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6/15/13, "China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities," NY Times, Ian Johnson
"The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with
high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering
the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of
brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population
of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.
This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist
Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in
cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and
economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to
find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends
increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers.
Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago
dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant
hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services, but
often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of
the countryside.
“It’s a new world for us in the city,” said Tian Wei, 43, a former wheat
farmer in the northern province of Hebei, who now works as a night
watchman at a factory. “All my life I’ve worked with my hands in the
fields; do I have the educational level to keep up with the city
people?”
China has long been home to both some of the world’s tiniest villages
and its most congested, polluted examples of urban sprawl. The ultimate
goal of the government’s modernization plan is to fully integrate 70
percent of the country’s population, or roughly 900 million people, into
city living by 2025. Currently, only half that number are.
The building frenzy is on display in places like Liaocheng, which grew
up as an entrepôt for local wheat farmers in the North China Plain. It
is now ringed by scores of 20-story towers housing now-landless farmers
who have been thrust into city life. Many are giddy at their new lives —
they received the apartments free, plus tens of thousands of dollars
for their land — but others are uncertain about what they will do when
the money runs out.
Aggressive state spending is planned on new roads, hospitals, schools,
community centers — which could cost upward of $600 billion a year,
according to economists’ estimates. In addition, vast sums will be
needed to pay for the education, health care and pensions of the
ex-farmers.
While the economic fortunes of many have improved in the mass move to
cities, unemployment and other social woes have also followed the
enormous dislocation. Some young people feel lucky to have jobs that pay
survival wages of about $150 a month; others wile away their days in
pool halls and video-game arcades.
Some of these problems could include chronic urban unemployment if jobs are not available, and more protests from skeptical farmers unwilling to move. Instead of creating wealth, urbanization could result in a permanent underclass in big Chinese cities and the destruction of a rural culture and religion....
Almost every province has large-scale programs to move farmers into housing towers, with the farmers’ plots then given to corporations or municipalities to manage. Efforts have been made to improve the attractiveness of urban life, but the farmers caught up in the programs typically have no choice but to leave their land. ...
The primary motivation for the urbanization push is to change China’s
economic structure, with growth based on domestic demand for products
instead of relying so much on export. In theory, new urbanites mean vast
new opportunities for construction companies, public transportation,
utilities and appliance makers, and a break from the cycle of farmers
consuming only what they produce. “If half of China’s population starts
consuming, growth is inevitable,” said Li Xiangyang, vice director of
the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government
research institute. “Right now they are living in rural areas where they
do not consume.”
Skeptics say the government’s headlong rush to urbanize is driven by a
vision of modernity that has failed elsewhere. In Brazil and Mexico,
urbanization was also seen as a way to bolster economic growth. But
among the results were the expansion of slums and of a stubborn
unemployed underclass, according to experts. ...
The costs of this top-down approach can be steep. In one survey
by Landesa in 2011, 43 percent of Chinese villagers said government
officials had taken or tried to take their land. That is up from 29
percent in a 2008 survey.
“In a lot of cases in China, urbanization is the process of local
government driving farmers into buildings while grabbing their land,”
said Li Dun, a professor of public policy at Tsinghua University in
Beijing.
Farmers are often unwilling to leave the land because of the lack of job
opportunities in the new towns. Working in a factory is sometimes an
option, but most jobs are far from the newly built towns. And even if
farmers do get jobs in factories, most lose them when they hit age 45 or
50, since employers generally want younger, nimbler workers.
“For old people like us, there’s nothing to do anymore,” said He
Shifang, 45, a farmer from the city of Ankang in Shaanxi Province who
was relocated from her family’s farm in the mountains. “Up in the
mountains we worked all the time. We had pigs and chickens. Here we just
sit around and people play mah-jongg.” ...
The government will still need significant resources to get the programs
started. Currently, local governments have limited revenues and most
rely on selling land to pay for expenses — an unsustainable practice in
the long run. Banks are also increasingly unwilling to lend money to big
infrastructure projects, Mr. Xiang said, because many banks are now
listed companies and have to satisfy investors’ requirements.
“Local governments are already struggling to provide benefits to local
people, so why would they want to extend this to migrant workers?” said
Tom Miller, a Beijing-based author of a new book on urbanization in
China, “China’s Urban Billion.” “It is essential for the central government to step in and provide funding for this.”...
Most of the costs are borne by local governments. But they rely mostly
on central government transfer payments or land sales, and without their
own revenue streams they are unwilling to allow newly arrived rural
residents to attend local schools or
benefit from health care programs.
This is
reflected in the fact that China officially has a 53 percent rate of
urbanization, but only about 35 percent of the population is in
possession of an urban residency permit, or hukou. This is the document
that permits a person to register in local schools or qualify for local
medical programs.
The new blueprint to be unveiled this year is supposed to break this
logjam by guaranteeing some central-government support for such
programs, according to economists who advise the government. But the
exact formulas are still unclear. Granting full urban benefits to 70
percent of the population by 2025 would mean doubling the rate of those
in urban welfare programs."...via Althouse
Ed. note: The US political class and the Communist Chinese think alike. The US is well into the process of forcing everyone to live in cities. At least in Communist China a few people set themselves on fire to protest the government herding them around like animals to die a quiet death in a crate. Which is genocide.
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