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Filmmaker: Maggie Gu

China's transformation from rural isolation to a global economic giant is already taken for granted.

It has shrugged off communism and emerged blinking into a capitalist world. 

But this rapid re-adjustment has meant China's 1.3 billion people are desperately trying to keep up. Some are simply left in the dust.

Zhang Changyong used to be a farmer in central China but ten years ago he too bought in the new economic dream.

He moved to Beijing, worked in a factory for years and set up a small tailoring shop. All was going well until he fell victim of an unscrupulous retailer who knew that new immigrants from the country had no rights under Chinese law. He refused to pay Zhang the money he owed.

There are thousands of similar stories of country peasants exploited by city dwellers. Millions of job seekers have poured into Chinese cities. Driven by poverty in the countryside they have come to pick up the dirtiest, toughest jobs for the tiniest pay.

This cheap labour force has proved to be vital to China's urban development. But the workers behind the city boom are living the life of outsiders and the underclass without government protection for the most basic rights.   

Maggie Gu decided to investigate why rural migrants were treated as second class citizens in the Peoples Republic of China.