Country beds now better than city homes
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Fast developing China never seems short of stories, especially true when it comes to the nation's rapid urbanization.
"A bed in the city is better than a house in the countryside." This saying was once especially popular among Chinese farmers, eager to register their hukou (permanent residence permit) in the big cities. For those rural residents, an urban lifestyle blessed with standardized welfare and healthcare systems seems irresistible.
But suddenly, the headwinds seem to have shifted against urban migration.
Those who used to fight desperately for a place in the city now prefer to keep their place in the fields. College students from rural areas in Chongqing are the latest to say no to an urban hukou.
Since the fall semester began, colleges in Chongqing have been forcefully pressuring students with rural hukou to shift to urban ones, even threatened the scholarships, Party membership, and graduation of those unwilling to shift.
The authorities' over-enthusiasm has generated more widespread blame than the gratitude they expected.
The reason is simple: A bed in the city isn't as attractive as it used to be. Students affected complain that the shift, which means they lose the rights to their home and farm in the countryside, means saying goodbye to a huge compensation package if their land is used by government for other purposes in future.
It's business interests that make these students want to cling on to their farmland. This phenomenon has already appeared on China's more developed eastern coast.
Apart from those who refuse to register their hukou in cities, some urban hukou holders have even shifted to the countryside.
To escape from the city, as many as 195 civil servants have given up their "golden bowls" of welfare, potentially worth over a million yuan ($150,000). These civil servants come from Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, famous for its small manufactories, where China's urbanization is in full-swing.
When farmers, civil servants, and compensation packages are put together, the results can be explosive.
