In China, Clearing Urban Centers of ‘Unwanted’ People

From early 2011, major cities in China have started cleaning up “dangerous” and “low-end” elements of their populations.

The proposal on “population control” was firstly introduced [zh] in the People’s Congress held in Beijing in January 2011. It suggested that in the coming five years, the Chinese capital has to repress population growth; it has been estimated that more than 700,000 people living in the old city will be relocated to the city outskirts. Moreover, “unwanted” and “low-end population” elements of the urban population, such as rural migrants, will be squeezed out of the city altogether.

Panorama of Shenzhen City, China. Image by Flickr User yuan2003 (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Population cleansing

Similar population cleansing has also taken place in Shenzhen as part of the “One Hundred Days Movement” starting from April 11, 2011, through to July 31 2011. The city aims to meet its target to get rid of 80,000 “highly dangerous people” to prepare for the 2011 Universiade international university sporting event. As Mary Ann O’Donnell points out in her blog, Shenzhen Noted:

the Universiade clean-up reminds us that yes a hukou [house registration system] matters, not by its presence, but in its absence. Shenzhen is not simply putting in the infrastructure to improve public safety, but has built into that network a tendency to target those who are least able to protect themselves.

She also rightly points out that apart from the crackdown on dissidents, social control happens day-to-day, with door-to-door sweeps, for normal people:

I hope that as discussions of Ai Weiwei’s incarceration continue and as necessary attention is directed at the way the Chinese state surveils its white-collar populations of computer hackers and experimental artists, we also keep in mind Shenzhen’s 80,000 unnamed slackers / hooligans / drifters who are suddenly not here. Surveillance at this lowest of levels occurs through door-to-door sweeps that indiscriminately clean out the good, the bad, and the ugly. Indeed, the lack of documentation about three withouts’ lives, their collective lack of hukou, legal income, and fixed housing means that at the end of the movement, all that remains are traces of what may or may not have happened, which assuage white-collar anxiety, but do not make us safer.

Shenzhen and Beijing are not isolated cases; it is quite clear that the belief is that to impose better social control in urban areas, similar population cleansing would need take place in other major cities. Not-old-nor-spicy is rather pessimistic about the situation [zh]:

北京有“低端人口”，深圳有“高危人群”。知趣的人还是早点走吧，不要等别人来赶你。把漂亮的大都市留给“高端人口”å’Œ“高稳人群”吧。但老辣还是要说。在有钱的地方，穷人是“高危人群”；在我们这种穷地方，有钱人才是“高危人群”。

No-brother points out [zh] that such social control strategy is unlawful, wrong and will end up in creating more social conflict:

本人有以下疑问：1、“高危人口”在法律上是如何界定的？2、哪些被清理出来的“高危人口”被“安置”在何处了？3、清理出来后他们再回去怎么办？以我个人仅有的一点法律常识，总觉得深圳的这种做法欠妥，有侵犯人权之嫌！

[…] …其三，也是一个最重要的概念要厘清，这就是“高危人口”还是不是共和国的公民。有了这一条，大家就明白了深圳的做法到底是对是错了。
当前我国社会正处在转型期，各种社会矛盾、问题相对较多、较复杂。我们应当积极探索一些有效地社会管理方式和手段，变管制社会为管理社会，变人制为法制。如果全国各地都效仿深圳的做法，我们的社会将是个什么景象？我们总不能把“高危人口”全部清理出中国吧？深圳：住手吧！

Creating enemies

Indeed, in an online poll [zh] on the website umiwi last year about Beijing policy against the “low-end population”, more than 85% (1,782 votes) of the respondents were against such kinds of population cleansing measures. Below are three of the most popular comments in the poll:

onghen778：去北京干嘛 实现梦想就一定要去那里？ 幼稚。 中国人就是喜欢跟风 另外什么叫做低端人口？ 没钱就叫低端 有钱就叫高端 人本不分贵贱 是北京人不等于你就是高人一等了 尊重和敬仰别人 不是看一个人的地域来的。 2010-08-08 12:33

小花兔转转杯：什么叫低端人口？北京本地人就是北京人口么，有那么多的人在为北京的建设做出了不可磨灭的贡献，北京人在享受的同时居然 将其化为低端人口，北京人就不是中国人么，北京就不是中国的领土么，那中国人在中国的领土上生存有什么不对？适者生存，不适应的人自然会离开，如果你感到 不适应了，也许应该你离开，而不是什么所谓的低端人口。2010-08-08 00:51

欧羊游离：我说“相对论”同志，您白叫“相对论”了。既然是相对论，话要分两头说。首先，您为什么对号入座？您是不文明的那一个吗？您 是到处丢垃圾，到处随地大小便的那一个吗？您低头看看您的脚下，黑斑点点那是什么？是不文明的人随地吐出的口香糖。如果您的家里来的客人或亲戚这样不文明 的糟蹋您的家，您又怎样？我相信您不是不文明的那一个吧，您没必要对号入座吧？第二，我们之间应该不是矛盾的，矛盾在上边，上边既然把人分成高中低，想必 他认为自己是高端一族了，高端的人竟然说出这么没水平的低端的词，姑且不说政策的正确与否，先说这话就是“æ ‘æ•Œ”的。其实北京的百姓和其他城市的百姓一 样，同样是在付出，就像家庭过日子，家长主持的好，儿女团结又孝顺，家长主持的不好，儿女四分五裂，甚至忤逆乱伦的都有。所以我们都是儿女，都希望在家长 的呵护下过太平日子。您说是吗？我们都是普通人。2010-08-09 10:07

The resentment of the policy has transformed into political parody against the privileged. Below is one of the most popular parodies of the cleansing policy started by [zh] prominent blogger Lianyue on Weibo:

深圳有8万高危人口，全中国高危人群有多少？一说全国13亿，不过我认为是8千来万——他们长期滞留中国，又无正当职业，拉帮结派，具有严密的组织性，长期诋毁中国人素质低，适应不了人类文明。

So far (April 14, 2011 11:37 am) this thread has received 498 comments, most of them are highly critical of the 80 million highly dangerous population judgement:

……捏造历史愚弄民众残害百姓……他们不是滞留中国，而是寄生中国的毒瘤。

长期有意诋毁中国人素质低，造就了很多恨铁不成钢的思维模式，洗了很多人的脑，以掩盖一切乱象来源于体制。

帮会成员八千万，世界最大最嚣张最不要脸的黑社会团体

他们靠向公民收保护费过日子，且手段越来越残暴。