China Farmer's Forced Migration

This article accompanied by a short video , which is linked here ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250-million-into-cities.html?_r=0) discusses how China plans to move 250 million farmers to urban areas in the next 12 to 15 years. To put that into perspective, that is like trying to take the entire populations of New York City, Chicago, Miami, Boston, and many other large cities worldwide and moving them to another location. The amount of people here who are on the move is absurd. It's basically two thirds of the entire United States population. China is trying to move all of these people to the city because they want them in the city to help with economic growth. They do this by being consumers, and they are more likely to buy more items if they are living in the big cities. China is desperately attempting to modernize in many aspects. State spending is through the roof, as the Chinese government is spending an estimated $600 billion dollars on things such as new roads, hospitals, schools and community centers. A big question here is how will this affect the job markets? Will this cause even the lowest of jobs in the big cities of China to become hotly contested? With all of these people moving, the Chinese government has to create millions of new jobs because these people will not be able to farm for a living anymore. How will China be able to do that? They can build as many hospitals and schools as they want. It is still not going to create millions of jobs. Another big issue is pollution. Already, China has many cities that rank in the top 20 most polluted cities in the world. How many more will be added to the list with the addition of 250 million more people? The pollution problem is likely to become much worse. How will the people be feed if fewer people are farming and more are living in the big cities? Already, a huge percentage of the population lives inside the cites. What happens when there are 250 million fewer farmers? Will China have to import a lot of its food from countries like the U.S? All these question will likely be answered in the near future.