>China's 'reserve army of labor' hasn't necessarily been exhausted yet. Wages in the inland provinces still lag those found in the coastal provinces, and Inlan

>China's 'reserve army of labor' hasn't necessarily been exhausted yet. Wages in the inland provinces still lag those found in the coastal provinces, and Inland province wages lag because building a factory in backwater China guarantees that you will be cut off from China's industrial infrastructure and your shipping costs will skyrocket. Hence no jobs there. If you want a job, you move to the coast. Those regions really can't compete with places like Vietnam or Bangladesh that have access to a decent port AND have the same level of wages. Their best hope for rising wages is still from migrant workers funneling cash home. >government policy is at least nominally trying to encourage investment and development there in an effort to close the gap. I don't think it's really working. A large proportion of that investment (if not most) is being blown on useless projects and siphoned off by corrupt local government officials and their cronies. Worse, it's (nominally, at least) debt driven investment, too, so the provinces will need enormous bailouts or stimulus at some point if they are not going to suffer a crippling depression. This happens in coastal China too, but the corruption and level of malinvestment isn't nearly as bad. I think on some level inland China will always be very poor. I can well imagine quality of life in coastal Chinese cities overtaking the US and Bangladeshi/Vietnamese cities moving to first world status while dire poverty still exists in the Chinese countryside.