144 7 Marginalised Children and Universal Basic Education
migrant children in the inflow city which typically excluded migrant children
from upper secondary education or university except in technical and vocational
subjects.
7.2.1 The Flow of Migrants
China has sought to achieve social transformation from an agricultural country
to a modern industrial society and cope with the problems resulting from migra-
tion as a result of massive urbanization. China’s sustained economic growth and
social transition has created a large floating population of individuals and house-
holds. Estimates of numbers may not be reliable but the data available suggest that
there were 80 million in the floating population in 1995 with approximate 3 mil-
lion school age children. By 2000 the number was over 102 million (fifth National
Census) of whom over 14 million were children under 14 years. About 24 % were
migrants across Provinces and 34 % were migrants within Provinces. The rest
were migrants between cities. Since 2000 the numbers have continued to grow. It
is now estimated that there are over 240 million in the floating population includ-
ing at least 39 million children of school age (Chinese Migrants Development
Report 2012 published by National Population and Family Planning Commission)
with the prospect of annual increases in numbers of 5–10 % as urbanization con-
tinues. The majority of migrant children are from rural areas and it appears that
about 75 % have family backgrounds in agriculture. The numbers seem set to con-
tinue to increase for the next decade (Table 7.1).
The regional distribution of migrant children is highly concentrated in a
few provinces as we can see in Chart 1. Guangdong ranks first with 2.7 million
migrant children (14.2 % of all migrant children). Other provinces with large num-
ber are Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian and all of them have more than 1 million
migrant children. Sichuan and Shandong have 0.93 and 0.8 million migrant chil-
dren respectively. Migrant children in these six provinces account for more than
40 % of the total number in China (Table 7.2; Fig. 7.1).
The proportion of migrant children in some areas is very high. There is one
migrant child in every three Shanghai children and nearly one in four in Beijing.
As the political, economic and cultural center of China, Beijing is always one of the
main inflow areas for China’s child migration, as is Shanghai. Zhejiang (14.2 %),
Fujian (12.1 %) and Tianjin (12.1 %) also have high proportions of migrant chil-
dren in their school systems. Overall migrant children constitute 6.1 % of all school
age children, and 12.1 % of urban children (Table 7.3; Figs. 7.2 and 7.3).
Table 7.1 Floating population and migrant children in China
Year 1995 2000 2005 2010 2011 2012
Floating population (millions)^80102120220230240