Shanghai’s migrant millions
James Irwin, Shanghai-based Canadian journalist
Building up the modern city: migrants are ready to take on all kinds of heavy work
in order to stay in Shanghai.
‘China is one of the few places where there
is a deliberate government policy that addresses urbanization’
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City planning has had its day. The age of culture is beginning. Oriol Bohigas Guardiola, Spanish architect (1925-) |
Shanghai’s train station serves as a dormitory for many migrant workers.
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People like each other so much that when they escape from the city they still look for crowds, in other words they reconstruct the city in the countryside. Charles Baudelaire |
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Factfile Population |
As it learns to manage
the massive influx of ‘temporary residents’ that provide muscle for its explosive
economic growth, China’s city of opportunity is treading a delicate balance between
control and grassroots involvement
Among the well-dressed university students mingling just outside the gates
of Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University, three men stand out. Dressed in surplus
army uniforms, they perch on the curb behind small cardboard signs stuck in pavement
cracks. The crude signs advertising their labour for odd jobs or construction work
can be hastily snatched up and hidden should the police make a sudden appearance.
The men, migrants in their 20s and 30s from the nearby city of Suzhou, never know
when they might have to make a quick get-away. Unemployed for the past month and
flat broke, they haven’t paid the temporary residence permit fee, which makes them
subject to possible eviction from Shanghai.
“We don’t have much money for anything, including the 15 RMB1
(US$1.75) for the monthly permits, so it’s better if we stay clear of the police,”
says the eldest of the three.
A steady
stream of manpower
Temporary residents, the
so-called “floating” population, are everywhere in China’s richest city. On bicycle
and afoot they stream through the city, ringing bells and shouting out offers to
sharpen knives, sell fruit and vegetables from their carts or haul away old junk
and garbage. Like the three men from Suzhou, they are ready to do almost anything,
provided it will keep them in China’s city of opportunity.
Such is the allure of Shanghai that an estimated 3.3 million of its 13.6 million
population are migrants. Thanks to a thriving economy propelled not only by economic
reform but also an ambitious national policy to transform Shanghai into a major Asian
financial centre, the city has turned into a huge construction site. Migrants have
filled the need for sheer manpower. But for the most populous city in the world’s
most populous country, the massive migrant population brings new problems, from huge
strains on infrastructure to an exacerbation of a widening social chasm between the
haves and the have-nots.
China is going through “urbanization of a scale never seen before in its history,”
says Wu Weiping, a native of Shanghai who teaches Urban Studies and Planning at the
Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States. Already some 30 per cent of
the country’s 1.3 billion people live in the cities. That proportion is likely to
reach 50 per cent in the not-too-distant future, according to Wu.
In a word, the challenge is of truly epic proportions. But so far Shanghai does at
least seem to be averting many of the worst problems of urban swell common in other
developing countries. Then again, not every city in the world has at its disposal
the tool that has been a key to Shanghai’s qualified success: a set of controls perhaps
only possible under a system of authoritarian government.
“China is one of the few places where there is a deliberate government policy that
addresses urbanization,” says Wu. One solution has been to encourage the growth of
small and medium-sized cities around the country to take some of the demographic
pressure off the largest city. The other pillar of the urbanization policy is to
control migrant populations once they have reached a city. It is in this latter area
that Shanghai has shown its skill.
Migrants started making their mark on cities soon after they were first allowed to
move there in 1978, the beginning of China’s economic reform programme. Control on
mobility was effected through the hukou, or place-of-origin system. One had to remain
in one’s place of origin unless granted permission to move. Apart from being illegal,
migration without official approval made life quite literally unlivable: without
the appropriate hukou card one was denied access to essentials such as ration tickets
for rice, meat and cotton cloth.
But the former constraints on migration were arbitrary, imposed from the top down,
and were certainly not compatible with the market economy that was to develop after
the Cultural Revolution. As the economy exploded, jobs opened up for unskilled labourers,
particularly in coastal areas where most of the foreign and domestic investment has
poured in. In response, the authorities have encouraged migration to bring in cheap
labour. Meanwhile, higher crop yields and rising population on a dwindling arable
land mass have left the countryside with at least 100 million surplus labourers.
The hukou card system is still in place, but cities like Shanghai today also issue
temporary permits to accommodate migrants. The temporary permit system gives the
government the best of both worlds: flexibility and a relatively strong level of
control.
Migrants must first get permission from their local government back home to work
away from their area of origin. Upon arrival, the fortunate stay with family or friends
from back home, while others sleep rough as the authorities provide no accommodation
for transients.
Should they want to stay more than three days, migrants are required to get a three-month
residence registration, which can then be extended for a two-year permit issued by
an enterprise or local police station. Permits are granted only upon proof of legal
accommodation in the city and of employment. On top of this, migrants need to apply
for an urban employment permit, renewable yearly for a fee equivalent to $8.40. Unlike
blue- or white-collar employees, street vendors and small retailers apply for business
licences instead of employment permits. Only after they have managed to make it through
all these bureaucratic check points are migrants legally allowed to remain in the
city.
The temporary permit system means that in times of economic downturn—such as that
which has left the three Suzhou men jobless for about three-quarters of the past
year—the authorities have some leverage to force migrants to go back to their homes.
An estimated one in four of Shanghai’s floating population doesn’t bother to register
with the authorities.
Ignoring the law seems to be much easier than it was, certainly in the pre-economic
reform era. So much of the economy is now private that one is not necessarily forced
into contact with the state. At the same time, the success of economic liberalization
means that food and other basic goods are so abundant that ration coupons are no
longer needed—again, reducing reliance on state organs. Also, the numbers of migrants
are so huge that it is impossible for the police and other authorities to keep tabs
on them all.
It is possible for migrants to achieve long-term residency, but the hurdles are substantial
and ensure that most will never make the grade. For example, to make the leap, migrants
must purchase an apartment or house, which requires considerable cash; get corporate
sponsorship, which is usually granted only to the well educated; or marry a local,
which requires overcoming the considerable prejudice of the snobbish Shanghainese
who shower disdain upon the floating population.
But while the state keeps close watch on migrants, it also intervenes to make sure
they have at least the basics of survival. That help is motivated not only by a sense
of charity or social duty: the last thing the state wants is for social problems
to fester and explode into mass movements potentially challenging the political order.
Life for migrants, while in many ways difficult, is nevertheless not impossible.
For example, on the city’s northeastern outskirts at the long-abandoned Jiangwan
airport, sits a temporary residents’ camp sanctioned by the municpal government three
years ago. The community is anything but fancy, and life here pales in comparison
with that of the middle classes and especially the small, but visible class of new
rich who have made it to the top through a mixture of contacts, savvy and privileged
position. Nevertheless Jiangwan is relatively clean and orderly—a far cry from squatters’
communities found in the worst slums of other developing countries.
The site, home to 500 families, includes a rudimentary health dispensary, a few workshops,
tiny factories, small stores, a clutch of hairdressers, ramshackle places to eat,
market gardens and a host of other small businesses. Young children proudly lead
the way to a school which, while rudimentary, does have a television, a stereo and
wall maps of the world, and is probably no different from thousands of other elementary
schools in poorer parts of the country. The teachers, mainly in their early 20s,
come from the same provinces as the migrants and thus share a common dialect. The
children themselves seem cheerful and outgoing, and are all properly shod and healthy
looking—apparently enjoying the same sort of parental attention that China’s one-child
family planning policy has inadvertently ensured for today’s youth.
The majority of the adults, who come from nearby provinces such as Jiangsu as well
as poorer, hinterland provinces including Henan, Anhui, Szechuan, leave the camp
to work each day in nearby Shanghai and its environs. To do so they must pass through
the gates of the compound under the occasionally watchful eye of the gatekeepers,
most of whom are laid off workers from state enterprises and all of whom are bona
fide Shanghai residents.
Second-class
citizens
Like other such camps,
Jiangwan is under the jurisdiction of the local district committee, which is responsible
for ensuring the residents are registered, taxes and temporary residency permits
are paid, and security is maintained.
Each family pays approximately $70 to the private landlords who built and own the
rows of houses where it and its neighbours live. In a country where the state has
traditionally provided housing for nominal amounts of money, these rents are very
expensive. Likewise, the half-yearly tuition of about $50 is fairly onerous. Yet
migrants don’t seem to complain much, perhaps because overall life in the city is
better or more promising than that back at home.
Apart from the temporary permit system, there are a number of factors which help
the municipality manage the floating population issue, not the least of which is
the city’s policy of grassroots management. In a pyramid-shaped organizational structure
with the city at the apex, the district just below, the street next and the neighbourhood
forming the wide base, the city has found a way of keeping local involvement high.
Through this last level of government, the neighbourhood committee, the authorities
oversee day-to-day contact with the transient population. Once known for being composed
of busybodies who interfered at every opportunity in people’s lives—denouncing and
ensuring punishment of everything from extramarital affairs to even mild forms of
political or even social dissent—the committees have been professionalized in recent
years. Where once they were usually composed of retired people, now they are manned
by paid staff, usually displaced state employees who have been specially trained,
notes Wu. Instead of being seen largely as an instrument of interference in people’s
private lives, the committees nowadays concern themselves with practical, everyday
affairs.
Wu believes this approach is miles from central planning-type diktat, a remarkably
efficient form of maintaining control while answering genuine needs for social service.
As the population under any one resident committee rarely exceeds 2,000 people, the
organization is characterized by a strong sense of familiarity.
Another tool for managing migrants is urging employers to provide housing for their
staff. Wu estimates that 36 per cent of migrants in Shanghai live at or close to
their place of work and that nearly half of all rural labour migrants live in housing
provided by urban enterprises. Two-thirds of those listing construction as their
occupation live at construction sites.
But while migrants may fare better here than in other parts of the developing world,
there is little doubt that they in effect do not enjoy the same status as Shanghainese.
Migrants are second-class citizens, grudgingly accepted for their labour but mistrusted
because of the stresses they add to the city’s infrastructure. Other residents of
Shanghai are often subsidized for the cost of their children’s education by their
employers or the government. The same goes for medical services. Not so the temporary
residents, who must pay the full cost should medical treatment be necessary. And
their children, many of whom are born in Shanghai, are destined to be forever locked
on the outside looking in. Migrant children are unlikely to mingle with their Shanghainese
peers. A Shanghainese parent would be distraught if his child married a migrant—which
is not all that likely anyway as the two worlds are, for all the physical proximity,
culturally leagues apart, difference of dialect being just one of the many factors.
Besides, there is a big price to pay: when a Shanghainese man marries a migrant woman,
their child inherits her place of orgin.
Part of the disdain comes from the sheer lack of sophistication of the migrants in
terms of dialect and demeanour, and their misplaced expectations. For example, male
economic migrants typically buy a suit before hitting the big city in hopes of landing
a desk job. They often end up wearing the suits—the labels still stitched to the
sleeves—not in fancy office blocks, but on construction sites. Another cause for
animosity is that problems such as rising crime are attributed to migrants.
One does not have to look very far for signs of contempt or discrimination. Outside
a high school in downtown Shanghai—gleaming with new buildings and proud of its new
sports stadiums, expressways and a metro system, all built by migrants—a policeman
on a motorcycle is checking the papers of a migrant worker who has been selling brightly
coloured shoelaces to the students. Not even deigning to get off his bike, the policeman
speaks sharply to the middle-aged woman.
Distraught and crying she pleads her case to the uniformed figure of authority who
snaps closed his notepad and speeds off down the street.
Still weeping, the woman gathers her meagre goods and begins walking away, watched
by a small crowd of Shanghai residents. Where she’ll go is anyone’s guess.
1. The Chinese currency is called Renminbi (RMB).