A closer look at China's global development policies

Chinese construction site in Ethiopia :: © SarahTz / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

China's increasingly assertive role on the global stage and robust engagement in development activities around the world have attracted a lot of attention lately.

Large-scale infrastructure projects, mining or manufacturing operations, construction of dams and power plants, building of roads, bridges, railways, hospitals and housing, funding of special economic zones or agribusinesses indeed rank high on the agenda of Chinese state and non-state actors alike.

In Western media and academic circles, especially the countless initiatives on the African continent have been in the spotlight. Over the last few years, a real cottage industry of publications on China's footprint in Africa has emerged, only recently being superseded by a series of books on Chinese investments in Latin America.

Commentators have been and still are divided, not knowing exactly what to make of the bewildering scale and diversity of the Chinese spending spree abroad and how to assess its overall impact. Many critics were eager to denounce the no-strings-attached approach favoured by the Chinese state in starkly moral tones.

In the same vein, China has been depicted as an aggressive neocolonial power with no regard whatsoever for cherished Western notions of transparency, good governance, respect for human rights, labour protection or environmental standards. China, on the other hand, has portrayed the vigorous and multi-faceted ventures of state-controlled giants as well as private entrepreneurs as mutually beneficial arrangements and strongly objected to accusations of neocolonialism.

The debate has often been reduced to deeply flawed ideological clashes and oversimplified assertions, not taking into account the heterogeneity of Chinese actors or the many pitfalls of conventional Western interventions.

Steadily, China's overseas activities and foreign aid have come to surpass or substitute for that of Western players, especially in those parts of the world where these were no longer willing to go or never went in the first place (such as fragile states, volatile regions, countries with corrupt regimes, for instance).

A good starting point for anyone curious about the many intricacies of China's development projects in foreign countries might be the blog Exporting China's Development to the World. A MqVu Project on China's Aid Investment and Migration. The intro reads:

'MqVU is a team of anthropologists based at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) and the Free University (VU, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) who research China’s development projects around the world. This site is intended as an aggregator of news and a platform for discussion on these projects, as well as China's domestic development issues.'

Started in 2008, the site provides in-depth information, lengthy and no-nonsense critical commentaries, book reviews, conference reports and astute newspaper analyses. Thankfully and unusually, Chinese-language sources and perspectives play a major role in discussing various development projects worldwide.

Coverage tends to concentrate on African-Chinese relations and investments on the African continent, but the situation in regions as diverse as Russia's Far East, Hungary, Libya, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Malaysia, Ecuador or Afghanistan is addressed, too.

The writing is exceptionally good and easily accessible to non-experts. Although the blog is updated only sporadically that doesn't diminish its value. Noteworthy is also the extensive list of links to relevant English- and Chinese-language sites.

By the way, the site's spiritus rector (I presume) and most prolific author, Pál Nyíri, holds the chair 'Global History from an Anthropological Perspective' at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and is a respected China scholar with many years of experience in fieldwork (and a very nice guy, too, I would like to add).

Currently, he is working on a new book on how Chinese correspondents report about the world, so watch out for the forthcoming release by The University of Washington Press.

Talking about Chinese global development and investment policies: The New York Times just published a well-researched and detailed case study of China's substantial and rather controversial engagement in Ecuador (available in English, Chinese and Spanish) as part of the ongoing series 'The China Factor'.

China's urban villages in limbo :: Integration or destruction?

Shipai Village / Guangzhou (2010) :: © Karl Fjellstrom / Flickr / CC BY 3.0

The so-called 'urban villages', literally 'villages within the city (chengzhongcun 城中村)', have been around for quite some time as unintended by-products of rapid urbanization processes in burgeoning Chinese metropolises.

Large stretches of farm land were increasingly incorporated into the city proper, farming was abandoned and former peasants became part of city life.

Every large city has its own pockets of 'rural' enclaves and the future of these unique urban settlements is highly contested. Advocates praise their informality, ingenuity and flexibility in accommodating large numbers of residents at low cost while opponents perceive them as disgusting eyesores, precursors to slum formation and dangerous breeding grounds for all kinds of criminal activities and vices.

In view of the accelerating speed of urbanization and the tenacious official urbanization mantra, it is time to take a closer look at the current situation of China's urban villages.

The first and most thoroughly studied among them, Beijing's Zhejiang Village (浙江村) in Fengtai district, made headlines across the nation as early as the beginning of the 1990's, when it already had experienced several waves of immigration by small entrepreneurs and workers from Wenzhou in Zhejiang province.

At the height of its development in the mid-1990s, this group dominated the market in leather goods in the Chinese capital and the village housed nearly 100,000 migrants (not only from Zhejiang, but also from Hubei, Jiangxi, Hebei and Sichuan provinces) in total. Soon becoming a nuisance for city authorities, several attempts at eradicating this unruly and unofficial urban space were made.

Besides notorious Zhejiang Village, the cluster of well-known urban villages in Beijing included Anhui Village (安徽村), Henan Village (河南村) and Xinjiang Village (新疆村), evidently all named after the source communities of the majority of their respective inhabitants.

These newcomers often worked in the same line of occupation; Anhui Village, for example, was famed for its countless tenants employed in private households (baomu), Henan Village for a huge concentration of workers in the waste business and Xinjiang Village for specialization in ethnic food (not all of these or the numerous villages not mentioned here have survived).

Other famous (and, for some time, infamous) urban villages were or still are located in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. These settlements are considered to be prototypes of chengzhongcun as they were virtually engulfed by an ever-sprawling city.

Sanyuanli (三元里), Xian (冼) or Shipai (石牌), to name just a few, are all notable examples of extremely dense settlements in Guangdong province's bustling capital.

Admittedly, scale, physical form, resident composition and administrative status vary widely in different localities and even within one and the same locale. Some urban villages are based in the very center of the city in question, while others are situated in suburban areas or are scattered on the outskirts, with very different repercussions for their standing and future.

Longtan Village / Guangzhou (2013) :: © Trevor Patt / Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

If the villages are located in core areas, the first sight is downright startling:

Surrounded by modern high-rise apartment blocks and shiny new office towers, these neighbourhoods stand out by the height (mostly low-rise up to eight floors) and shabbiness of the housing structures, incredible density and serious overcrowding. I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend to enter in case you suffer from claustrophobia as the alleyways are occasionally so narrow that there is no way two persons are able to walk beside each other.

Neighbours in opposing houses can easily shake hands - this is why they are commonly called 'handshake houses' or 'kissing buildings'. Entry points are normally equipped with a traditional gate inscribed with the village's name; tricycle drivers wait in droves at the entrance for customers, because cars can't enter the criss-crossing, confined and dark lanes where you easily get lost.

Despite the staggering diversity of urban villages across China, they all share two major characteristics:

They are places where the rural and urban closely intersect and migrant workers assemble in large numbers due to the ready availability of inexpensive housing.

To understand the special position of urban villages, one has to take into account the complicated dual-track land ownership system in the PR China. The peculiar administrative status of urban villages is owed to the fact that in these former agricultural areas, the land still belongs to the collective, not to the state; they are governed by village committees, not by municipal authorities.

After requisition and conversion of agricultural land, villagers are compensated by allowing them to retain the property rights to some land for housing and other purposes, such as industrial ventures. To manage the land, village communities often establish joint-stock companies with all villagers as shareholders.

This arrangement has paved the way for unregulated and feverish building activities within urban villages.

For the original inhabitants, inflowing migrant workers are heaven-sent because they are willing to rent sub-standard rooms owners are constructing at staggering speed without caring for any safety standards. Whole villages live off the rents collected from migrant tenants, expanding houses floor after floor after floor.

The demand is immense as migrants who don't stay at construction sites, in their rented stalls or in dormitories provided by their employers have to find affordable lodgings. As outsiders, they don't qualify for government-provided social housing and are not able to pay the high rents on the general housing market.

It is clearly a win-win situation:

Villagers gain a steady income by renting out cheap housing and migrants find an easily accessible entry-point to the cities. In countless urban villages in core areas of municipalities, the migrant population exceeds that of the locals by three to six times, consisting of tens of thousands of new dwellers from nearly every corner of the country.

As more and more migrant workers move in, basic infrastructure catering to their specific needs is created by other migrant residents.

Eateries and food stalls, small shops and grocery stores, bicycle sheds, hairdressers, telephone booths and internet cafés, small workshops, private health stations, transport services or repair shops proliferate, offering additional job opportunities for those not working in manufacturing, the service sector, construction or commerce in the surrounding city.

Most of these ventures are not registered and therefore illegal. Raids are not uncommon, but as soon as the inspectors are gone, life goes on as usual. Villagers themselves feel no need to participate in such income-generating activities as they earn enough by renting out living space; many of them move out of the village for good, thus constituting a new class of absentee landlords.

In some instances, city governments have merged urban villages by formally transforming them into official municipal territory, granting locals an urban hukou (household registration 户口).

Generally a much sought-after document due to the manifold privileges associated with it, not all villagers were content because they ultimately lost all their land (and houses in case of full conversation) and were often compensated only meagrely.

Besides, the densely knit urban enclaves had enabled villagers to preserve at least some of their cherished traditions, customs and clan structures.

Shops in an urban village in Guangzhou (2010) :: © Karl Fjellstrom / Flickr / CC BY 3.0

All things considered, I am still reluctant to call these distinctive settlements 'urban slums'.

Not to be misunderstood, they are not necessarily a pretty sight and health and fire hazards are indeed very serious concerns. So are the often primitive living conditions (not that other forms of accommodation, such as dormitories, are superior) and the very real possibility of higher than usual crime rates. Life is neither romantic nor idyllic in such confined spaces.

Nevertheless, the urban villages I have visited so far, mainly in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are not in the same league as the extensive shanty towns common in other parts of the world. And they play a vital role in the transition from rural to urban modes of existence and in providing low-cost housing to a populace that otherwise would not be able to stay.

When urban villages are demolished to make way for new apartment blocks and office buildings, migrant tenants are invariably evicted, unable to compete for gentrified new housing units and thus often pushed to remote corners where job opportunities are rare.

Municipal governments have reacted very differently to spontaneous developments on the ground.

In some localities, whole communities have been entirely razed early on, while authorities in other cities have been more benevolent, lethargic or indifferent, for whatever reasons. As a rule, the urban villages most in danger of extinction are naturally those in prime locations that are deemed highly valuable by developers. Normally, urban villages on the periphery of large cities or mega-cities stand a better chance of survival for the time being.

The overwhelming majority of city officials and urban planners tend to view these villages as remnants of a past soon to be forgotten.

Informal, disorderly, seemingly unmanageable and of 'low quality (suzhi di 素质低)' (with regard to both physical structures and human inhabitants), the settlements are disturbing the revered vision of a civilized and truly modern metropolis.

More concerned about city image and overall urban development planning, city leaders only notice the negative sides of these highly dynamic urban spaces. Many cities have now included not only the so-called 'urban villages' but also outlying rural villages under municipal jurisdiction and incorporated them into their urban planning master plans.

As soon as areas are marked for redevelopment in official plans, the demolition crews might not be that far.

Redevelopment of Dachong Village / Nanshan district / Shenzhen (2011) ::

© dcmaster / Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Given the frenzied pace with which city governments all over China push ahead with their urban planning projects, I am not very hopeful that a large part of still existing urban villages are going to survive, even in a somewhat modernized form.

'Reconstruction', 'renovation' or 'redevelopment' are more often than not thinly veiled euphemisms for total destruction, razing all physical structures and building a completely new, gentrified urban architecture that no longer provides room for the migrant population. In eradicating a unique urban fabric that functions as an important gateway to the city for a large segment of migrant workers, overly ambitious city authorities, in tow with developers vying for lucrative deals, miss an opportunity for more equitable, sustainable and socially responsive urban planning procedures.

Of two alternative viewpoints, namely whether informal migrant communities in Chinese metropolises, as typified by urban villages, should be viewed essentially as a problem (as harbingers of slum formation) or primarily as a solution (as fluid stages of innovative informality and precursors to ensuing integration), the first one clearly seems to prevail.

(For the latest academic article about current urban villages in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, see here (free full text).

An intriguing new book, edited by Dutch architect and urban designer Stefan Al, focuses on southern China's urban villages (Amazon).

I also warmly recommend the terrific blog Shenzhen Noted by Mary Ann O'Donnell who has closely followed redevelopment projects in Shenzhen for years.

It is a pity that the site China's Vanishing Urban Villages has not been updated since 2013, but it still holds lots of valuable information, including photographs and maps, on this fascinating phenomenon.

For in-depth coverage of villagers' protests against official corruption in the redevelopment of Guangzhou's Xian Village, read Jonathan Kaiman's account in The Guardian.

And for a recent eyewitness report about the discriminatory practices rural migrants living in urban villages encounter, have a look at 'Chasing Shadows: Policing Migrants in Guangzhou’s Urban Villages'.)

Visualizing Beijing's urban sprawl

© NASA / JPL-Caltech

If you ever wondered how a three-dimensional computer model simulation of Beijing's frantic process of urbanization would look like, well, here it is:

Using data from NASA's QuikScat satellite, scientists of Stanford University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton (UK) were able to assess the city's urban expansion between the years 2000 and 2009 based on detected changes in physical infrastructure.

According to the press release from June 25:

'Gray and black indicate buildings, with the tallest and largest buildings in the city's commercial core appearing lighter gray. Other colors show changes in areas not yet urbanized (for example, clearing land or cutting down trees), with the rate of change indicated by color. Blue-green indicates the least change, yellow-orange more change, and red the greatest change.'

The new study finds that the Chinese capital virtually quadrupled in size during this time alone, leaving it to further analysis to determine how much the burgeoning mega-city has expanded since then.

Interestingly, the researchers also quantified how this phenomenal urban sprawl has modified Beijing's wind and pollution patterns by using a computer model of climate and air quality created by one of the two team leaders.

Not surprisingly, even winter temperatures have risen by circa 3 to 4 degrees Celsius and wind speed has been reduced by approximately 1 to 3 meters per second. Higher temperatures and less air circulation are highly consequential, of course, leading to more ozone pollution on the ground, for example.

Even if Beijing's administrative city limits encompass an enormously large area, it doesn't mean this space reflects its 'actual footprint', as team leader Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory cautions.

Nghiem succinctly points out:

'There are so many definitions of urban extent, both legislative and administrative. To learn how physical change affects the environment, you cannot use an arbitrary political definition. The reality is what's happening on the ground.'

And that's exactly what the novel technique permits scientists to specify. For everyone who wants to delve deeper into the details of this fascinating study:

The full article, to be published in the next issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmosphere, is available online here (paywall).