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Experts Exchange
Contact Information

Phone: 310 825 2974

Fax: 310 206 9844

contact: Prof. Russell C. Leong
Prof. Don T. Nakanishi

Mission of the
U.S./China Media
and Communications
Program at UCLA
Our mission is to create, promote, and disseminate a more balanced understanding of the interrelationship of the countries, peoples, and cultures of the United States and China through the tools of mass communication and public education.

Four strategic areas make up the U.S.-China Media and Communications Program, housed at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

C.Cindy Fan

Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

C. Cindy Fan is a UCLA Professor in the Department of Geography and in the Department of Asian American Studies. Her research interests include: Population geography, regional development, post-Mao China (regional policy, migration, inequality, gender), ethnicity, and quantitative methods.

Who Built Beijing? The Human Stories of China's Rise

[keywords: migrant workers, construction workers, Olympic facilities, rural-urban labor migration]

All eyes will be on China in August 2008 as the Olympic Games opens in Beijing, and in May-October 2010 as Shanghai hosts the World Expo. Behind the glamour, millions of migrant workers have been toiling for decades to make, build, and serve. The floating population – people not living in places where they are registered – amounts to 150 million at present and can increase to 250 million by 2025. Beijing alone has four million peasant migrants, of whom a quarter are construction workers, many brought in to build the “Bird’s Nest” and other Olympic facilities.