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and 2004 has increased the urban portion of China’s population from17.9 to 41.8 percent, Cai and Wang contend that an even higher levelof urbanization will be necessary for China to match the world’s mostproductive economies. Blocking such progress are policies that originatedwithin a planned economy but now discourage economic growth: the oldhukou system, which restricts migrants’ freedom to resettle with accessto public services, and state enterprises, which protect urban workers’jobs from competition and exclude migrant workers from employment.To assure that cities will have the workers needed for future economicexpansion, the authors urge a deepening of reforms that would result inmore open and competitive urban labor markets and increased internalmigration.The research of Zai Liang and Hedeki Morooka has examined the economiccontributions to southern China’s Fujian Province made by remittances senthome by international migrants working in the United States. The authorsfound that although migrant families spent remitted funds primarily onconsumption, they also devoted a small but significant portion to publicwelfare projects, such as schools, roads, and public buildings in theirvillages, and, after pooling funds, to investments in industry and realestate elsewhere in the region. Contesting the notion that remittances mustbe invested in productive enterprises in order to contribute to economicdevelopment, they point out that consumption – particularly housingconstruction – has multiplier effects that ripple throughout the regionaleconomy and stimulate investment and growth in related businesses. Thusthey see international remittances as contributing positively to regionaleconomic growth within the longer history and broader context of nationalpolicies that have been implemented since the late 1970s to promote coastalindustrialization and international trade.22Shifting regional focus, Manuel Orozco’s chapter takes up the developmentcontributions that remittances and other migration-related economicactivities make to development in Latin America and the Caribbean. LikeLiang and Morooka, Orozco points out that remittances have multipliereffects in the communities and regions where they are spent, but the extentto which remittance spending can promote economic growth, he concludes,depends upon the structure and organization of the local economy and theopportunities it provides for both consumption and investment. Crucialfactors include levels of productivity and efficiency in different economicsectors and markets; access to savings, loans, and other financial servicesthrough banks and other institutions; and the economic policy environmentestablished by local and national governments. Whether remittances canbecome integrated into local markets and leverage economic transformation