PC is an investor running Investor Diary in Hong Kong. He is also a good friend of mine after we exchanged some emails. He dropped me an email today and discussed about the idea of moving to smaller cities.
Dear Jian Shuo,
In the US an increasing number of people choose to live outside of the big cities because of lower costs of living and better quality of live. See http://www.forbes.com/bestplaces/2005/01/20/life2land05.html
I wonder if the same can be applied to China. Apart from the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, are there smaller cities in China that are cheaper and nicer (e.g. air quality, population density etc.) to live? For example, what about places like Tsing Dao?
Maybe that can be a topic for your post later on. Anyway just a thought.
Kind regards,
PC
PC, thanks for the good topic. Yes. I will write about it.
Moving into Cities? It is a Dream
China is still at the stage of urbanization. It remains a dream for the 0.6 billion population in country-side to move into cities. They struggle for their whole life to get a city Hukou so they can move into cities. If they don’t get the Hukou, they are called farmer workers, with no health insurance, no education opportunitiesÂ…
To enter a collage is one of the very few ways to get a city Hukou. I have friends who tried more than 5 times for the collage examinations. It was 5 years of waiting and trying. If he didn’t try, he will remain a farmer for the rest of his life (before the Hukou system changes).
Moving into Largest Cities? It is a Dream
For people in smallest cities, they want to go to bigger cities like Luoyang (which has 6 million population). There are more job possibilities there.
For people in these middle sized cities, like me, they try to move to bigger cities. People in Shanghai or Beijing have many benefits which people in other cities don’t have. Let’s take education opportunity as an example.
In Henan Province, only 1 out of 5 students has the chance to enter university at the time I completed my high school, while in Shanghai, the ratio was about 4 out of 5. In Beijing, the ratio is higher.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University accepted 56 students from Henan province (with a population of 100 million) while accepted several hundred from Shanghai (with population of 12 million at that time). When I was in grade two or three in high school, some of my friends transferred to high school in Beijing or Shanghai. The reason is simple. In Luoyang, they worried about whether they could be accepted by a colleague, while in Beijing, they only worry about whether they can enter Tsinghua or Peking Univ. That is the difference.
Besides education, the job opportunity, the income, the city facility in bigger cities are better. I never heard of drama or symphony performance in Luoyang, but I can see them in Shanghai. It seems everything in big city is better in smaller city – except the hot competition, the high pressure and the bad air.
There are too many people looking for opportunities to enter biggest cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, while so less thinking about moving out.
Moving Out to Smaller Cities? It is Also a Dream
For those who already have good life in Shanghai, sometimes, they may be attempted to move out of bigger cities when they bear too much pressure. It’s just like say “Hey, I hope I can stay at the sand beach for the rest of my life.” It is a dream that no one really get it.
Wendy and I joked: If we sell out our house and we move back to Luoyang, maybe we don’t have to work for the rest of the life. The living standard in Luoyang is low and everything is cheap. In a city where people with 200 RMB monthly income can lead pretty good life, we have many 200 RMB to spend. We can lead happy life there. It is only a dream. There are too many things we cannot give up.
Wendy’s friends, a couple with a newly-born child, once told me about the same dream. They are alone in Shanghai and no one takes care of their child – both of them need to work and an Ayi is not helpful enough to take of the newly-born child. After several months of life like “working at day time and taking care of the child till early morning”, they really thought about giving up the high pressure life in Shanghai and go back to the small town. We said, we all have the dream, but how can we really do it?
Nice Small Cities
There are some very nice smaller cities in China. Here are some on my life:
- Dalian in Liaoning Province
- Tsingtao (or Qing Dao) in Shandong Province
- Xiamen in Fujan Province
- Sanya in Hainan Province
- Beihai in Guangxi Province
- Suzhou in Jiangsu Province
- …
The list can be long. They are really nice with good view or environment. People are nice and the pace of living is slow. However, I don’t think it feasible to move. You can not get 1/3 of the salary you get here. If someone does not need to work, and he/she just want to find sometime to retire, he/she can do it. Dalian or Qingdao is good choice.
Move? It is not Easy in China
U.S. is a country on cars. People pack up everything and drive to a new city to settle down. Since the country is the immigrated country, it is common for people to move.
China is not. Moving was traditionally considered to be very bad thing. The last thing people in China will do (traditionally) is to move home. We call it Bei Jing Li Xiang 背井离乡, or directly translated to English: Go away from the well and leave one’s home town. If there is not disaster in that area, people do not move.
Recently, the metropolitan like Shanghai attracted many people to do it, for sake of the family’s future, they move. Many move only for better education for next generation. For sake of children is still the #1 reason for those who immigrate to Canada. It is very rare to see someone to move back to smaller cities. I never heard about it so far.
China is different. It is at the stage when everyone rushes to cities. Maybe after several years, when people are more mobilized, a very small portion of the population may think about moving out. In Shanghai, people have cars started to move out of the downtown and move into the town house out side the Outer Ring. It is a positive sign of the future move.
Conclusion:
To move from smaller cities into bigger cities is a dream that many people have realized. To move from bigger cities out to smaller cities is also a dream that no one takes it seriously.
P.S. Steve-O flattered me to be the “nicest guy in the world!” today. Maybe. But I am the happiest guy in the world when I got your comment. Thank you Steve-O!
Mr. Wang and PC,
Regarding your topic about moving to smaller cities, I would like to say a few words about it.
The cities you listed, actually in America and most European countries are considered a big city. Any city has population over several millions are not smaller city. As to compare with metropolitan huge cities, like Shanghai, Beijing, New York, Tokyo, London, and Paris, maybe it is small. As to Hong Kong, their population is about 5-6 millions. Is Hong Kong a big city or small? maybe we should include city size(square mile) and population density to decide whether the city is big or small.
In America, people live in surbanban of a major city, is mostly financially ahead of the people live in crowd inner city. If developer can plan surbanban cities around Shanghai and Beijing, people will move out of the inner city if the traffic is acceptable and easily accessible. I personaly feel that Shanghai city government should or would have a developmental plan soon or later to make satellite cities or towns surrounding Shanghai more attractive. I believe that they need time to achieve this. America and European countries took many years to achieve, probably so Shanghai and Beijing should too.
James
PS: They do have luxurious and expensive apartments in New York city.
This article is quite long. For some of us, immigrating from the current homeland to fortunate nations is a dream.
I think James brought up a good point and one that I’d expand upon. In the US, most “white collar” workers move outside of the city and live in suburbs, commuting to work, but this has yet to happen in China. We are slowly seeing a change, I’m not sure how much its happening in Shanghai, though the city is expanding further and further on Pudong. In Beijing, it is very apparent as now there is the new addition of the “cheng tie” for those who are living outside of the city center. It is getting to the point where Beijing, out in areas like Shunyi and Fatou, is developing suburbs. The people who live in this area are an interesting mix, you have the very rich with large apartments or even houses who are looking for more space, cleaner air and who don’t mind the commute because they have a car. You also have younger professionals who may not be able to afford an apartment inside the city yet (ie within 2nd or 3rd ring rd) and you have poorer people who just can’t afford those places, period. Beyond the points that Wang JianShuo brought up in the original post, Chinese have too strong a belief in regionalism and sense of pride. It would be hard for a person from Shanghai to move to a smaller city in the West for example, unless there really was a great opportunity there.
In most countries other than China, people can move to anywhere in the country as they want to. The reason some spots become cities is there are more business activites there, which makes people eaiser to find work so they can live. They do not necessarily like urban atmosphere, they live there because they need some work to do and cities offer more. China is little bit different. Cities in China are significantly wealthier than rural area. Farmers flee to cities not because they like the urban life style, but they are too poor to live a basic life. They believe whatever work they can find in cities is better than staying in their rural hometown. If this situation remains unchanged, Chinese moving to smaller cities will not happen. Chinese cities’ prosperity has not much to do with average Chinese citizen’s standard of living because the funding of mordenising cities comes from national resources. This means people in the entire China are taxed to make a fews cities beautiful. Of course that can be done and of course people outside cities are poor and they want to come to cities.
James, Shanghai is building the satellite cities – like Song Jiang, Jia Ding, which is within one hour of car’s ride. They are connected with the city with express way but meanwhile, people are still waiting for the subway to extend to their area before really move in. The subways are under construction now.
In China, the choose between city and suburb, bigger city or smaller city is not as simple as to choose a place to live. It means a lot other than that, as I described in the article.
Dear Jian Shuo,
Thanks for your very informative post which reminded me that it’s not that easy to move within China. I recall when I was living in Shanghai last year, a friend had so much trouble trying to get a Hukou in Shanghai.
Admittedly China and US are at very different stages of development. The former is a developing country where people are just trying to get ahead by going to the big cities with more opportunities whereas the latter is a fully developed country where people are looking for better quality of life in smaller cities and want to escape the rat race.
In the longer term when China becomes richer, the preference for surburbs or smaller city living should increase.
Also thanks to everyone else for their very insightful comments.
Thanks to PC for raising this interesting topic and to Jian Shuo for sharing his insights with us.
Just one observation – please correct me if I’m mistaken. Suzhou (Wendy’s favorite?), Jiangsu is mentioned in your post. Isn’t this city doing very well economically and as a result the costs of living there are significantly higher than the other medium-sized city listed above?
Dalian, population 5.9 million (2.7 in urban according to UN)
Tsingtao (Qingdao), population 6 or 7 million (2.4 urban, acc. UN)
Xiamen, population 2.2 million (1.3 in urban)
Sanya, population 0.5 million
Beihai, population 1.4 million (0.2 or 1.0 in urban, 3.7 as UN forecast for 2015)
Suzhou, population 1.5 million (1.2 acc. UN; 2.2 urban and 5.9 metro acc. to Suzhou.gov)
…
OK, perhaps Sanya counts as a “small city” for a while…
When I talk with my foreign friend, and they ask me about where I came from, I may say, I came from Luoyang, a small city in Central China’s Henan Province. When asked about the population, I said: 6 million. At that time, both of us will realize it is not a small city at all. It has more population than many countries in Europe. :D The scale of small and big in China is different than other countries.
About living quality, see
http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness/hap_nat/nat_fp.htm
I wonder if the chinese counting had been achieved only by those who can read english ????
Then it will be less than “something very small” part of the total population in China !
Note the top (danish) rank, though….. no. 1 !
There must be good reasons, huh ?
Find out on the homepage beyond the survey.
Sorry, it was :
http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness/hap_nat/findingreports/RankReport2004-1c.htm
Hukou is a invisible border segregating the people of the same country into two categories, the rich and the poor. Does anyone think it is fair to every citizen of China?
When China annex Hong Kong in 1997, one country two systems, and in 1999, Macau returned to China, one country three systems, should Taiwan unifies with China in the future, one country four systems. Is there a better way to express equality for majority people within the same country?
Stephen
I disagree that hukou is an “invisible border” that segregates people, generally. I think Stephen is attempting to argue something else. Sure there is damage it causes those in the countryside as opposed to the city, but there are ways to get around the hukou system if so desired. Further, think of some major Chinese companies like Tsingtao Beer and Haier, both come from Qingdao and Dalian has its Shide Group, Harbin has pharmaceuticals. These other cities have something to offer in specific industries and are constantly growing. What has amazed me in my travels around China is how the “second tier” cities like Shenyang and Nanjing are experiencing amazing growth. Salaries may not be quite as high as in the “first tier” cities, but cost of living is also lower. I think the “choice” of living in the suburbs is quickly not becoming a choice. I can imagine a day when greater Shanghai extends even to Suzhou. As the older areas in the city center are “chai’ed” these people have no choice but to move outside of the city center.
How do you explain the workers from rural area working in Shanghai are subject to exploitation, arrest and repatriation, while people in Hong Kong can visit China without restriction and visa is always required for Chinese to do the reciprocal. After all, these are all Chinese living in the same country!
It is about equality and basic human right!
Stephen
Both Cheng02 and Stephen have different expression of “Hukou”. It will be hard to get a satisfactory agreement or conclusion. The name of the game is education and living standard. If a country has popularized education and higher living standard, who is going to complain. Otherwise, they got to have class disparity and human rights problem. The class disparity will never be disappeared, it will be only within acceptable range. Just like human rights issue, it is still existed, but in a tolerable and compromised level. Even in your own home, sometimes parents will have different treatment to their children. Among nations, there are visible disparity. We live in a comparable and relative world, competition and cooperation are probably two major themes. Competition is surpass cooperation. Do we compete in this world. For what?, the most important thing is better living, period. it will be great if everyone will have basic education, basic living standard and basic human right. Can we live happily and peacefully? I am sure that a lot of good ideas will surface if we continue to discuss this type of issue.
james
chengb02 gave a better name to the different kinds of city – first tier cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing and second tier cities. What is interesting in Hukou is, it does not allow people from on city to go to the other. For example, if I have Shanghai Hukou and if I go to Beijing to work, I still face many challenges that people with Beijing Hukou do not have. This includes education of my child (in the future), the health care… The good thing is, it is not a big problem for me because I am pretty “out of the system” already, but for those who work for state-owned-enterprises and who are poor, it is a big problem
james
China is not ‘popularizing’ education and high living standard, but ‘polarizing’ it between top tier and bottom tier citizens by mean of ‘hukou’. As mentioned by Jianshuo, university acceptance rate from rural is lower as compared to city dwellers, without education, rural residents’ ability to make wealth is limited.
Should one day you become the ruling class, how are you going to tackle the desire of the vast majority of population to receive better education and treatment like the elite few receive today?
Stephen
Dear Jian
So interesting to read about developments of cities and future suburbs in your amazing country. I can envision both megopolises forming in rings. But I can also envision what you call your smaller cities, ie. Dalian, Tsingtao, etc. developing and coming unto their own so to speak. This appears to agree with the Chinese sense of antiquity. And you would not have the problem of future “traffic jam” from big city to suburb.
As for education in smaller cities, much can be accomplished via satellite today. Ask India!
Ann
First I am glad there are people like Stephen reading this blog.
Second I want to say I am mad those people like chengb02. Who do they think they are.
My book for the HuKou system is semi-serf system.
I was from China, from country-side. Now I am living in America. After I came to US, I sensed the huge difference between China and America, about the equality of each person, non-discrimination, human rights. I know Chinese people in China may not like to hear this word, but this is the most important issue for a human being.
I still hold GuangZhou’s HuKou. I had been in GuangZhou for 6 years. Although I were one of those who has the privilleges over other “out siders”, I was one of the benificiaries of the hukou system after I got into one of the best university by hard working and luck, but I am shame of the system.
Why people in Beijing discriminate people in Luoyang (JS, do not say no, you know it’s there), why people in the city discriminate our brothers and sisters from country-side? They are same race as you people in the city, they speak same language as city-people do, constitutionaly they are citizens of China. Why they are deprived their rights to get equal opportunities for education, for job, for social benefit?
Any American citizen can move to NYC freely, can find a job freely, can let their children go to schools in NYC. Why as Chinese citizen we can not move to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou freely? Are Beijing University and TsingHua University funded only by BeiJing people? Too much.
While I am in US, I go to watch college football, I go to watch NBA game. During those events, the audience sing the US national song (forget the proper word) with passion from their heart. Why, because US deserves their love. They are treated by this country as a human being.
We Chinese always complain about the inequality that foreigners treat us. My opinion is that as the day we Chinese still do not treat our own citizen equally, don’t expect other will treat us equally.
Tristan
Stephen,
I understood how you felt about ‘hukou’ which derive a series of other problems, both socially and possibly politically. I wonder that cities, towns, and villages have their own ‘hukou’ registry. People will receive subsidiary from government when almost everything is lacking and need to be distributed acording to need. The rice and cooking oil etc. keep people going and alive. It is also a statistics and security measure. This is a brief explanation about ‘hukou’. It existed at least 8 years while Japanese occupied China. ‘hukou’ itself is not a bad thing, just like registry and identity in western countries. The only problem is the benefits ‘hukou’ provide. That’s one of the main reason why people like to migrate to the city with better benefit. Of course, better opportunities, too. If there is no benefit and subsidiary from the ‘hukou’, ‘hukou’ is just a registry and identity tool. Everyone has to pay tax to enjoy benefits from the city. Local, international and transient residents are alike. That’s my opinion.
I would not agree tht ‘hukou’ could cause equality and human right violation. Both equality and human rights are relative things. It is hard to measure. Unfortunately relative equality and less human right are always there. If we can achieve basic equality and human rights, itwill be very blesssed. What is the basic equality and human right. Do you have a definition?Democratic government with liberty does not necessary a sound government and lead people to have better lives. India is one of the example. The rich and poor in India is wide. There almost no middle class. Middle class I believe, is the backbone of a country as well as in society. Democracy, equality and human rights are wonderful. Unfortunately we are born unequally. If you are lucky, you are bron in a civilized rich world with developed equality, democracy and human rights. If you are unlucky, the road is long, curved and ragged. That’s why I say we are unequal when we are born. The beautiful name of equality, yes, we should pursue, probably with a price. Hopefully, the price is not too high and acceptable. It is a real big issue. I don’t think that anyone can solve that puzzle without a serious fight. Time will tell.
James.
haha, a point off of hukou system and everything else, there are definite problems to the system and things need to be changed, but I am not at the point where I want to use the radical names that others use to call it by. I like Tristan’s point about the national anthem in the US, because I attend a lot of events where it is sung, but its typically just procedure. However at Asian Cup this year, especially as China was advancing closer and closer to the title, it was amazing feeling to sit in Gongti and hear everyone sing as one, flags waving everywhere. That was true patriotism and true glory of China. Okay, there are the bad points of China and I readily admit to them, but it was great to sit back and remember the glory of our nation.
I should not say I am mad at chengb02, because I see there is still some consciousness in his/her mind. I apologize here.
We Chinese people never lack patriotism, we do not need more. We were great before, that fact should not stop us puring a better China, in modern standard.
Everyday a lot of crap happens everyday even in a democratic society, but with democratic way there is always a rational way to solve those problems. If India is really bad like James says, the problem is not from democracy, it has its inner roots. And I think we should take EU, Japan, US, Canada as our model for learning, instead take India’s case to let us feel good about ourselves. That’s not a nation with high self-esteem, high expectation should do.
Wake up, “middle class” comrades, after you have your house, your car, do something good to China by changing yourself to be a modern citizen.
— Tristan
I think things (like Hukou) are changing in China (not so fast, but moving) today. I think current leaders and the young generations of China have learned a lot from the western world. But China is just like a big boat, it takes time for it to change it’s direction.
PS. I like the discussions in this way. ;-)
In regards to comparison between US and Chinese educational opportunities, there are also competitive US public universities such as Univ. of Michigan or Univ. of Wisconsin, where as an in-state applicant to these schools, it is easier to get in than as an out-of-state applicant. This is not a discrimination, rather a previledge state residents have because they pay state taxes. Morevoer, I don’t think there is any discrimination if you are an out-of-stater. In fact, some instances, in-staters acknowledge that out-of-staters do as an average have higher qualifications. As in China, there are some parents who live in certain states, to send their children to public univ. and also save some money paying in-state tuition.
FORGET WHAT AND WHERE THEY LIVE.
WHAT ABOUT THOSE MAINLAND HAIRSTYLES ?
WHATS THE DEAL WITH THOSE WILD HAICUTS THAT HAVE THE CHICKEN THING STICKING UP IN ALL DIRECTIONS?
ANSWER ME THAT !
I would also like to add that the countryside in America and Europe is very different to the countryside in most Asian countries (eg excluding Japan, Korea etc…
Economically the “country” in Asian countries have crumbling infrastructure, low levels of education, lousy pay and generally a lower standard of living for its people. However there is a sharp contrast in more developed nations. In regions such as Western Europe and North America, the countryside is not wealthier as a whole but in terms of per capita it is (that is people from the country are richer than the people in the cities; generally speaking). This can be due to the fact to lower population density and government subsidies for farmers etc…
Socially Asian people (that come from poorer Asian nations) tend to view peasants from the country with disdain because of the crime rate, poverty, level of education most receive and the perception of backwardness. Again it is the complete opposite in more developed nations, where the quality of basic infrastructure and level of education is almost on par with those from the major cities. And crime rates are generally lower because poverty is almost non-existent. So people’s perception of the countryside are generally more positive when compared to people from developed nations. For example take the numerous Western films such as Babe or Smallville; where the countryside is portrayed as clean cut and very peaceful, whereas people from the cities are all cunningly sly and un-contented and usually interfering in the towns folk’s peaceful existence.
Spiritually, yes I made this up, it is important to consider many people from poorer Asian nations tend to have ambitions of monetary success. Whereas people in richer regions tend to want a better quality or more fulfilling level of life. This can be due to many factors, but it is probably due to the fact that many Asians are poor and are therefore struggling to survive (e.g China and India) whereas in America people are generally economically sorted so-to-speak. Both are striding for the em-betterment for themselves, but because of their backgrounds both possess different ambitions to try and achieve spiritual content.
These are the differences between China and the USA regarding why the Chinese as a whole do not move to inland regions of China. As for “Do Chinese move to Small Cities”? I would think so out of a population of 1300000000 people, but the surge from the wave caused by those moving from the country to the Eastern cities dwarfs that figure. Lets face it, right now there are more poor in China than there are rich (obviously), but who know in 20 years the trend in China then might be the same as the trend in the USA today.
As the saying goes “money makes the world go round”! There is probably a lot more to add, but I will refrain myself from hijacking this discussion lol…
P.S. Lim
I would also like to add that the countryside in America and Europe is very different to the countryside in most Asian countries (eg excluding Japan, Korea etc…
Economically the “country” in Asian countries have crumbling infrastructure, low levels of education, lousy pay and generally a lower standard of living for its people. However there is a sharp contrast in more developed nations. In regions such as Western Europe and North America, the countryside is not wealthier as a whole but in terms of per capita it is (that is people from the country are richer than the people in the cities; generally speaking). This can be due to the fact to lower population density and government subsidies for farmers etc…
Socially Asian people (that come from poorer Asian nations) tend to view peasants from the country with disdain because of the crime rate, poverty, level of education most receive and the perception of backwardness. Again it is the complete opposite in more developed nations, where the quality of basic infrastructure and level of education is almost on par with those from the major cities. And crime rates are generally lower because poverty is almost non-existent. So people’s perception of the countryside are generally more positive when compared to people from developed nations. For example take the numerous Western films such as Babe or Smallville; where the countryside is portrayed as clean cut and very peaceful, whereas people from the cities are all cunningly sly and un-contented and usually interfering in the towns folk’s peaceful existence.
Spiritually, yes I made this up, it is important to consider many people from poorer Asian nations tend to have ambitions of monetary success. Whereas people in richer regions tend to want a better quality or more fulfilling level of life. This can be due to many factors, but it is probably due to the fact that many Asians are poor and are therefore struggling to survive (e.g China and India) whereas in America people are generally economically sorted so-to-speak. Both are striding for the em-betterment for themselves, but because of their backgrounds both possess different ambitions to try and achieve spiritual content.
These are the differences between China and the USA regarding why the Chinese as a whole do not move to inland regions of China. As for “Do Chinese move to Small Cities”? I would think so out of a population of 1300000000 people, but the surge from the wave caused by those moving from the country to the Eastern cities dwarfs that figure. Lets face it, right now there are more poor in China than there are rich (obviously), but who know in 20 years the trend in China then might be the same as the trend in the USA today.
As the saying goes “money makes the world go round”! There is probably a lot more to add, but I will refrain myself from hijacking this discussion lol…
P.S. Lim
You all obviously know what your talking about…Ill leave the discussion up to you guys…look me up in 20 years.
We choose to live in the relatively small city of Weihai because of the outrageous prices of property within the major City’s it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I personally think there is a lot more to the developing city’s, Value for money, better infrastructure as a result of building from almost scratch and even more business opportunities in developing these sectors although salary’s may be lower to start with the sky’s the limit and the cost of living certainly levels it out.
Yes. I believe it is the time for people to considering moving to smaller cities – this happen only when the real estate price gap has been big enough to give people incentive to develop the smaller cities.
I found the description of educational opportunities really interesting. Is the discrepancy in admissions between rurual and urban due to poorer educational opportunites (i.e. teaching and schools very poor) leading to poor scores on the national exam? Or is it that those in the cities have more influence or give larger “gifts” to get their children into the university? Or do the universities just allocate admissions unequally (that is, does the national exam score really matter?). Any answers would be appreciated.
Bob Grant
Although I am for the rights of every citizen in China to live in where ever they prefer, I was wondering if all the well educated individuals such as yourself left their less deverloped home cities/provinces for big cities, who would help their home towns / provinces to catch up. And would it ever occur to people like you that as one of the few well educated people, you might possess some sort of social responsibility to your home province to go back to help the social, economic development there?