Beijing

HE makes less than US$1,000 a month in a city where apartments can cost more than US$1 million, but even so the Chinese government is pinning its improbable hopes for a property revival on the likes of Liu Jun.

The electrician and plumber is a recent addition to China's 250 million-plus migrant workers, who have provided the labour force to transform the country's economy in recent decades, emerging from the countryside in droves to seek better lives and incomes in the cities.