A senior official announced on Monday at a State Council press conference that 20 million migrants have lost their jobs as the economic crisis hit home.

The figure made front-page headlines in many newspapers and was broadcast worldwide.

China Business News describes 20 million as a "stunning" figure that exceeds even the most pessimist estimates.

Owning up to the gravity of the situation is a positive first step towards tackling it.

The situation calls for desperate remedy, especially when the economic trauma has shown no signs of having bottomed out, and thus might get much worse before it gets better.

That so many find the figure stunning reflects the fact that the regularly released official unemployment statistics do not usually take migrants into account. China has around 130 million migrants.

The Chinese equivalent of "migrant" is nongmingong, or peasant-workers, a post-reform coinage that is itself an oxymoron suggestive of migrants' awkward status: peasant by birth but workers by occupation.

Except for the rare elites who could hope to erase the stigma of peasant/migrant status through academic excellence, this is an hereditary status that clearly sets them apart from any urbanites.

Their relative state of material privation, their simple work ethic and their family loyalty make them ideal labor for factories and plants, as they are hardworking, disciplined, and cheaply available.

The products they make are filling the world's shops.

The generous supply of their labor fuels the China miracle, and they become easily invisible when they are not needed.

While these qualities make migrants particularly desirable as labor, they also make them particularly vulnerable in a downturn.

Although they are technically still peasants, many no longer have farm land back home.

A new generation of young migrants has been softened by urban amenities and finds it impossible to readapt to farming life. More important, farming does not make any economic sense in some regions.

The plight of migrants is an uncomfortable prick on the urban conscience, but if their plight has been ignored for so long, what kind of chance do they stand now when many local governments' top priority is to provide for their needy locals, not the jobless or underemployed migrants?

Since 2004, the central government has published a total of six top circulars on rural work conferences - that it takes so many suggests how formidable the task is.

But handled properly, a crisis can force a breakthrough.

As Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said during the latest rural work conference on December 27, there should be a heightened sense of the urgency about rural work.

He observes pointedly that, driven by market forces and economic incentives, the transfer of arable land, funds and human resources from rural to urban sectors has accelerated, worsening the rural-urban imbalance.

Hui said some areas have been experiencing a "de-agriculturing" process, admitting that in some areas "the strategy of urban sector subsidizing agricultural modernization and the construction of new countryside is confronted with serious challenges."

In understanding Hui's remarks, we should bear in mind that agriculture is not a sector that naturally attracts capital and investment.

In emphasizing the importance of agriculture, we should give more weight to the importance of food security, environment, and lifestyle, rather than the unregulated market forces.

As the crisis worsens, some academics have voiced concern over the "possible reversal" of the urbanization drive.

I prefer to think that the crisis affords us a good chance for a reality check. For instance, what we imply by urbanization?

There is no doubt that there have been significant developments in agriculture in recent years. We have phased out the agricultural taxes, there have been frequent calls to narrow the gaping rural-urban income gap. Recently there had even been talk of curbing the drop in pork prices.

But the most urgent thing is to again make farming a respectable and desirable way of living.

And that will only be possible when officials are deflected from their single-minded pursuit of GDP growth, in favor of development that is balanced, human-centered, and environmentally friendly.

(Shanghai Daily February 5, 2009)