1. On the
Margins:
Migration among Miao, Yi and Tibetan
people in China
A special report
from China
Development Brief
By Matt Perrement with an Introduction by Nick Young
June 2006
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2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS x
CASE STUDY I: MIAO PEOPLE IN GUIZHOU 1
Overview of the Miao people 1
Livelihoods of the Guizhou Miao 3
Overview of Miao migration 4
The four villages surveyed 5
Interview sample 7
MAIN FINDINGS 7
. . . Mass exodus . . . 7
. . . but it’s mainly men who leave . . . 8
. . . for the east but also the west . . . 9
. . . Wages are derisory . . . 11
. . . Few plan to stay outside the province . . . 12
. . . Local migration has better prospects . . . 12
. . . Not much money to send home . . . 13
. . . Skills, education deficit . . . 15
Thumbnail portrait 1: Shoe-polishing specialisation 16
Thumbnail portrait 2: The migrant who thrived 17
Thumbnail portrait 3: Nothing to offer, no chance to leave 18
Thumbnail portrait 4: Choosing, and able, to stay 19
CASE STUDY II: TIBETAN PEOPLE IN QINGHAI 20
Historical snapshot 20
Livelihoods 22
Grassland degradation 23
Western Development Strategy (“Go West”) 26
Migration 27
Banma County and three “villages” 28
MAIN FINDINGS 31
. . . No migration out of pastoralism . . . 31
. . . Very few local opportunities . . . 32
. . . Migration is exclusively rural-rural . . . 33
. . . Sometimes sparked by family tragedy . . . 34
. . . Incomers have no land security . . . 34
. . . And host communities are unlikely to accept more 35
. . . School is not seen as a route out . . . 36
. . . Separate development . . . 37
Thumbnail portrait 1: Craftsman rues
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3. the pastoralist life he has lost 39
Thumbnail portrait 2: Upwardly rising—via the monastery 40
Thumbnail portrait 3: Trucking people and plants
makes for an easier life 41
Thumbnail portrait 4: Local market offers
modest opening for migrant tailor 42
Thumbnail portrait 5: Resettlement is less than idyllic 43
CASE STUDY III: YI PEOPLE IN SICHUAN
Overview of the Yi people 44
Preliminary overview of Yi migration 46
Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture 46
Dawenquan, Maluogu and Mazhaluo villages 48
MAIN FINDINGS 50
. . . Many men migrate, mainly short-term,
to a wide range of destinations . . . 50
. . . Some to a life of crime . . . 51
. . . Drugs and AIDS . . . 52
. . . Non-criminal patterns are emerging . . . 53
. . . But are less than satisfying . . . 54
. . . Whilst some who work hard
at home fare better . . . 54
. . . Remittances are low . . . 55
. . . Women are more reliable but less mobile . . . 56
. . . But there is an emerging marriage trade . . . 57
. . . Which shades into trafficking . . . 57
. . . Educational achievement is very low . . . 58
Thumbnail portrait 1: Failed migration brings family ruin 60
Thumbnail portrait 2: Fine line between love and money 61
Thumbnail portrait 3: With enough land, hard work
makes life possible 62
Thumbnail portrait 4: Honest toiler remains aloof
from drug culture 63
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 64
TABLES:
Table I: Miao, Yi and Tibetan Populations, 1953-2000 1
Table II: Comparative Per Capita Urban and Rural
GDP in Guizhou, Qinghai and Sichuan, 2004 3
Table III: Population, Services, Income and Assets
In Jidao, Yangxiao, Lusheng and Shiqing villages 6
Table IV: Receiver Area of Miao Migrants
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4. broken down by Village 9
Table V: Employment Location and Job Function
of Miao Inter-Provincial Migrants 10
Table VI: Wage Levels amongst
Inter-Provincial Migrants from Guizhou 11
Table VII: Annual Remittance Levels (Guizhou) 14
Table VIII: Breakdown in Use of Remittances (Guizhou) 14
Table IX: Distribution of Tibetan People
in China (by Province) 20
Table X: Comparative Rural Development of
Qinghai, Guizhou, Sichuan and the TAR 22
Table XI: Qinghai Pasture Conversion & Resettlement Plans 24
Table XII: Yaks per Household 30
Table XIII: Population, Services, Cash Income & Household
Goods in Hokoma, Duorima and Garima Villages 31
Table XIV: Number of Inward and Outward Migrant
Households by village and Sender / Receiver Area 33
Table XV: Time Elapsed since initial Migration
to Banma County 34
Table XVI: Final Education Level of Tibetans by age-group 36
Table XVII: Yi Dialects and where they are Spoken 45
Table XVIII: Per Capita GDP and Composition of GDP,
Cross-Section of Regions in Sichuan 47
Table XIX: ‘Grain for green’ policy
in Liangshan (1999-2002) 47
Table XX: Water and Sanitation Coverage in Rural
Sichuan, Qinghai and Guizhou (2002) 48
Table XXI: Population, Services, Income and Assets
in Dawenquan, Maluogu and Mazhaluo villages 49
Table XXII: Migration Rates, Destinations and Occupations
of Migrants from Dawenquan, Maluogu and Mazhaluo 50
Table XXIII: Average Length of Migration among Men
from Dawenquan, Maluogu and Mazhaluo 54
Table XXIV: Annual Remittances of Male Migrants (CNY) 55
Table XXV: Male:Female Sex Ratio in the
Three Liangshan Villages 57
Table XXVI: Female Migration Patterns 58
Table XXVII: Education Level of Adult Villagers 59
Table XXVIII: Comparative Mobility of
Miao, Yi and Tibetan Migrants 65
PHOTOGRAPHS and IMAGES:
Figure 1: Miao Woman, Lusheng Village 1
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5. Figure 2: Map of Guizhou Province 2
Figure 3: Karst mountains, Guizhou 3
Figure 4: Typical Kitchen Scene, Yangxiao Village 5
Figure 5: Woman carrying water in Lusheng 5
Figure 6: Young and old in Jidao Village 7
Figure 7: Woman tilling land, Jidao Village 8
Figure 8 / 9: Growth Potential: Little and Large 17
Figure 10 / 11: Maps of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)
and Ethnographic Tibet 21
Figure 12: Yak dung drying in Hokoma Village 22
Figure 13: Tent in remote valley, Hokoma 23
Figure 14: Grassland in Banma County 25
Figure 15: Map of Qinghai 28
Figure 16: Unpaved Road running through Remote Valley 29
Figure 17: House Interior, Hokoma 29
Figure 18: Map of Sichuan 44
Figure 19: Yi script (top) 45
Figure 20: Yi Women in traditional dress, Butuo 46
Figure 21: House interior, Dawenquan 48
Figure 22: Water Supply in Maluogu 48
Figure 23: Nothing to do – Yi men and children
by roadside in Dawenquan 52
Figure 24: Woman washing clothes, Dawenquan 56
Figure 25: Woman with back-breaking load, Maluogu 56
Figure 26: TB drugs supplied by the Japanese government 60
Figure 27: What price to repair cracked walls? Not marriage 61
Figure 28: Jike Dari’s orchard of apple and pear trees 62
TEXTBOX:
Textbox 1: Despite implementation problems, government is
sticking to and scaling up its anti-desertification plan 25
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6. INTRODUCTION
What place will ethnic minorities occupy in China’s future?
At the time of the 2000 census, 131 million Chinese people were living away from
their officially registered place of residence. The 2005 China Human Development
Report suggests that the number has since risen to 150 million and projects that by
2010 it may rise to 250 million people—the overwhelming majority of them farmers
leaving the land for work in manufacturing or service industries.1
The staggering scale of this migration both illustrates and underlines the profound
social and economic transformation under way in China. At the turn of the century,
for the first time in their “5,000 years of continuous history,” more Chinese people
were employed in manufacturing and service industries than in agriculture. (Table 1)
Although there are plenty of farmers left, earnings from their tiny plots are generally
low, and so too is the relative productivity of the sector. (By 2004, the 46.9% of the
population still employed in agriculture were producing only 15.2% of GDP. 2
)
Conditions therefore appear set for a continued drain out of agriculture. Farming is
likely to become a part-time activity for many families, while some of the most
remote and resource-poor areas are likely to be substantially de-populated. Further,
rapid urbanisation seems inevitable. (Table 2)
Table I: Employment by sector, 1978-2004
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1978 1989 1997 2004
Year
%
Agriculture
Manufacturing
Services
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook, 2005
1
The China Human Development Report 2005, published by the United Nations Development Program in Beijing, was
authored by a team of Chinese researchers coordinated by the China Development Research Foundation (attached to a
key, central government think-tank, the Development Research Centre.
2
National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 2005, Tables 3-2 and 5-2
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7. Table II: Urban / Rural Population, 1975-2015
15
25
35
45
55
65
75
85
1975 1978 1989 1997 2003 2015
Year
%
Urban
Rural
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 2005. Values for 2015
are a UNDP projection, as published in the China Human Development Report 2005
Change on such a scale inevitably involves pain: not just low pay for hard toil in
difficult and often dangerous conditions, but frequent family separation, loneliness,
the emotional and cultural wrench of proletarianisation in alien urban environments.
A great deal of such pain lies buried in the history of Western industrialisation too,
and is still felt in other developing countries that now compete to supply sweatshop
labour to produce the world’s consumer goods. But in China the migrants’ lot seems
particularly bitter, because for so many of them “labour mobility” is not matched by
social mobility. There are some rags-to-riches stories, yes, but the notorious
household registration (hukou) system remains a formidable barrier to upward
mobility in an increasingly stratified society. Moreover, the sacrifices that migrant
parents make do not necessarily ensure better prospects for their children, who
mostly continue to have only limited educational opportunities, whether left behind
in village schools or placed in second-class urban schools.
Writing about these things, foreign observers and reporters frequently conclude—or,
perhaps, presuppose—that the government of China and its urban elite are callous,
or indifferent to the migrants’ fate. In fact there has been significant progress
towards dismantling the hukou system and absorbing migrants into new urban
communities at a rate that urban infrastructure and services can sustain—although
managing social transformation on such as scale could never be easy. There is also
quite lively and growing debate in Chinese media, among researchers and NGOs,
around issues of inequality, labour rights, and social integration of migrants. (Some
of this may be due to international assistance: for example, starting in the
mid-1990s, the Ford Foundation supported a package of research and intervention
projects that had significant impact on analysis of migration dynamics; and many of
the researchers involved in those studies have gone on to become acknowledge
authorities in the field, and staunch advocates of migrants’ rights.)
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8. At least some of the research, debate and advocacy has highlighted the differential
gender impacts of migration. But, surveying the literature, we found that there were
almost no studies of whether and how ethnic minority people, who comprise nearly
9% of the country’s total population, are faring in this process of transformation.3
This modest study set out, if not to fill, at least to clearly signpost that gap and to
underline its importance. It is not a systematic or “expert” survey. The sample is not
“scientific” and there are no regression analyses in interpretation of “data.” The
study consisted, rather, simply in going to several communities in each of three
different ethnic minority areas and talking to people there—village leaders and
ordinary people in the communities—about their personal and collective
experiences of migration. (Happily, these conversations took place in relative
privacy, without the presence or oversight of local government officials).
Yet despite the modesty of our methods, our findings are clear and alarming. As
might have been expected, ethnic minority people who were among the poorest and
least successful of China’s farmers are now among the poorest and least successful
migrants. They are handicapped by language barriers, low educational attainment,
lack of marketable skills, remoteness from labour markets, and low ability to make
the investment in travelling out of the village. There were extremely few cases of
“success”—whether in terms of moving away permanently, or in terms of ability to
invest earnings productively in the village to stimulate the rural economy. And there
were plenty of examples of failure, such as the Miao man who returned to his village
poorer than he left, after working for CNY 220 (USD 27) per month in a factory that
made him pay a “deposit” to get the job, or the Yi men for whom migration is
tantamount to crime and drug addiction.
Tragic as these individual cases are, they raise larger questions about the collective
ability of these ethnic minority cultures to renew themselves and survive in a
reconstructed and predominantly urban China. The Yi people of Liangshan, for
example, appear already to be experiencing social breakdown marked by male
criminality and drug use and by increasingly skewed sex ratios—as young women
are married out, for essentially economic reasons, while sex-selective abortions
reduce the supply of new females born into the village. This could lead to cultural
extinction within one or two generations. An uncertain future also awaits Tibetan
pastoralists in Qinghai who seem wholly unprepared (and to have little inclination)
for any other kind of life, yet whose rangeland—for reasons that are contested—has
been pushed beyond carrying capacity.
It is important not to be sanctimonious about this or to regard cultural erosion as a
uniquely Chinese phenomenon; for global history suggests that whenever a people
becomes a “minority” within a larger polity they are in for a hard time. The forging
3
A rare exception is China’s Minorities on the Move: Selected Case Studies, edited by Robyn Iredale,
Naran Bilik and Fe Guo, (M.E Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 2003).
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9. of European nations involved the absorption and assimilation of local practices,
languages and cultures into a unified and increasingly homogenous state, and the
colonial extension of European influence resulted in the systematic destruction of
indigenous culture across much of the New World. As recently as the 1950s
Australian aboriginal people were having their children taken away for adoption by
white people who, it was assumed, would make better parents.
Nonetheless, a debate about the place of ethnic minority people in China’s
fast-forward development is long overdue. Intense efforts and substantial funds are
being invested in the drive to eradicate absolute poverty (now estimated, as
measured by China’s very low poverty line, to encompass around 20 million people,
less than 2% of the total population). But, while it is sometimes acknowledged
that ethnic minority people count for a high proportion of the absolute poor, the
wider implications of this have not been widely discussed or explored.
What place will ethnic minority people have in the place that China is becoming? Is
loss of cultural tradition and identity an inevitable feature of modernisation and
development? What policy and practical support would be necessary to develop
livelihoods that are more sustainable and dignified than becoming a kind of folkloric,
tourist amenity? Should minorities be empowered and encouraged to compete in
non-local labour markets, or helped to develop their local economies; and, if the
latter, how can this be done without creating dependencies that sap and undermine
vitality? What meaning does the regional “autonomy” policy have in a
de-regulating market economy, and how might it be adapted to better serve the
rights and interests of the people living at the margins of China’s ongoing social and
economic revolution?
These are difficult questions that we do not attempt to answer; but we hope that this
document will at least help to encourage more in-depth research and discussion of
them.
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10. Acknowledgements
Matt Perrement was the main researcher and author of the report, which was edited
by Nick Young. Thanks are also due to Dr. Xu Ying (徐莹) of the People’s University
School of International Studies, who helped with an initial literature review and also
interviewed a number of Chinese scholars with relevant research backgrounds.
In Guizhou a local historian, Yang Jinke (杨金科), served as a guide and interpreter.
Additional insights and advice were offered by Zhang Xiao (张晓) of the Guizhou
Academy of Social Sciences and Huang Mingjie (黄明杰) of the Guizhou International
Cooperation Centre for Environmental Protection.
In Qinghai, Tashitso (鎵庤鎺), a member of Shem Women’s Group and native of
Golok Tibetan Autonmous Prefecture, served as interpreter and guide. Thanks for
facilitating the visit are also due to Michelle Kleisath of Shem.
In Sichuan, interpretation was provided by Luohong Muguo (罗洪木果) of the
Liangshan Norsu Women and Children’s Development Centre. We are also grateful
to Professor Hou Yuangao (侯远高) of the Research Centre for Western Development
at the Central University for Nationalities.
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