Guangzhou's Social Inequalities

A construction worker demolishing migrant slums. The image shows the average housing size a migrant is able to afford.
(LIFE)

The aggregate of creating smaller villages in order to "kick" them out of the city defines the Chinese societal ladder as one that has missing rungs. With the pursuit of new smaller cities instead of housing these citizens in a mega city supporting all of its residents, the government has issued a statement saying these migrants are second class citizens and will continue to stay that way, thereby eliminating the need for government effort in order to "support" them in health, insurance, or education benefits. This erroneous policy, while it has served the older generation as their needs weren't apparent in staying in the city, needs to change in order to accommodate the new generation, staking their future on lives in a city unwilling to accept them. Even those with college degrees from their province or city have only become white collar workers, not yet equivalent to the middle class.
While the older generation worked fields until they decided coming to cities and factory work was more financially stable compared to agriculture, while the new generation simply comes to the city for business and promising opportunities, as they lack the knowledge in working on a farm. Given this, the new generation's access to magazines, the Internet, and an pop-culture infused media has fueled the need to vie into materialism and what other people have instead of staying content with what they have. Metropolises look more appealing to this generation because that's what's portrayed on TV, sprawling homes with luxurious cars and rich decoration, but migrants are "forced" to live in apartments barely 10 meters squared, with 38.4% of total migrants in Guangzhou living in less than 5 meters squared.

Gransow, Bettina. "Slum Formation or Urban Innovation? – Migrant Communities and Social Change in Chinese Megacities." Freie Universität Berlin and Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, P.R. China. Print.