(XU SUHUI)

Passengers wait to board a train at a railway station in Jinan, Shandong Province, on August 29.

China had 236 million "floating people"—those who left their places of origin to seek employment or education elsewhere—in 2012, said the National Health and Family Planning Commission on September 10. More than half of the floating population of working age were born after 1980, according to the commission.

It also said that 75 percent of those floating people born after 1980 had left their hometown before turning 20, and more than 70 percent expect to settle down in big cities.