Thinking about China's urbanization at Shanghai Expo
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Liu Huafeng, a construction worker in Shanghai from central China's Henan Province, said his dream is just to have a good life in Shanghai.
"I hope I can bring home more money during the Spring Festival, rent an apartment to live together with my wife and son, and my son can get a university education in the future," said the man in his forties.
The Shanghai Expo, with the theme "Better City, Better Life" aims to make people think how to improve city life for everyone, including migrant workers and their children.
In many pavilions, including those belonging to Switzerland, Taiwan, Ningbo and Shenzhen, visitors can see life in the countryside.
Experts at a forum titled "Interaction between Urban and Rural Areas" held at the Expo in September, agreed more efforts were needed to reduce the gap between urban and rural areas. They said biased policies and attitudes towards migrant workers must change.
"The Expo provides an opportunity for us to learn from other countries' experiences of urbanization and find new solution to problems that occur during the process," said Sheng Yafei,secretary of Shanghai Songjiang District Committee of the Communist Party of China.
There used to be 280,000 farmers in Songjiang District, a suburb of Shanghai, now only some 5,000 still live on the fields, Sheng said.
Liu Huafeng said he only found out how wonderful urban life can be after visiting the Expo.
However, "this kind of life is too far from us. It's just a dream," he said.
The newly-concluded Fifth Plenum of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) said the country would "universally raise people's incomes at a relatively fast pace," as one of the major targets for economic and social development in the next five years, and stressed "maintaining coordinated development in rural and urban regions."
The Shanghai Expo will end in a week, but the migrant children's portraits won't easily be forgotten as they symbolize an integral part of China's ever changing cities.
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