"We'd rather starve in cities than returning to our villages," said many young rural workers at their interview with journalists of China Youth Daily.

The new generation of rural workers are unwilling to return to their home villages, but they cannot obtain equal treatment as urban residents. Unlike their remarkably hardworking parents, the new generation of rural workers have received higher education, have higher expectations in their jobs and higher demands for pleasure but lower endurance of hardship. And they are habitually treated as "cheap labor." These factors lead to the unprecedented surprising shortage of rural workers.

In the Pearl Delta region, rural workers fall into two categories, those who make a living through hard work, and those through violence.

According to Professor Ji Shao with the School of Labor Economics of the Capital University of Economics and Business, however, there is a third group who depend on their parents for a living. They might have come with their parents to work here, but unwilling or unable to take too tough or tiring work, they become idlers who linger around cities, supported by their parents.

These young rural workers aged 18 to 25 constitute the mainstream of current rural workforce. They were born after implementation of the family planning policy and are therefore called the new generation of rural workers. Unlike their parents, they are unwilling to take the most filthy, most tiring and probably most "unpromising" jobs; they do not save every penny for their families at home; nor are they content with returning to their home villages, building a house, getting married with a village girl and setting up a small business at home.

(Chinanews.cn July 12, 2005\)