China Leadership Monitor No. 28

Spring 2009:
Political Reform
By Joseph Fewsmith

With the onset of the world economic crisis, China’s export industries have been hard hit, with the result that millions of “peasant workers” have returned to their inland homes. Although these returnees present a potential social order problem, especially if the economy does not rebound in the latter half of 2009, most of the social order problems witnessed in recent months appear to be a continuation of the deterioration in local governance in various parts of the country in recent years. Thus, the return of migrant workers to the countryside is not so much a problem in and of itself as it is an additional burden on an already fragile political economy.

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