RISING WEST A NEW CHOICE

As high living costs in the east have smashed the dreams of many workers, rising labor demands in less-developed and less-expensive western regions seem to be a better choice.

The huge inflow of foreign capital and the emergence of industries such as electronic devices have fueled an insatiable demand for migrant workers in the west.

In Chongqing, major districts such as Yongchuan, Hechuan and Fuling need at least 15,000 laborers each year, driven by a campaign by local government to boost the local economy, according to official statistics.

In Hechuan District, the local industrial park required more than 20,000 laborers in 2013, prompted by sectors such as car assembly, electronics and machinery.

According to the municipality's labor department, laborers in Chongqing who chose to work in the city's vicinity outnumbered those working outside the municipality for the first time in 2011, and in early 2013, the difference exceeded one million.

In the central province of Henan, an area with a large number of outbound laborers, a staggering 3.86 million more people chose to work in the province rather than making ends meet in other places in 2013, official data showed.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of migrant workers in central and western regions grew more quickly than that in the east in 2012, and the proportion of migrant laborers in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta that year fell by 0.5 and 0.3 percentage points respectively.

The shrinking income gap between the east and west is an advantage that has wooed migrant workers westward, according to investigations by labor departments and employment agencies in various localities.

The income gap in electronics companies, for instance, has shrunk to 400 yuan (66 U.S. dollars) at present from 1,400 yuan in 2008.

Many migrant workers move home to take care of family members, or because they want to start a career on their own with the money they have earned in big cities, according to Fu Liqun, a research fellow with Hangzhou's Academy of Social Sciences.

As urgency for change mounts, companies in the east are mulling measures to reverse the outflowing trend.

Xiao Xuebing, vice-board chairman of Wingtech, a Zhejiang-based mobile phone design and production company, said that the company will increase workers' salaries by as much as 20 percent in order to survive in the face of cutthroat competition.

"We will also improve the welfare of our workers," Xiao said.

In addition to the efforts of the companies themselves, Fu Liqun said that the government must take a trailblazing role in guiding companies toward restructuring to survive labor shortages.

"The government could provide preferential policies for companies that have market potential," Fu said.

He added that the country's western and eastern regions should improve connections and communication during industrial transfer, which could help make the best of resource distribution.