Silk touches the lives of rural Chinese in more material ways, too, in the form of the silk clothes, quilts, umbrellas, fans and flowers that punctuate everyday life.
The number of rural Chinese working away from home is now almost 160m, or 12% of the country's population.
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Her suicide, says Dr Phillips, was due not to depression but to the conventions of rural Chinese society.
Most countries would still be happy with such a figure, but it has become an article of faith in China that output needs to grow by at least 8% a year to create enough jobs for the millions of rural Chinese moving to cities.
With more than 800 million rural inhabitants, these banks represent the principal savings institutions for rural Chinese.
Also, the two sides will discuss joint government and U.S. business opportunities for bringing electricity to the estimated 80 million rural Chinese who have no access to electric power.
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In Zhejiang, the first Chinese province to provide support for the rural elderly, the sex imbalance at birth has almost disappeared, according to Xie Zhenming, editor of China Population Today.
Those who provided labour for the housing boom in America (notably Latinos), Ireland (Poles) and China (rural Chinese going to cities on the eastern seaboard) have been among the first to be laid off.
According to this article the Chinese government reported that rural consumers purchased 41.7 billion RMB in household appliances as a result of the subsidies over the first 4 months of 2010 (equivalent to a 510% increase year-on-year).
Tens of millions of rural Chinese migrants are on the move at any given time and many have managed to settle, whether legally or not, in cities throughout the prosperous eastern part of the country.
It is the rural population, however, that makes the Chinese numbers so big, and selling to them is another matter.
The data represent the urban Chinese, having greater wealth and income than their rural counterparts.
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The low-skilled jobs also serve China well as Chinese rural migrants have opportunities to move up in life and gain some skills.
The Chinese government's population-planning commission forecasts another 100m rural residents could move to cities by 2020.
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Milk and other dairy products would also make logical Chinese acquisitions, said Li Guoxiang, a researcher at the state-backed Rural Development Institute of the China Academy of Social Sciences.
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In the past, it was rare for Chinese to leave their home regions, and four-fifths of the population was rural.
It seems clear too that, however miserable the work in the vast factories making every kind of gadget, it is lifting millions of Chinese out of rural poverty.
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