New Year, China's most important holiday, provides the year's only chance to return home for many of the 150 million migrant workers who drive the country's booming economy.
The 150 million migrant workers account for the majority of employees in China's world-beating manufacturing sector, the bulk of its coal miners and most of its construction workers.
Living for years at a time in coastal cities, China's migrant workers have built the country's skyscrapers and assembled its exports, sending tens of billions of dollars in earnings home to their families in poor inland provinces. For the workers known as "factories without smoke", the Chinese New Year holiday is often their only annual vacation.
Migrant workers dominate the Chinese labor force in dirty and dangerous trades: 70 percent of construction workers, 68 percent of manufacturing employees, and 80 percent of coal miners are migrant workers. But not all are on their hands and knees. More than 60 percent of staff in the service trade, according to state media, are migrants as well. The migrants' schedules are dictated by the fluctuations of demand from their foreign customers: winter is peak season for lawn furniture factories, for example. But most of the factories in southern China are busiest in summer, as they fill orders for the Christmas season. Many of these plants close for the first months of the year and take the Chinese New Year holiday off, triggering an exodus of migrants as those who can afford the train and bus tickets travel home to see their families.
The best way to grasp the dimension of this big outset is to spend some time at Guangzhou main station in southern Guangdong, the country's most prosperous province. Guangzhou is a major transit hub through which millions of migrant workers have to pass on their homeward journey.
...
