Increasing returned migrants fuel rural development of east China

HEFEI, March 12 (Xinhua) -- In their five-story photo studio, Shen Xiaolei and his wife began their day early in the morning, setting up cameras and preparing photo props to welcome clients.

The couple worked in the coastal cities before returning to their rural hometown Yingshang County in Fuyang City, east China's Anhui Province, in 2015. In the same year, they opened their first photo studio.

"It is the county's growing demand for photography services and the promising market prospect that made us choose to return to operate the photo studio," said Shen, noting that the rural consumer market is expanding. Influenced by social media, many consumers from rural areas are eager to take personalized and fashionable photos, he added.

Approximately three years later, they opened another studio -- the five-story one -- in the county, which has now become sought-after by eager visitors, with an average monthly turnover exceeding 180,000 yuan (about 25,365 U.S. dollars).

"I used to earn 8,000 yuan a month at most while working in the coastal cities, but now my monthly income is 10 times as much," Shen said.

Formerly the hometown of over 2.6 million migrant workers, Fuyang has seen 63,500 migrants return to run businesses like Shen and his wife since 2008, thanks to the improvement of the business environment and the increasing job opportunities in the city.

Fuyang is not alone. Data shows that the population in Anhui has seen net inflows for four consecutive years since 2020, with a total net inflow of 266,000 people in 2022 and 2023.

With a growing number of returned migrants, institutions engaged in entrepreneurship training in rural areas have gone into overdrive.

At a media company in Fuyang, there are thousands of returned migrants receiving photography and new media skills training every year.

"The number of returned migrant trainees in our company has been skyrocketing over the past few years, and many of them plan to run franchised photo studios of our company," said Yan Hongyu, founder of the company.

According to Yan, his company currently possesses nearly 400 franchised photo studios within rural areas in Anhui, and about half of the studios are run by returned migrants.

With younger and more educated migrants returning to Fuyang, the city becomes more attractive for them to start entrepreneurship, Yan noted.

The 37-year-old Yang Guangshuo was one of the beneficiaries. In 2011, he quit his job at a game company in the eastern financial hub of Shanghai and returned to Fuyang. Yang told Xinhua that the local government helped him reduce the land rent to run a company specializing in selling agricultural products including eggs in 2014.

Drawing on the experience he learned from Shanghai, Yang leveraged internet platforms to expand sales channels of the products available. By the end of 2023, the annual sales revenue of Yang's company reached 170 million yuan, providing some 400 jobs for local people.

"Fuyang's growing strength in human resources helps catalyze economic development and bring more opportunities for the city," said Hu Yan, deputy dean of the Innovative Development Institute of Anhui University.