ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the phenomenal internal migration in the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the equally phenomenal emergence of China as a leading agency in the economic expansion and regional integration of East Asia. It presents three related arguments: Arrighi et al. do not specify how lower income locales like the PRC are able to mobilize the labor power needed to sustain the labor-intensive exports that feed into the dynamic "space-of-flows" in the region; large-scale internal migration in the PRC is closely related to the PRC's export-oriented development strategy of national integration for upward mobility in the world-system; and the livelihood struggles of rural migrant workers against exploitative work conditions in the special economic zones (SEZs) and the struggles of the urban unemployed and laid-off workers have created considerable social unrest in the country. China has become the world's new 'global factory', with the southern province of Guangdong as its powerhouse.
