Yet for all the urbanites who have prospered, many have not. Farmers in remote, barren regions like western Qinghai province are barely kept from starvation by government handouts. As social controls have eased, rural migrants have flooded into the cities looking for work. Their manpower shouldered the construction boom that has transformed Beijing. Older rural women stay behind to raise children and tend farms.
Young women leave to labor in factories or work as housemaids.
Faced with a huge pool of urban and rural unemployed and a slowing economy, authorities struggle to keep chaos in check. Inheritors of Mao's revolution, today's leaders base their power on their ability to keep control, to deliver prosperity. With communism a vague ideal of past generations, patriotism and nationalism are now the staples of the party's ideology. Regaining Taiwan, split in civil war from the mainland in 1949, is a sacred mission. No challengers to the party are allowed.