China has had 15 years of unprecedented economic growth, which, to a significant extent, is related to a large scale movement of surplus labour from the low productivity rural sector to the high productivity urban sector.
Rural-urban migration provided Chinese industries with abandoned cheap labour and facilitated the fast growth of labour intensive manufacturing exports. Those who are interested in the issue of the sustainability of Chinese economic growth would be eager to learn the extent to which rural-urban migration can continue to drive the fast pace of economic growth.