China's forced urbanization puts land before people
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Migrant workers are another social group on an even larger scale. If those in "city villages" lack the necessary skills to become urban dwellers, then migrant workers are de facto urban dwellers without urban identities. Although they come from rural areas, they make their living in cities using their skills and know what city life is all about. This is especially true of second-generation migrant workers. They were either born or brought up in cities and have no experience of rural life, let alone the ability to live in the rural areas. Now there are even third-generation migrant workers in China.
For a long time, local governments showed no interest in urbanizing the migrant workers. Although in recent years some local governments have begun to show interest in them and have begun in some cases to change their residency status, the majority of migrant workers are still denied official urban identities. Yet, the fact is that nowadays most large and medium-sized cities could not function normally without migrant workers. Without them, most cities would die. Since the cities cannot do without migrant workers, the urbanization of migrant workers will promote genuine urbanization. On the other hand, if our cities cannot absorb their migrant workers, China will continue to be a three-layered society composed of farmers, migrant workers and citizens. What's more, migrant workers may become a source of social unrest, since they are neither workers nor farmers and are highly mobile. So, China's urbanization should include this special social group.
Moreover, if the focus of forced urbanization continues to be on land rather than on farmers, China's urbanization may see a "ruralization" of the cities. Already, as urbanization speeds up, social disparities in China's large and medium-sized cities are becoming more conspicuous. One of the symptoms of this is conflict and confrontation among different social groups. Alarmed by this, some cities are trying to preserve the "concept" of cities by restricting the entrance of migrant workers or outsiders that they identify as unqualified. However, this just demonstrates the failure of different social groups to integrate in the course of urbanization.
For farmers, industrialization since China's reform and opening-up has meant exploitation. The exploitative process involves multiple participants including state-owned capital, private capital and foreign capital. Huge numbers of migrant workers have been sucked into the process of industrialization, which should in theory mean progress. But the degree of exploitation to which they have been subjected is extreme. In many places, there has been no industrial upgrading for decades. What enterprises depend on for survival and development is the unlimited supply of migrant workers. At the same time, local governments deny these migrants urban identities using the mechanism of the household registration system. It is the intensive exploitation of migrant workers that explains the incredible cheapness of "made in China" goods.
Once the overall planning of urban and rural development is elevated to the level of national policy, there must be a sound system of laws and regulations to protect farmers' rights to their land. Otherwise it will inevitably lead to seizure of land by force, leading to further exploitation of farmers. Although the various parties can claim that urbanization is in the farmers' best interests, the intervention of administrative or political power will inevitably lead to forced urbanization. Governments at various levels rely on land sales to support their finances and are so bound up with interests related to land that nothing seems able to stop them. The constant increase in land prices has been the basic precondition for local fiscal revenue and infrastructure building. The development of the real estate industry over the years exemplifies this. The central government pledges to regulate house prices but stands helpless in the face of an alliance of local governments, developers and banks. Forced urbanization of land is already happening in some places. Once the practice becomes prevalent, the central government will be driven to its wit's end.
If this scenario is realized, we will see a final round of exploitation of the farmers that finally transforms hundreds of millions of them into proletarians, urban poor or vagrants. And it will be a terrible scene to witness. The massive wave of demolitions in cities has already exacerbated relations between the people and the government and between the people and the developers. No one can predict what hundreds of millions of landless farmers becoming aware of their exploitation will mean for China's social stability. Western societies also experienced a long process of urbanization, but for them it was a relatively natural process not forced by the government intervention. They had various mechanisms to protect the farmers' property rights. Although, in reality, such protective mechanisms were feeble in the face of capital, at least the government did not stand on the side of capital. In many cases, the government played a restraining role in a capital-dominated process of urbanization. If the Chinese government, on the other hand, continues to join hands with capital in pushing forward urbanization, China will definitely set another world speed record.
And people may ask, what is the point of this kind of urbanization? The ultimate target of development in any society should be people not land. Urbanization should be a process that ensures farmers are incorporated into the normal urban way of life under the people-first principle. What the cities need to do is provide public goods such as inexpensive houses, basic education, medical care and social security, and most importantly, the opportunities for training and employment that farmers desperately need to adapt themselves to the challenge of urbanization. The government should also ensure that the increase in land prices is translated into improvement of people's living standards and happiness. Only in this way will the next round of urbanization be "a dose of good medicine" for China's social stability and economic development instead of "a poison" leading to social and economic disorder. And this will require readjustments to be made to China's current fiscal system and even to its economic and political system as a whole.
The author is Director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn
(This blog was first published in Chinese and translated by Luo Huaiyu)
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