New China Cities: Shoddy Homes, Broken Hope
By Ian Johnson, NY Times, November 9, 2013
HUAMING, China--Three years ago, the Shanghai World Expo featured this newly built town as a model for how China would move from being a land of farms to a land of cities. In a dazzling pavilion visited by more than a million people, visitors learned how farmers were being given a new life through a fair-and-square deal that did not cost them anything.
Today, Huaming may be an example of another transformation: the ghettoization of China's new towns.
Signs of social dysfunction abound. Young people, who while away their days in Internet cafes or pool halls, say that only a small fraction of them have jobs. The elderly are forced to take menial work to make ends meet. Neighborhood and family structures have been damaged.
Most worrying are the suicides, which local residents say have become an all-too-familiar sign of despair.
As China pushes ahead with government-led urbanization, a program expected to be endorsed at a Communist Party Central Committee meeting that began Saturday, many worry that the scores of new housing developments here may face the same plight as postwar housing projects in Western countries. Meant to solve one problem, they may be creating a new set of troubles that could plague Chinese cities for generations.
"We're talking hundreds of millions of people who are moving into these places, but the standard of living for these relocatees has actually dropped," said Lynette Ong, a University of Toronto political scientist who has studied the resettlement areas. "On top of that is the quality of the buildings--there was a lot of corruption, and they skimped on materials."
Huaming is far from being a dangerous slum. It has no gangs, drug use or street violence. Nearly half the town is given over to green space. Trees line the streets that lead to elementary, middle and high schools.
But the new homes have cracked walls, leaking windows and elevators with rusted out floors. For farmers who were asked to surrender their ancestral lands for an apartment, the deterioration adds to a sense of having been cheated.
"That was their land," said Wei Ying, a 35-year-old unemployed woman whose parents live in a poorly built unit. "You have to understand how they feel in their heart."
The sense of despair and alienation surfaces in the suicides, a late-night leap from a balcony, drinking of pesticide or lying down on railroad tracks.
"I have anxiety attacks because we have no income, no job, nothing," said Feng Aiju, 40, a former farmer who moved to Huaming in 2008 against her will. She said she had spent a small fortune by local standards, $1,500, on antidepressants. "We never had a chance to speak; we were never asked anything. I want to go home."
The situation in these new towns contrasts with the makeshift housing where other migrants live. Many of those are created by farmers who chose to leave their land for jobs in the city. Although cramped and messy, they are full of vitality and upward mobility, said Biao Xiang, a social anthropologist at Oxford University who has studied migrant communities.
"These migrant neighborhoods in big cities are often called slums, but it's the new resettlement communities that will be harder to revive, partly because they are not related to any productive economic activity," Professor Xiang said. "And the population tend to be homogeneous, disadvantaged communities."
Almost uniformly, Huaming residents say the only jobs open to them are in dead-end menial positions, such as street sweepers or low-level security guards. These jobs pay the equivalent of $150 a month.
Even so, competition for them is fierce. Poor migrants from other parts of China are willing to work for even less, often because they have lower living costs. Almost all the gardening in public spaces in Huaming, for example, is done by workers from the inland province of Henan who come for a short time and leave. Workers pruning bushes in the town's beautifully manicured park, for example, said they were paid $100 a month and were happy for it.
Other migrants, mostly from Shandong Province, dominate Huaming's taxi industry because they have teams of experienced mechanics, drivers and dispatchers.
"You can't really compete with them," said one local driver, Wei Zhen. "They're professionals who have been doing this for years."
Retraining was supposed to have allowed Huaming villagers a chance to get skills to compete. According to official literature, $1,500 was allotted for each resident. However, it was impossible to find any who had received retraining or had heard of anyone who had.
For young people, the problems are especially acute. Even when they can get the well-paying menial jobs of $150 a month, residents overwhelmingly said this barely allowed them to make ends meet. Day care costs $100 per month per child, which would take a third of an average couple's salary. Unlike in the villages, many families do not live near one another, making it hard to leave children with their grandparents.
Costs are also high. Inflation has nearly doubled the price of rice, something the residents find especially galling because in the past they grew it themselves.
Many young people seem to have given up trying to find work. Internet cafes are packed with them playing games. Although the cafes are supposed to be limited to the commercial streets, they are found in converted apartments in many housing blocks.
In one, 28-year-old Zhang Wei said he had invested $4,300 to renovate an apartment and install computers. The unit's former living room was packed with young people hunched over screens, many of them playing games like World of Warcraft for money.
"They're all unemployed local people, but without qualifications, what can they do?" Mr. Zhang said.
In a nearby unit, Liu Baohua, an unemployed 62-year-old farmer, said the buildings were almost uninhabitable during the winter. "These buildings look modern outside, but they're not," Mr. Liu said. "It's the worst quality."
Mr. Liu's apartment leaks water from the ceiling, which he said maintenance crews told him they could not fix. Windows were double-glazed but the quality was bad and seals broken, causing them to mist up with condensation. Radiators, he said, had almost no hot water. He also showed work bills from maintenance visits in January confirming that his north-facing bedroom was 55 degrees.
"We need to buy space heaters to survive here," Mr. Liu said. His wife works as a street sweeper and the couple get the equivalent of welfare for an additional $60 a month.
For many, the disappointment leads to suicides. Recently, residents said, a 19-year-old man ill with cancer flung himself off the family's third-floor balcony at 5:30 a.m. and landed on the parking lot next to two vans serving breakfast. His father dead and his mother living on welfare, the family was too poor to afford further cancer treatment. The story could not be verified with the authorities but was repeated independently by residents.
More common are stories of old people who cannot get used to the new lives and quickly die of illnesses. One term that residents repeatedly use is "biesi"--"stifled to death" in the new towers.
Some residents wonder why they went through these travails when so little development is visible. Outside the town, most of the former township lies empty. Some hotels and office blocks have been built next to the airport logistics center. But mostly, one is confronted by mile after mile of empty lots--once farmland, now lying fallow, sometimes blocked from view by endless sheet-metal fences painted with propaganda about prosperity and development.
Driving through the demolished villages with former residents is especially poignant. Some of the streets are still serviceable but mostly one is surrounded by a gutted, bombed-out landscape of foundations overgrown with scrub and small trees.
Given all the fallow land, claims that agricultural production would not suffer do not seem possible. Official propaganda material shows greenhouses that produce vegetables. Many greenhouses have indeed been built, but dozens were empty during a visit in June. Doors swung wildly in the wind and the clear plastic used to let the sun in was torn and flapping. Two greenhouses seemed to be functioning; local residents said they were used to make gifts of produce to visiting leaders as Potemkin-like proof of the still-vibrant agricultural sector.
