By Morgan Crank
March 2, 2010
China’s rural population may decrease by over 50% over the next three decades due to rising urbanization, dropping to 400 million people from the current 900 million. A large portion of these people are migrant workers who are moving into cities, but are not permanent residents. In fact, one in four residents currently in cities come from the rural population. The demographics of these migrant workers show that they are young people reluctant to go back to the countryside, seeking to establish a more urban lifestyle.
With this influx of migrant workers comes valuable goods and services as well as a substantial increase the cities’ tax bases. The matter of migrant workers receiving their duly deserved social benefits follows close behind. As the importance of migrant workers to city life is being felt more and more every day, the low wages the migrants receive makes them unwilling or unable to remain for prolonged periods of time. A major policy document released last month addressed the new generation of migrant workers making it clear that the government is striving to reform the household registration system in cities, enabling the workers to receive more social benefits. Reforms would bring enticing benefits in education, housing, as well as social security.
“The gravitation of people all throughout China to its prosperous urban areas attests to the nation’s growing economic strength and windows of opportunity,” stated Scott Garner, director of Lehman, Lee, and Xu law firm’s Shanghai office. “We have experience assisting our clients in negotiating and drafting employment contracts, advise them on governmental health and safety requirements and employee benefits, and assist with employment-related dispute settlement.”
Lehman, Lee & Xu is one of the first five private law firms established in the People’s Republic of China. After nearly twenty years of practice and development, Lehman, Lee & Xu now has more than two hundred patent, trademark and PRC-licensed attorneys working in numerous branch offices located in the most-developed cities in China. As one of the leading IP firms in China, Lehman, Lee & Xu provides high quality legal service to its clients and has been consistently rated among the top five IP law firms in China. Lehman, Lee & Xu is also a top-three commercial law firm, and has provided a variety of commercial legal services to hundreds of clients, many of them multinational corporations (MNCs) and Fortune 100 companies. The firm’s diverse catalog of commercial services covers foreign direct investment (FDI), merger and acquisition (M&A), tax, employment and many other areas.
For more information about Lehman, Lee & Xu, please visit the firm’s website at
www.lehmanlaw.com
.