Lin Min

    WANG XIAOLEI and her husband, from Jiangxi Province, make a living in Shenzhen as migrant workers, having left their son in a boarding school in their hometown.

    The couple has been in Shenzhen for eight years, making more money here than in their hometown. But they paid a price in family bonding: their son has never called them daddy or mommy after so many years living without their care.

    Like this couple, most migrant workers are forced to be separated from their family members because of the high living costs in cities and because they are not eligible for the same treatment as their urban counterparts in children’s education and other social benefits.

    The huge number of farmers-turned-workers has made China’s urbanization — and economic growth — in the past 30 years a world miracle. But migrant workers have not regarded themselves, or been regarded as, belonging to the cities in which they live.

    Under impressive GDP growth lies the human toll that cannot be described in figures. Besides the unequal treatment and opportunities between migrants and their urban counterparts, farmers-turned-workers suffer from family separation like the Wangs. Their children are usually left to be cared for by their grandparents, other relatives or schools. Without parental guidance, some children drop out of school and some even go astray.

    Many husbands are separated from their wives. The cities they work in do little to help them live a normal family life, although a few factories provide temporary “reunion rooms” for visits by their workers’ spouses. A reunited family even in a small city apartment remains a distant dream for many.

    Farmers and farmers-turned-workers, the majority of the Chinese population, have largely lagged behind in the epic economic boom and urbanization of the past three decades, both in terms of the growth of income and wellbeing. They suffer the distain of city dwellers and even rough justice by authorities.

    As China embarks on a new era of development, the country should no longer neglect the wellbeing and dignity of these people who have made the economic miracle possible.

    Quicker urbanization being envisaged in the country’s next five-year development plan appears to be a boon for farmers. Growing urbanization will effectively expand domestic consumption and spur economic growth as the country reduces its dependence on exports.

    However, there are ominous signs with local governments grabbing farmlands, paying below-market compensation to force urbanization. Some cities were offering farmers social security and hukou in exchange for their land. In Zhucheng, Shandong Province, villages were consolidated into communities where villagers were given high-density townhouses and apartments in exchange for their land. Quite often their livelihoods were put in limbo after they lost land. In these cases, our rural cousins seemed to be treated like sacrificial lambs.

    In the past 10 years, about 70 percent of new urbanites were migrants from the countryside, according to official figures. The scale and speed of continuing urbanization in China are unprecedented in human history. With hundreds of millions of farmers being relocated to cities and new towns, urbanization simply for the sake of economic growth could lead to the rights and interests of these new urbanites being neglected and even their livelihood being lost, if local governments’ greedy land grabs go unchecked.

    New urbanization programs should not just focus on how much land can be freed up for development. Instead, priorities should be determined to make sure farmers receive adequate compensation and maintain a livelihood after their land is requisitioned.

    While things are looking up for farmers-turned-workers with their salaries being raised, many people are worried that China’s urbanization bid may become a modern version of England’s Enclosure Movement from the 15th to 19th centuries which led to “sheep eating humans.” China should do whatever it takes to prevent the “apartments eating humans” sarcasm from becoming reality.

    (The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)