China: the role of rural-urban migration in economic development under capitalism

Examining the problems for post-communist countries in the context of the European Union. This paper focuses on China and the role of rural-urban migration in economic development under capitalism. The economic relationships between the urban and rural areas of a less developed economy encompass the terms of trade between rural and urban products, the intersectoral transfer of labour, the relative wages of labour in the two sectors, the intersectoral transfer of saving, the relative sectoral returns to investment, the relative sectoral contributions to tax revenue and benefits from public expenditure, and the extent to which government policies favour one sector over the other. There are at least three theoretical frameworks for the analysis of these relationships: the Lewis model of eco­nomic growth with surplus rural labour, the 'coercive', or 'price-scissors', model of economic growth financed by extracting a rural surplus, and the notion that economic policy is subject to 'urban bias'.