China’s estimated 130 million migrant workers are the elite of the rural workforce. They generally earn more and live more comfortably than the 320 million rural Chinese engaged in traditional agricultural activities such as farming, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing. Another 80 million rural workers are employed by companies near their family homes.

Mainly thanks to migrant worker remittances to their lao jia, nationwide rural income grew 6 percent annually for the past four years. Net per capita rural income was expected to hit 4,700 yuan last year, with 40 percent of that tied to non-farming salaried jobs and 60 percent coming from agricultural activities, government subsidies and land leases.

The percentage of per capita income from migrant laborers was even greater in the provinces that export the most workers: Sichuan, Hebei, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Gansu provinces; Guangxi Autonomous Region; and Chongqing Municipality.

In Henan, for example, net per capita income among farm families grew to 3,851 yuan in 2007, up 12 percent year-on-year. Two-thirds of the increase was linked to remittances from salaried jobs outside the province.

Before the economic crisis, the central government hoped per capita rural income would rise 5.8 percent annually over the next 12 years, doubling overall income by 2020. That will be difficult to achieve now that millions of migrants are out of work.

Income for migrant workers from hometowns in central and western areas declined sharply, falling 28 percent and 13 percent, respectively, in the second half of 2008 compared to the first six months of the year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

In eastern Jiangsu Province, salaried jobs used to provide 53 percent of the overall income for farm families. But that was expected to fall after 330,000 rural laborers – about 80 percent of them migrant workers – returned to agricultural activities by the end of November. Without an economic rebound, experts say, rural income will nosedive.

Under a national farm management system in place since 1979, 227 million rural Chinese contract to work cropland from a collective-owner. Each household gets 0.35 hectares.

The system has been widely praised. But over the years taxes, surplus labor and costs have crept higher. Farming was a losing business between 1998 and 2004, Many farmers left the land during those years, swelling the ranks of migrant workers.

Before leaving home, migrants often transferred contracted land to relatives, neighbors or local governments without signing formal agreements. That left an open door for future problems should they return. And some did after 2005, when a government stimulus package for farmers took effect, revoking taxes and boosting subsidies.

So in 2006, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, about 5 percent of all contracted land changed hands and disputes over land contracts topped 204,000 cases.

Another looming problem is a shortage of arable land. In the Qijiang District of Chongqing, more than 8 percent of the migrant workers who returned in November had no land to till. In nearby Caixian County, those who rented land from migrants to supplement their own plots now fear a loss of livelihood if their rentals are revoked. Some have been looking for land outside their villages.

A survey of 16,268 migrants in 20 regions in the country’s east, west and central districts showed nearly 92 percent of migrant workers do not have pensions, and that at least two people in 21 percent of the families surveyed do not have contracted farmland at all. The three-year survey was conducted by the Research Office of the Democratic League’s Chongqing branch.

“Without social insurance, without enough land, and with no jobs, the livelihood of migrant farmers is on the verge of collapse,” said Feng Xiuian, who initiated the survey as former deputy chief of Qijiang’s People’s Political Consultative Conference.

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