Reuters Pictures
A farmer carries a rack as he collects firewood using a donkey and cart in his field located near his house in the village of Da Shi Men, around 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Beijing February 2, 2009. Chen Xiwen, Director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, told a news conference on Monday that official surveys found that about 15.3 percent of the total migrant labour pool working in cities had returned jobless to the countryside, adding that it was a sobering warning about damage to the vast and still mostly poor countryside from the global financial crisis. Chen, who advises Chinese Communist Party leaders on policies for the country's 750 million-strong farming population, was speaking a day after the government issued its first big policy document for 2009, which as in past years was devoted to rural development.
