Backtotheirroots

Chinese farmers return home from the cities and help boost rural economy

As the Chinese say, after the bitter comes the sweet. For migrant worker-turned-entrepreneur Zhang Liangfan, the saying rings especially true.

Originally from Gaokeng Village in south China’s Guangdong Province, Zhang had to leave his family behind to find work in the province’s capital of Guangzhou after graduation from senior middle school. Working long and strenuous hours as a courier, he lived a frugal life and saved whatever he could from his modest salary.

In 2015, after years in the city, he saw a chance to literally enjoy the “fruits” of his hard labor. Zhang took his savings and experience back to his home village of Gaokeng, and taking advantage of the region’s abundant fruits, launched his own online fruit shop. “I found the opportunity while working as a courier in Guangzhou and my working experience has taught me the knowledge of managing an online store,” he said.

Zhang’s story is not an isolated case. He is part of the thousands of migrant workers who have returned to their home villages to become their own boss. This rising phenomenon in China is called (literately “those returning from the city”), who, as of last year, numbered 4.5 million, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

With the support of government measures, these former migrant workers return home with luggage filled with their rich professional experience and know-how, and have become an important engine driving the development of the rural economy. at Peking University, disagrees, noting the rise of a new kind of demographic dividend. “China has entered a period of heightened economic transition, and as China’s labor market reform is gaining momentum, a new demographic dividend is emerging in rural areas,” he said at the Annual Conference of China’s Economy, which took place in Beijing in December last year.

According to Li, the are important for this new demographic dividend. In the late 1980s, a large number of farmers in China left the countryside to earn a living in booming cities. But starting from 2010, more and more of them are finding their way back to the countryside while chasing their entrepreneurial dream.

Liu Zhencheng, 34, is such a in Wulian County, Shandong Province. Three years ago, he came back from Jinan, capital of Shandong Province, and launched his own tea company, which quickly gained an excellent reputation in the region.

“Even though our tea factory is not very large, we still strictly follow the European CE standard, which is very strict in terms of product quality,” he told

“My parents have been trading tea for years, but due to our traditional production methods, the volume of production is very limited. I hope that