More young workers lured back home

Better road connections, infrastructure upgrades and other transformations unfolding in rural areas in recent years are helping persuade younger workers to take jobs closer to their hometowns.

The shift is taking place amid the westward move of labor-intensive work — from wealthy coastal regions to less-developed inland areas such as Guizhou and Jiangxi provinces — as former manufacturing hubs in the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas seek to shed their industrial images and upgrade to tech-centered or cleaner industries.

Yang Yifan, a professor at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, Sichuan province, who has been following the process, said many manufacturers in eastern regions such as Zhejiang province are struggling to find enough workers to fill assembly lines.

That is a result of an increase in equally paid job opportunities back home, a welcome change that saves would-be migrants the trouble of leaving their families behind and squeezing into dormitories with workmates thousands of kilometers from home.

"The only options for such employers are either to embrace mechanization or move closer to potential workers' hometowns," he said.

A report published by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that China had 295 million rural workers last year, a year-on-year increase of 3.1 million.

Among them, 123 million such workers were employed in their hometowns, a 2.4 percent increase from a year earlier.

For those working away from home, 70.6 million work outside their home provinces, down 1 percent compared with 2021, the report said.

In an interview with financial news magazine Yicai, Ma Zhihui, director of the Economic Institute of Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said Jiangxi, which had seen significant outflows of its working age population in the past, is now seeing the reverse.

He said that in recent years, the province's economic growth has ranked among the top in the country.

"An important reason for this is that Jiangxi has intensified its efforts to undertake the transfer of industries from the eastern regions. It has attracted many large projects and industrial chains," Ma said.

"With rapid economic development and the impact of the recently subsided COVID-19 epidemic, many people who had migrated to other areas have returned to their hometowns to start businesses or work nearby."

With better roads and infrastructure, rural areas are increasingly seen as places teeming with opportunities for young urbanites who have developed a distaste for conventional office jobs and hectic working schedules.

Chen Zhe, who used to work in marketing in Shanghai, quit his job and started a Chinese cartoon-themed cafe in Yucun village, Zhejiang.

He was among about 60 young people drawn back to the village in recent years to help with local revitalization efforts.

"I'd rather say that young people need the countryside than vice versa," he said.

"For example, landscape designers are finding themselves lacking areas to put their talents to use, whereas in the countryside, there are plenty of places for such artistic creation. What's more, the countryside provides a place for them to discover their cultural roots."