02-01-2018, 12:52 PM
(01-25-2018, 11:23 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: *** 26-Jan-18 World View -- In major policy shift, China will demolish thousands of migrant homes in cities
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- In major policy shift, China will demolish thousands of migrant homes in cities
- Migrant workers built modern China, and are now being discarded
****
**** In major policy shift, China will demolish thousands of migrant homes in cities
****
A rare street protest in Beijing against demolitions of migrant homes and businesses (Getty)
The mayor of China's capital city Beijing has announced that workers
would demolish 15 square miles of homes used by low-paid migrant
workers. Many migrants have lived in these homes for years or
decades, but now the city is declaring the homes to be illegal
structures. The migrants will be evicted and left homeless.
Officials are not saying how many migrant workers would be evicted by
the demolitions this year. However, in general terms, Beijing would
like to reduce the population of Beijing by 15%, and this would fall
most heavily on the estimated 3 million migrant workers living in
Beijing, or 450,000. (Other reports estimate 8 million migrant
workers in Beijing. The larger figure may include suburbs.)
In December of last year, a demolition campaign evicted tens of
thousands of migrant workers in just one month alone, so these figures
seem to be credible.
Some demolitions had been going on slowly for years, but when a
shantytown fire on November 18 killed 19 people, the demolitions and
evictions took on a shape that's being described a "vicious" and
"cruel."
People were given only few hours' notice before their homes were
demolished, and they were forced into the sub-zero December
temperatures. The demolitions included small businesses as well as
homes, causing many migrants to lose their life savings as well as
their source of income. Many migrants had been supporting their
families by sending money back to them, but that source of support was
cut off overnight.
Chinese intellectuals have petitioned the government to halt the
evictions, calling them a violation of human rights. Even some state
media have criticized the campaign. According to Yi Fuxian, a China
population expert, the government has called migrants a low-end
population - basically implying that they're inferior quality human
beings. "China didn't just say this. They actually wrote it into
government documents. This is absurd," says Yi. Reuters and Shanghaiist (24-Nov) and BBC and
NPR (4-Dec-2017)
Related Articles
- China drives thousands of Beijing migrants out into the winter cold (01-Dec-2017)
- Mongol invasion of China in 1206 has impact today (06-Dec-2010)
****
**** Migrant workers built modern China, and are now being discarded
****
Whenever a large number of foreign migrants travel from one region to
another, the reactions of the natives generally range from
marginalization to open hostility to violence, sometimes ending in
deportation. In Beijing, the migrants are not foreigners. They're
ordinary Chinese from farms and rural areas who come to the city to
improve themselves, or to earn money to send back to their families.
According to China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), there are an
estimated 282 million rural migrant workers in China, making up more
than one third of the entire working population of 807 million.
Migrants work are almost always marginalized and work in low-paid
jobs. They're subject to various kinds of abuse, including forced
overtime and non-payment of salaries. The vast majority of rural
migrant workers are still employed in low-paid jobs in manufacturing,
construction and services. According to NBS figures, the employment
by sector is as follows:
- Manufacturing - 31%
- Construction - 20%
- Sales - 12%
- Household services etc. - 11%
- Transport and logistics - 6%
- Hotel and catering services - 6%
- Others - 14%
The millions of migrants living in Beijing, often for decades, were
the laborers who built Beijing into the huge metropolis that it is
today. Now their work is done, and they're being left cold, broke and
homeless.
Although news stories have focused mainly on Beijing, thanks
to the shantytown fire on November 18, we're apparently seeing
a major change in Chinese policy that affects all large cities,
and possibly medium sized cities as well.
The likely causes of this change of policy are as follows:
- Beijing and other large cities suffer from massive
traffic jams and massive bouts of choking pollution, calling
for a reduction in population.
- Beijing and other large cities need to build new roads and
other infrastructure, requiring that the "illegal" homes of
millions of migrant workers be demolished. Out with the old,
in with the new.
- China has recently changed its "one-child policy" to a "two-child
policy," threatening even larger population gains in the large
cities.
- There are signs of a great deal of xenophobia between the elite
residents of the cities, and the low-paid migrants who do all the
work.
This kind of major demographic policy change can only put strain on
China's economy, which is already running on a huge debt bubble and a
huge real estate bubble.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this split could be
significant as the first signs of a new internal rebellion, for which
China is overdue. China's history is filled with huge, massive
internal rebellions (civil wars), the most recent of which were the
White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1805), the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) and
Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49). The leaders of China's
Communist Party (CCP) are well aware of this history, and they're
aware that a new internal rebellion is now due, and probably overdue.
China used to publish the number of "mass incidents" occurring in the
country. The number of "mass incidents" of unrest recorded by the
Chinese government grew from 8,700 in 1993 to about 90,000 in 2010,
according to several government-backed studies. The government
stopped publishing the figures in 2010, but it's reasonable to believe
that the number of mass incidents per year is well into the hundreds
of thousands. If even just one of these mass incidents occurred in
America or Europe, it would be international news, so the fact that
hundreds of such mass incidents occur in China EVERY DAY indicates how
socially unstable China is.
So you already have an economy running on a huge debt bubble, with
hundreds of thousands of mass incidents per year, and with millions of
marginalized migrants scheduled to lose their homes and their jobs,
when the country is well into a generational Crisis era. China's
next, massive, historic internal rebellion is overdue, and this new
policy could end up being one of the triggers. China Labor Bulletin (Hong Kong) and South China Morning Post (Hong Kong, 5-Jan) and The Diplomat (26-Jul-2017)
Related Articles
- China says that increasing numbers of 'major mass incidents' threaten government (10-Dec-2006)
- China Prime Minister warns country becoming unstable (24-Jan-2006)
- China's Wen Jiabao warns of unrest and widespread environmental destruction (07-Mar-2013)
- Up to 50,000 workers riot and clash with police in southeast China (26-Dec-2004)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, Beijing, migrants,
Yi Fuxian, National Bureau of Statistics, NBS,
White Lotus Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion, Communist Revolution
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I see an old pattern from early capitalism: at the start, capitalists need veritable armies of day laborers to do the hard, dirty, dangerous work of building the basic infrastructure. So it was with laying railroad track, building structures, and digging ditches. The workers usually end up in temporary housing, the housing typically jerry-built with poor sanitation. Vice flourishes. But once the early boom ends, the day laborers are no longer necessary. Maybe they move on. More troubling, they might want to stay and take a piece of the action as regular employees, skilled workers, or as small-scale entrepreneurs. Many do not make the transition, and the powers-that-be want such people out. The technology may be different, but the social pressures are much the same.
The day laborers are the most genuine proletariat in the Marxist sense. They see capitalism at its worst and get the least out of it. Of course they want better. But will they get it?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.