MCLC: pitfalls in push from farm to city

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: pitfalls in push from farm to city
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Part 2 in Ian Johnson's wonderful series Leaving the Land. A slide show
and video accompany the text.

Kirk

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Source: NYT (7/13/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/asia/pitfalls-abound-in-chinas-push
-from-farm-to-city.html

LEAVING THE LAND
Pitfalls Abound in China’s Push From Farm to City
[Articles in this series look at how China’s government-driven effort to
push the population to towns and cities is reshaping a nation that for
millenniums has been defined by its rural life.]
By IAN JOHNSON

XI'AN, China — Li Yongping sat in a darkened conference room, his face
illuminated by an enormous map of southern Shaanxi Province projected on a
wall-size screen. He nodded to an assistant and the screen split: the
province on one side and a photograph of a farmer on the other.

“These people are moving out of here,” he said, gesturing to the mountains
that dominate the province’s south. “And they’re moving here,” he said,
pointing to the farmer’s newly built concrete home. “They are moving into
the modern world.”

Mr. Li is directing one of the largest peacetime population transfers in
history: the removal of 2.4 million farmers from mountain areas in the
central Chinese province of Shaanxi to low-lying towns, many built from
scratch on other farmers’ land. The total cost is estimated at $200
billion over 10 years.

It is one of the most drastic displays of a concerted government effort to
end the dominance of rural life, which for millenniums has been the
keystone of Chinese society and politics. While farmers have been moving
to cities for decades, the government now says the rate is too slow. An
urbanization blueprint that is due to be unveiled this year would have 21
million people a year move into cities. But as is often the case in China,
formal plans only codify what is already happening. Besides the southern
Shaanxi project, removals are being carried out in other areas, too: in
Ningxia, 350,000 villagers are to be moved, while as many as two million
transfers are expected in Guizhou Province by 2020.

All told, 250 million more Chinese may live in cities in the next dozen
years. The rush to urbanize comes despite concerns that many rural
residents cannot find jobs in the new urban areas or are simply unwilling
to leave behind a way of life that many cherish.

The push has the support of the highest reaches of the government, with
the new prime minister, Li Keqiang, a strong proponent of accelerated
urbanization. The campaign to depopulate the countryside is seen as the
best way to maintain China’s spectacular run of fast economic growth, with
new city dwellers driving demand for decades to come.

The effort is run by officials like Mr. Li in Xi’an, who speaks
emotionally about wanting to help push China’s 700 million rural residents
into the 21st century. Heirs to imperial China’s Mandarin officials,
modern-day Communist Party officials like Mr. Li speak knowingly of what
is best for China’s 1.3 billion people, where they should live and how
they should earn a living.

“An objective rule in the process of modernization,” he said, “is we have
to complete the process of urbanization and industrialization.”

One of the mantras that officials repeat about the Shaanxi project is that
it is voluntary, although interviews suggest that not all of those who are
being moved agree.

China’s previously largest migration project was to resettle about 1.2
million people for the Three Gorges Dam. That was mandatory: villages and
towns were flooded, and people had no choice but to move. This new effort
will take place over a decade or more, and those who wish to stay on the
farm may do so, at least for a while, officials say. They promise generous
subsidies for moving and a better standard of living, including jobs, in
the new urban areas.

But in the mountains 200 miles south of Mr. Li’s offices, one of the
project’s showpieces illustrates the complications he faces. The onetime
village of Qiyan became a focus of national attention in 2010 when a
landslide in a nearby ravine killed 29 people. Provincial leaders
immediately made the disaster a case study of why the removals were
necessary.

Qiyan, previously a village of 200 households, was designated a town, and
its lower reaches were leveled and rebuilt with towers to house 6,000
people. Those living in the surrounding hills were encouraged to live in
the valley — and not in big cities like Xi’an. The process is known as
chengzhenhua, moving into towns, and has become one of the most-debated
topics in China. The idea is to limit the number of megacities by keeping
farmers closer to the land they farmed instead of moving them to giant
cities. The problem is jobs, or the lack of them, in these areas.

===========================================
PERSPECTIVES FROM CHINA »
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/16/world/asia/weibo-voices-land
-seizures.html>
中文|English

剥夺了我的田地，强拆了我的房子，连一丁点宅基地也不补偿给我，只同意拿廉租房作为补
偿。- 刘美美329..., 江西, via Sina Weibo
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/16/world/asia/weibo-voices-land
-seizures.html>
===========================================

During a visit in February, townspeople sat in their front yards, huddled
around open fires. Their homes were brand-new, with indoor heating and
modern appliances, just as Mr. Li’s plan envisions, but it all runs on an
unaffordable luxury: electricity. Hence the fires to keep warm.

“Back when we lived in the mountains we had monthly electric bills of 10
yuan,” or renminbi (about $1.60), said Lin Jiaqing, a farmer who moved to
Qiyan two years ago. “But one month we had to pay 670 yuan” — about $110 —
“so from now on we don’t heat or even use the washing machine.”

Mr. Lin and others still officially classified as rural residents agreed
that living in the mountains had its drawbacks. He spent about 11 months
of every year on an assembly line far away in Jiangsu Province. He said he
appreciated the safety of the new homes.

“If you’re far away working, you can’t rest easily thinking of your family
up in the hills facing the dangers of another landslide,” he said.

The apartments, however, cost about $19,000. A government subsidy covers
about a quarter of that, and the government credit cooperative provides an
interest-free loan for another quarter.

That still means families must come up with what for them is a staggering
$10,000 to buy an apartment and then $5,000 more within three years to pay
back the government loan. And that is just for a concrete shell. Most
people spend thousands of dollars more on paint, lighting, televisions and
washing machines.

All of this helps push up domestic demand, just as intended, but it forces
painful choices.

“Our daughter was doing well at high school, but when we had to buy this
apartment, she knew we couldn’t afford to send her to college,” said Mr.
Lin’s wife, He Shifang.

The daughter dropped out of high school and is working in the southern
city of Shenzhen as a clerk at a travel agency.

Mr. Lin said the additional income would allow the family to pay off the
mortgage.

Others have a tougher time.

“I don’t have the money now,” said Cai Dawei, who bought his apartment in
2010 hoping to find employment in the new town. An industrial park was
built, but it is empty except for a seasonal processing plant for a small
tea plantation. Residents estimate that 20 people work there. Almost
everyone else is either unemployed or works in factories in distant places
where migrant workers are not allowed to put down permanent roots.

At 48, Mr. Cai said he is too old to work in factories, which generally
prefer younger workers. His three-year loan is due this autumn, and Mr.
Cai said he hoped his son, who had taken a factory job, could pay off the
family debts. Without a plot of land to farm, Mr. Cai said, he will also
have to rely on his son for money to buy food.

================================================
PERSPECTIVES FROM CHINA »
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/16/world/asia/weibo-voices-land
-seizures.html>
中文|English

至今宅基地都毫无着落。租来的房屋现在要我搬走我一个妇女人家带着三个小孩该搬哪
里去呢？- 湘辣妹子无悔, 湖南 株洲, via Sina Weibo
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/16/world/asia/weibo-voices-land
-seizures.html>
================================================

His wife, Lü Minqin, said she most regretted buying a 46-inch, $700
flat-screen television, which uses too much electricity, and a $200
washing machine. At the time, they seemed like part of being a modern city
person, she said, but now they sit unused.

Ms. Lü thought of moving back, but when she visited their homestead, she
was shocked.

“They planted trees everywhere, and there are wild pigs!” Ms. Lü said.
“You can’t really go back anyway because they tore down our home.”

When asked about the situation, the Chinese official leading the effort,
Mr. Li, said he was aware of these issues and was taking steps to improve
planning.

“We are listening to ordinary people and making adjustments all the time,”
Mr. Li said. “We aren’t blindly following one plan.”

Mr. Li’s focus on ordinary people mirrors growing concerns at the top
levels of government that urbanization is currently being carried out to
satisfy abstract targets instead of improving people’s livelihood. After a
meeting of a parliamentary committee in early July, the government issued
a document stating that while urbanization “is the only path to
modernization,” it must be planned better.

Tall and vigorous, Mr. Li, 54, is an unusually open and frank official.
His title is executive vice commander of the project, and he reports to
the deputy governor. But as a lifelong grass-roots Communist Party cadre,
Mr. Li knows how local officials pull the wool over the eyes of higher
officials like himself. “You have to talk to the people,” Mr. Li said, and
not rely on good-news reports from underlings.

To do this, he makes extended field visits, but he relies mainly on his
high-tech database that he projects on the wall and pores over like a
general plotting a campaign. Pointing to the photograph of the farmer in
front of her new home, Mr. Li said that in the future, migrants would be
able to see their personal information online to verify whether they had
received the correct compensation for their land, a modern check on
corruption.

Besides running the relocation office, Mr. Li is chief executive of a
state-run company that has raised $1 billion from state enterprises and
banks to start the work — a possible model for the national urbanization
plan.

================================================
PERSPECTIVES FROM CHINA »
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/16/world/asia/weibo-voices-land
-seizures.html>
中文|English

村里有一人在政府当官，欲将我家里土地夺取，我爸不肯，他就组织整个村里人为难我家人。
- 苦情女2012, 广东 珠海, via Sina Weibo
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/16/world/asia/weibo-voices-land
-seizures.html>
================================================

Under the plan, this money is supposed to be a pump primer for a
self-sustaining process of people moving into towns, finding jobs,
becoming taxpayers and replenishing government coffers. This is also the
way Beijing intends most investment in urbanization to work out, with the
enormous costs — in new schools, hospitals and apartments — borne by the
new wealth generated by the migration.

As for the lack of jobs, Mr. Li pulled out a study he is in the middle of
revising. It was a random telephone survey of 1,000 households by an
outside agency. He pointed out that the study acknowledged that few
residents could find work locally and many were forced to travel far for
employment.

“This is something we haven’t done well,” Mr. Li said. “But we’re working
on this: we’re building roads and industrial parks and will create an
environment so companies will come to these areas.”

Although he insisted that it was up to rural dwellers whether they wanted
to relocate, Mr. Li added that eventually everyone must move. China cannot
wait for the people to relocate into cities of their own accord, he said.
“People have been leaving the mountains to work in the cities on their
own, but this hasn’t happened fast enough.”

One reason for the urgency is that water from the mountains runs off into
one of China’s largest engineering projects: the diversion of water
through rivers and canals from China’s south to its arid north.
Reforesting the mountains will keep the water cleaner, Mr. Li said.

He also said the mountains are dangerous, with regular landslides and
other natural catastrophes. No one will be permitted to live in these
areas, he said. In addition, he called southern Shaanxi a drag on the
provincial economy. The poor farmers must become higher-earning urbanites,
Mr. Li said.

Underlying the project seems to be a distaste among city dwellers for
rural life. During the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Li lost his chance at a
college education because the country’s leader, Mao Zedong, closed schools
and sent young people to work in the countryside. Mr. Li said the time
helped him understand the plight of peasants, but like many elites in
China he also speaks dismissively of rural life.

“They need to shower more often, but how can they shower on a dirt floor?”
Mr. Li said of the farmers and their old adobe homes in the mountains. “If
you don’t shower a lot, that’s no good. Put simply, we want to teach
ordinary Chinese people to bid farewell to several backward ways of
living.”

Mia Li contributed research from Beijing.