A wall to “close” Beijing to migrants
Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) – Kick migrants out of Beijing or close them inside a walled area, this is the solution proposed by the municipal authorities to solve the serious problem of migrants who live in the city, but can not take up residence.
Migrants keep their residence in their village of origin so as to not lose their right to agricultural land and housing. But this means that they can not take up residence in cities where they work and live and as a result, are not entitled to free medical care or to send their children to public schools. To resolve this problem, which has long affected tens of millions of migrant workers and their families proposals have been put forward. The migrants are the backbone of cheap labour that has enriched China, but they have enjoyed virtually none of the benefits.
In some areas of the capital, the number of 'illegal' immigrant residents exceeds that of official residents by a ratio of 10 to 1. This has also caused serious problems in public order and now some villages on the outskirts of Beijing have clamped down on who enters. In Dashengzhuang, Xihongmen in Daxing District, there were 11 violent deaths between November and December. Now there are guards at the access roads from 11am to 18 pm and those who want to enter must present a special pass that indicates their name, sex, ethnicity, hometown, work, identity card and phone number. 16 villages have already put up village gates, barriers and armed guards; a further 92 will do the same this year.
Liu Qi, Beijing Communist Party secretary, in a seminar on 3 July, praised "the communist style management of the village” [of Dashengzhuang], considered a" real and positive experiment "that has also improved the management of social life and decreased crime. He proposed to extend this control to all of entire Beijing.
Deba Chen, head of Public Security in Daxing, agrees. He considers "seasonal migrant workers very dangerous, 90% of whom are young graduates from high school." The city will install cameras and deploy many more hundreds of police officers to observe what happens throughout the day.
Many people are critical of these measures, which they say transforms the villages into prisons and challenge the discrimination against migrants. But the government says that every village in Daxing can decide independently whether and how to "close". Other executives add that even migrants who live in the area can get "provisional" passes.
But the professor Hu Xingdou, an economist at Beijing Institute of Technology, tells the South China Morning Post that such a prison-style management "can improve safety in small areas, but is not adequate for the entire city. the system of residence should instead be rethought. "The hukou ... [the current policy on residency permits] represents closed-mindedness and conservatism".
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