China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities

According to the N.Y. Times, China is planning a great migration to spur economic growth - massive in size, and perhaps devastating in long term repercussions.  Read the article here.   To see see a video comparing the size of the proposed migration to current global urban populations: click here.  

“If half of China’s population starts consuming, growth is inevitable,” said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. “Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume.”

"Skeptics say the government’s headlong rush to urbanize is driven by a vision of modernity that has failed elsewhere. In Brazil and Mexico, urbanization was also seen as a way to bolster economic growth. But among the results were the expansion of slums and of a stubborn unemployed underclass, according to experts."

“For old people like us, there’s nothing to do anymore,” said He Shifang, 45, a farmer from the city of Ankang in Shaanxi Province who was relocated from her family’s farm in the mountains. “Up in the mountains we worked all the time. We had pigs and chickens. Here we just sit around and people play mah-jongg.”

"Our house is freezing – am I going to freeze to death because the heating has stopped? Mom hasn’t slept for days because she’s worried about losing our land. But it’s best not to fight the government directly because in the end, we'll get the short end of the stick. Everyone in the village is counting on us to kick up a fuss because we own a considerable amount of land. Whatevs. If you think it’s unfair, well then let’s solve the problem together – we’re not going to go into battle without the rest of the village behind us!

                                                                                                        —  Gamma_all I Can Do Is Pray, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province

To read some more reactions from the Chinese click here.