China's Dispossessed (part 1)

Available for over a year

In the first of a short series of programmes, Peter Day reports from China. This week he looks at the dispossessed. Over the past 30 years China's great economic modernisation programme has required many people to move – to provide a workforce for the thousands of factories producing goods for the global market and for big domestic infrastructure projects like the Three Gorges Dam and now the South to North Water Diversion project. However the migration - whether for personal economic gain or for the good of the country - hasn't always been smooth. There have been recent strikes and suicides by isolated migrant workers in big cities like Shenzhen, and many have lost land and property to make way for gigantic infrastructure projects. Peter Day reports from Beijing, Shenzhen and Hubei province on the people who've made sacrifices for China’s economic progress.