause trouble 650 00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:29,973 for them, but I miss them so much. It's very painful. But I can't do anything 651 00:59:29,973 --> 00:59:36,437 about it because I don't want to bother them. If I call them I will disturb them. 652 00:59:36,437 --> 00:59:43,151 I can't do anything but wait. I really want them to come back. 653 00:59:45,820 --> 00:59:53,493 When I grow up I won't leave here. This is my home. I want to do something big. 654 00:59:53,493 --> 01:00:00,249 I'd like to be a boss, run the factory, and I'll take my kids to my workplace 655 01:00:00,249 --> 01:00:02,334 so we can stay together.