The festering sores around Chinese cities

• Source: Global Times
• [01:43 January 29 2010]
• Comments

By Chen Chenchen

Every city seems to have two faces. Seeing the glowing face, one may feel like sitting down to sip wine in a goblet, which would mirror the skyscrapers, shop windows and the well-heeled people outside.

On the other side are those grimy houses and streets with people in rags. It can be hard to believe one is still in the same city.

These two faces are not far from each other in China: Drive from the city center for less than one hour, and one gets to see the festering sores on the urban fringe.

According to statistics provided by Beijing Municipal Floating Population Management Office, 88.5 percent of the city's floating population lives in the fringe areas.

Wang Guixin, director of the Institute of Population Studies at Fudan University, confirmed that floating population living in suburban Shanghai make up almost 80 percent of the city's overall migrant population.

The urban fringe area is often the first stop of many migrant workers. In Xiaojiahe community of Haidian district, Beijing, 14,000 illegal rooms have been built by local villagers and rented to migrant workers. Each household has put up a building with 20 to 30 rooms for rent.

Migrant workers sharing a room normally pay 400 yuan ($58.6) every month, and the house owner makes a pile. While urban planning fails to consider the floating population's need for accommodation, squatter settlements on the city edges are flourishing.

The chaos on the city fringe exposes China's urban inequalities. When a city expands toward rural areas, the urban construction and development department usually expropriates arable land, and neglects to acquire land for collective construction, due to high compensation involved in demolition.

Therefore, when villagers become unemployed urban residents after losing their arable land, they begin to build unauthorized houses. No one knows when "urbanization" reaches there. But the new makeshift houses provide them income, though their demolition would involve higher compensation someday.

The distorted and unplanned settlement on the city edge is a black hole in urban management. With the flood of migrants, the original village or town committee can no longer manage security, sanitation and other affairs adequately.

In the event of a fire in the unauthorized community, the cramped houses and narrow lanes become dangerous as firefighters cannot enter the area. Water supply is tight, and sewers are choked with garbage.

Some suggest uprooting such communities and establishing urban neighborhoods. I'm afraid this will only drive the floating population to another periphery further away, because they cannot afford the higher rents.

The only way out is to gradually absorb the floating population by improving conditions for their employment, education, housing and social security.