It is difficult to convey to those who haven’t seen it just how vast and poor is China’s agricultural hinterland. Westerners see the 21st-century skyscraper skylines of Shanghai, Beijing or Guangzhou, the exploding city 100 miles from Hong Kong, and think they are astonishing. Which they are; the spectacle never fails to take my breath away. But even more astonishing is the poverty of peasant villages sometimes only a few minutes’ drive away.
See also “Rural migrants hold key to China labour bottlenecks” from Pakistan’s the Daily Times.
