On this episode of China Uncensored,
the CCP has been pushing farmers
to move to the cities.
But let’s just say,
it’s not all going according to plan.
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
China has a serious problem
with rural poverty.
Rural households on average
live off of only $4 a day.
This is a problem for the Chinese Communist Party.
When you think of China,
they want you to think of rich cities
with glistening skylines.
But right now,
a lot of China looks more like this.
Oh, I’m sorry,
did I say, “China has a serious problem
with rural poverty”?
My favorite Party mouthpiece, Global Times
is here once again to correct
my misapprehensions.
What I meant to say was China
is enlightening the world
with ways to relieve rural poverty.
Here’s one way:
Change the definition of rural poverty!
While the average of $4 a day
might not sound like much,
it’s more than what the World Bank
defines as “extreme poverty.”
That line is set at $1.90 a day.
One thing China did to lift people
out of extreme poverty,
is lower the bar for what counts
as extreme poverty.
Instead of using the World Bank’s
dollar-and-ninety-cents-a-day metric,
China uses its own metric of just ninety cents.
And with just that change in definition,
the CCP has instantly lifted
tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty!
Into less extreme but still really bad poverty!
They just...leave that second part out
when they gloat about poverty relief
in state-run media.
Of course, there’s still tens of millions more
living on less than ninety cents per day.
But don’t worry.
Most of China isn’t in extreme poverty.
Most of China is just what you might call
pretty poor.
According to the Pew Research Center,
about 900 million Chinese people
live off between a dollar ninety
and ten dollars a day.
That’s two-thirds of the country
on less than 10 dollars a day.
But as the Global Times says,
the great and glorious CCP
is lifting people out of poverty.
Which by the way makes it
sound like the people aren't doing
anything themselves,
they're just being lifted.
Which is incredibly far from the truth.
This is all part of the CCP’s lofty aspirations
set in 2012 during the 18th National Party Congress—
to create a Xiaokang society.
A...moderately well-off society.
Yeah, you don’t want to set the bar too high.
Moderately well-off society.
It’s all about setting realistic goals for yourself.
It’s like making New Year's resolutions.
6-pack abs?!
Sounds like a lot of work.
I’ll settle for just being able to fit
back into my jeans.
Ok, my sweat pants.
But there’s another important way
the Chinese Communist Party is tackling
rural poverty:
Simply take the rural poor
and move them into cities.
By 2020,
the CCP wants 60% of the population
living in cities.
The CCP has set this as a top-down goal,
because they hope it will on one hand
alleviate poverty, and—
most importantly—
give people jobs so they can
make more money
and become active consumers.
The Chinese economy over the next decade
will rely more and more on domestic consumption,
rather than just exports.
That’s the only way to keep the Chinese economy growing.
And a growing economy
is key for the CCP to stay in power.
So now you understand why they are very serious
about alleviating rural poverty.
So the CCP has given top-down directions
to local officials
that moving people into cities
is an important goal.
China already has 10 megacities
with more than 10 million urban residents.
The United States by comparison
has zero.
Even here in New York City
we have only 8-and-a-half million.
Unless you count commuters from New Jersey.
Which we don’t.
But in China,
life in the cities is better in a lot of ways.
You’ve got better public transportation, for instance.
And more places to buy cheeseburgers.
Plus, the pollution makes for
really beautiful sunsets.
And in cities,
the average income is a whopping
12 dollars a day.
Take that, rural poverty!
Except, there are a few of problems
with this urbanization plan.
For one, as I mentioned,
the push to relocate people to cities
is a top-down government initiative.
It rewards local officials for meeting
certain migration targets,
but not necessarily for providing support
for the people once they’ve moved.
As one woman who moved from her village
to a big city told Financial Times,
“There’s no water there,
no jobs there,
nothing has been sorted out.
There wasn’t even water for flushing the toilet.”
It turns out her government-subsidized home
in a town in Guizhou
was actually worse than rural poverty.
And she eventually moved back.
Plus, urban centers are more expensive,
and don’t have enough jobs,
especially for people from the countryside
whose job experience mainly
revolves around farming.
But that’s okay,
“Rural migrants mostly carried out dirty,
dangerous and demeaning jobs,
which urbanites were not willing to do.”
They’ll never be appreciated.
At least until Mike Rowe
does the China edition.
And even though public services
are better in the cities,
migrant workers don’t always get
access to them.
You see, China doesn’t have freedom of mobility
like the United States,
where someone from a farm in Nebraska
can move without any restrictions to,
say, Los Angeles to get a career in acting...
slash-bartending.
China has something called hukou—
the “household registration” system.
Basically it chains you to where you were born.
If you have a rural hukou,
and you become a migrant worker in, say, Beijing,
you won’t be eligible to get certain jobs
or to send your kids to free urban public schools
or receive healthcare benefits
that urban residents get.
The hukou system turns you into a sort of
illegal immigrant in your own country.
And 60% of the Chinese population has rural hukous.
Many migrant workers
are forced to live wherever they can.
For example,
old underground bomb shelters.
Although, that might be turn out
to be a great place to live,
depending on how things go with North Korea.
There is a way to change your hukou,
buy you have to pay a huge fee.
The fee is larger and more difficult to obtain
for more desirable places like Beijing.
And keep in mind,
if this is a more desirable place to live,
you’ve got issues.
There are about 21 million people
living in Beijing.
According to Financial Times,
“At least 8 million of those residents
lack the coveted Beijing hukou.”
That’s a third of Beijing’s population.
And equivalent to the entire population
of New York City.
That’s why the central government’s urbanization push
is not so popular in the nation’s capital.
Beijing is actually putting a cap on the population.
In fact, a recent essay by a Chinese blogger
critiquing the so-called
“fake lives of Beijingers,”
talks about migrant workers,
“[Striving] for over a decade
to get an apartment the size of a bird cage.”
In one night his essay got 5 million views.
Two days later,
censors had scrubbed it from the internet.
Presumably they hired a migrant worker
to do the scrubbing.
But wait!
Maybe access to better education
will at least help the children
of these rural migrants.
I mean, it’s got to be better
than that school in the Chinese countryside
that’s literally in a cave!
Well, not if you’re in Beijing.
The local government has been demolishing
migrant schools.
And overcrowding in cities
is making the major cities
unlivable for anyone.
The wealth gap is growing.
And real estate is getting so expensive,
many apartments sit empty.
Plus urban sprawl means,
“six-hour round-trip commutes
are not unknown.”
But I don’t want to give the impression
that this urbanization movement
is just making things worse in cities.
It’s also making things worse in the countryside.
One third of the children
still living in the countryside
are left-behind children.
That is, their parents are off
trying to make a better life in the cities,
and we know how well that’s going.
And now, those children might not even
get the benefit of cave schools!
Three quarters of rural schools
are being shut down.
And “Fewer than 10% of rural students
make it [to senior high school].”
But don’t worry,
it’s not like they don’t have anything going for them.
Some are being trained as cage fighters.
So to sum up, the Chinese Communist Party
wants people to move to cities.
On one hand this is to alleviate poverty.
But more importantly
it’s to turn more Chinese citizens
into consumers.
Unfortunately, the top-down directive
is putting rural migrants into crummy situations
where they lack basic services
and find it hard to get good jobs.
You know, life in that cave school
is sounding pretty good.
So what do you think of China’s urbanization plans?
Leave your comments below.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.
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