Shifting manufacturing footprint inspires migrant workers' homecoming

BEIJING - Three years ago, when Peng Fangju, then a salesman in China's southern boomtown of Shenzhen, learned of a job opportunity at Taiwan-headquartered Want Want China's factory in his hometown of Xiantao, he decided to take his chances and move back.

Now Peng, a technician at the mid-sized factory in central China, enjoys decent pay and convenience to look after his aging parents.

"If there is a good job opportunity near home, why bother to venture outside?" he said.

As indicated by new official figures, Peng's home return is reflected in the similar stories of many migrant workers heading back to take advantage of job prospects in fast-developing central and western areas of China.

For decades, millions of Chinese migrant workers from the poorer center and west of China have flooded to the coastal regions of the south and east to seek better pay, helping to fuel these regions' dazzling growth.

But the trend is increasingly reversing thanks to the country's shifting manufacturing footprints.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed on Monday that the number of migrants working in the central and western regions saw relatively fast growth in 2012, up 6 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively, to 47.06 million and 44.79 million, compared with the 2.7-percent gain seen in the east.

The NBS also found the gap between average wages in the east, central and western regions is narrowing, and considering the high living costs along the affluent coast, workers there have less disposable income than those in the inlands, a major reason behind the homecomings.

In recent years, an increasing number of manufacturers such as Want Want China and Foxconn, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturing company and an employer of hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers, have been marching inland to seek lower land and labor costs.

Foxconn has extended its operations to the inner provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan.

The extra employment brought by them to these areas has offered migrants, excluded by China's "hukou" household registration system from most urban social benefits such as education and healthcare access, an option to head back.

Lin Dongrong, director of Want Want China's company in Xiantao, said many of its 1,700 workers have previously worked in the south and east before settling down in his factory.