This year, however, her dreams have come true. Thanks to new policies adopted by the government of Yancheng County, where Peng has lived for the last four years, all migrant workers from rural areas are now being given the same treatment as their urban compatriots.

This means they can get a Hukou, or permanent urban residence permit, just by proving that they are employed. They can also choose whatever occupation they want and join the city's medical, pension and other insurance plans.

And their children will be accepted and treated similarly as urban kids by local schools.

"For me, it's like a pie falling from the sky," said Peng, who was recently hired by the Rikang Company, a booming local private enterprise.

In the past, she could only make ends meet by doing odd jobs. The old policy said "good enterprises only wanted to hire urbanites."

For millions of rural migrant workers driven to the cities by their yearning for a better and more modern life, what has happened in small and obscure Yancheng might be the start of a revolution that could change their destiny.

The bold "reform experiment," as the local government in Yancheng calls it, has been sanctioned and backed by key central government ministries, including the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the State Development Planning Commission.

Similar "experiments" are also underway in 15 other counties across China.

This reform is intended to abolish discrimination in the workplace for laborers of urban and rural origins, establish an equal employment system for urban and rural laborers and draw migrant workers into the social security system, said Wang Aiwen, an official with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

There are more than 80 million rural migrant workers in China. Most of them swarmed into the cities in the last decade, when the government began shifting from a planned economy to a market one.

But many migrant laborers have had bitter experiences in their urban lives: their job opportunities have often been restricted to the most dirty and back-breaking work scorned by city dwellers and they have been underpaid and excluded from the social security systems all Chinese cities are now establishing.

Before the reform, migrant workers in Yancheng were even not allowed to sign labor contracts longer than a year.

Local enterprises were frequently advised to leave better jobs for urban laid-off workers, said Zhou Qifang, the deputy county magistrate.

Migrant workers also had to pay a variety of fees. The "urban accommodation and management fee" rose to more than 400 yuan (US$50) a year per head.

"But the situation is changing, and both the migrant workers and local enterprises welcome that change," Zhou said.

Tian Xinmin, deputy general manager at Rikang Company, said the reform has greatly simplified the procedure for hiring a rural laborer and enabled his company to recruit competent workers. Now, more than 70 percent of the company's 400-strong employees are rural migrant workers.

The reform in Yancheng has removed the "identity gap" between urban and rural citizens and offered them equal treatment in employment, thus reflecting the principles of "equality" and "fair play" stressed by the society after China's entry into the World Trade Organization, said Shi Maosheng, president of the Zhengzhou University law school.

The reform has also resulted in "safe passage" for China's huge rural surplus workforce, who will be most severely affected by the government's push to modernize, Shi said.

With a rural population of more than 900 million, China has the world's largest rural surplus workforce. Experts said it could reach 200 million by 2005.

Officials from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security hinted that China may use its cities, especially those newly developed small cities and towns, to handle the surplus rural workforce.

"The thriving of the non-public sectors and the mushrooming of small cities and towns have made the time ripe to form a unified labor market in China," Wang said. "We hope a breakthrough can first be achieved in some small and medium-sized cities."

(China Daily August 14, 2002)