China’s cities are growing
at a breathtaking pace. Mega-metropolises with
glittering facades for the ultra-rich. This is what the
major cities really want. The way they are thinking
is to have the high end. They call them the
high-end population. More and more Chinese are
moving from the country to the city. But beyond the shiny high-rises, the
streets are narrow, loud and dirty. There is no regulation or law in
China that protects tenants’ rights. Homeowners are expropriated, forced
to yield to the construction boom. Building space
is in high demand. Those left behind have no legal
recourse; they become desperate. My house is gone. Torn
down. Everything's gone. China's struggle
for living space. Li Qizhong is ready to
defend his home to the last. China as such does not have
a particularly dense population. But its sprawling urban
agglomerations do. Cities with millions
of inhabitants are practically
sprouting up overnight. Megacities: modern,
glamorous and full of superlatives. In 1980, 20% of China’s
population lived in cities. Today that figure has risen to
60% - over 800 million people. No country
in the world has as many large cities with
over one million inhabitants; China has
more than 100. Experts expect that figure
to double in just a few years. German architect
Erk Schaffarczyk moved to China as its
boom was well underway. He has lived and
worked here for 11 years. Of course everyone thinks you can find
your fortune in the biggest cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen
- that’s where the big money is. It’s part of the Chinese
dream to live and work in the big
dazzling cities. But most of the former rural
residents looking for work can't afford
to do so. Millions of them are constantly
on the move - as migrant workers. Which is sad, because
there's not just a few of them, but several
hundred million. I don’t know the exact number — but
200 or 300 million people, maybe more, are constantly wandering from
one place to another to make money because they
can't at home. There they could
only work in the fields, and even that isn't
so easy anymore, because so much
land is so contaminated that it's become
completely infertile. The rural exodus has led to
rapidly increasing rents in cities. In 2017, an apartment in Beijing
cost about 620 euros in rent, whereas the average
salary of a Beijing official was around
1,400 euros, barely twice
the rent. By comparison: A migrant worker earned
around 455 euros a month in 2017, making a city apartment
way beyond his means. Author David Bandurski has
lived in Hong Kong for 14 years. He has witnessed the social
upheaval across China from up close. They can’t afford these
new apartments that are built. These very rapidly, by the nineties,
were becoming really expensive. And you needed to have a proper
job, a proper work permit, etc., to even be able
to buy property. So they were rural people
living and working in the city. And it was natural for them to
look for spaces that accepted them. This is where migrant workers and
low-income workers can afford to live: in China’s so-called
urban villages. Formerly real villages
surrounded by fields, today they are
surrounded by the city. No glitter, no glass
facades - but affordable. Places that mostly remain
hidden from tourists' curious gaze. And that’s a village,
just a tight urban space, almost like a large city block,
just packed with migrants. At the heart of the
megacity Shenzhen, we managed to film one of
these poor neighborhoods. Here people live in cramped quarters
under the most difficult conditions. Filming is not officially allowed
— we weren't granted permission to capture the dark side
of China’s economic boom. If you are renting a room
in a very central village it might be more than
for one in the outskirts, but you could find a
room, maybe a share, and you pay 200, 300 maybe
500 renminbi per month: 40 or 50 euros or
something like that. 50 euros for a place
to sleep in a dorm compared to 620 for
an entire apartment. We want to learn more about the living
conditions for the residents here. Ms. Li shows us
her apartment. She and her husband
and daughter share 7m². Although she and her
husband both have jobs, they can't afford
anything larger. At least they have a window;
that's not always the case. They have to pay for
electricity, water, even school. Life in the city
is expensive. The room costs
100 euros per month. A home outside the urban
village is out of the question. Other residents also
show us their spaces. Although we try to be as
inconspicuous as possible, we get caught several
times: no cameras allowed. We stop
filming. China is a surveillance state,
but the police can't be everywhere. But in these poor areas, we
stand out as foreigners all the more. Professor for Architecture Juan
Du works at Hong Kong University. She specializes in large metropolitan
areas - and the urban villages. There are urban villages
in every single city in China. Some has hundreds, some have
thousands, some have a handful. For
decades, the Chinese government has considered
urban villages to be eyesores that hinder progress
and modernization. They were to vanish
from the cityscape... and make room for the
new, modern way of living. Make room for skyscrapers
and shopping malls — so urgently needed that the urban
villages are to make way for them. And the residents: they
hardly put up any resistance. They know that there is little point
in standing up to the government, so they pack up what
little they own and move on. Most of the reasons why a
government would want to be part of a demolition process to
demolish an urban village is because either the
government or developer deems that there is much better or
more valuable use for that land. Municipal governments say the
inhabitants of the urban villages should vacate their
homes voluntarily and not stand in the
way of potential investors. Severance payments
often make it easier to let go. But those who still refuse to leave
are put under massive pressure. We learned what that
meant in Guangzhou in 2012. Amidst a rubble field, marking a
former urban village, we met Li Jie. She had been arrested for
not abandoning her home. He told me to write a confession. I
was so scared and I don’t write well. I told him: I
couldn’t write. Then a fellow prisoner
wrote something for me. This,
here. She told me it was
my official objection to the demolition
of the house. I was very frightened. I was
confused. I just wanted to get out. Even death would have been
better. The police were so cruel. They had these stun
guns. I was terrified. That’s why I just signed. I
signed and they let me go. Writer and researcher David Bandurski
knows many cases like Li Jie’s. He was in Guangzhou
himself in 2012. In many cases like this, you
can see the absolute desperation. And it varies from village to village,
but many people are in this place. They have nowhere to go, there's
no future for them, no pensions, no place to live, their community is
gone, and they feel just desperate. With her forced signature, Li
Jie, who can neither read nor write, formally agreed to the
demolition of her home. She received
no compensation, and her signature
waived any later claim to it. So here I am. I stay with one person
one day, with someone else the next. What can I do? My house is gone.
Torn down. Everything is gone. Now I can only hang around
here. What else is there to do? It’s as if they
wanted me dead... The day after, Li Jie jumped off the
roof of a building and killed herself. A lot of people are jumping
off apartment towers. If you've lived in the same place for
sometimes more than six generations, then it’s hard to comprehend
when one day someone shows up and says it's over
and you have to leave. Or you are no longer welcome, that you
have to make way for something else, a highway or an Olympic
stadium or just another high-rise. These developments were
particularly extreme in Shenzhen. In 1980, paramount
leader Deng Xiaoping proclaimed one of China’s
first special economic zones in what was then a small town
of just under 59,000 inhabitants. Between 1980 and 2010,
according to a UN report, Shenzhen was the fastest
growing city in human history. The city devoured the neighboring
farmland and engulfed entire villages. Today, official figures say Shenzhen
has over 12 million inhabitants; in reality it’s probably
more than 16. Surrounding
agricultural areas are still being rezoned
as building land by decree. The urban villages
within the city are also expected to make
way for lucrative new buildings. A law was passed from
the central government. All village land inside a certain
vicinity now became nationally owned. Meaning: the land is no
longer owned by the villagers, it’s owned by
the government. So this is done by a law, by national
law. So you cannot say it’s illegal. You can say it’s the legality or the
correctness of the law we can argue, but it’s a
national law. So
therefore the villagers found themselves
overnight not owning the land. This government
decree in the 1990s stated that agricultural
land belonged to the state. The farmers
tilling the land had no other option than to
give into the state's wishes — to turn land
into money. They transfer the land
from collective land, which is rural land and belongs
to the collective of the community and they transfer it into
basically state-owned land — which means it
can be developed. And then they basically auction
off the land to private developers or state-linked — often
state-owned — developers: big companies that then build
apartments and infrastructure and this
kind of thing. In the end, all the
farmers were left with were their houses
in the village center. Under Chinese law, these belong
to the collective of all villagers and as such, cannot be
expropriated as easily. The villagers living in these
local villages in the city: the urban villagers recognized
a huge economic opportunity. I will take my one or
two story apartment on my plot of
collective land and I will build it to
seven or eight stories — as much real
estate as I can get — and I rent it to migrant families
or individual migrants coming in. So this is what happened:
they became landlords. The farmers,
deprived of their fields, had to find creative
ways to make money. They build their houses as
cheaply and efficiently as possible — as high as the
foundations would carry. It's still common
practice today. And there is even a
word for it in China. The word for farming is:
‘chong di’ — ‘to farm the land’. And they talk about ‘chong fa’:
‘to farm a home or to farm a house.’ The new landlords have to build up
this haphazard living space quickly to be able to rent it
out as soon as possible. Building
regulations, like those the glittering
modern palaces must adhere to, have no
bearing here. It’s true that when you go into these
urban villages often it’s very dark. The electrical grid is
basically all jerry-rigged. You have wires just
crossing each other. They look like spiderwebs in
this almost cave-like environment. The reason for this cave-like
environment is because on the first floor
they build a certain level. There may be 3 meters
between the buildings as a kind of
loose regulation. They can’t be
too close together. You need some access for
fire vehicles if you need them. And on the second
level they build in. Because they want to maximize
the space: the floor space to rent. More square meters
means more income. So you get this kind of
compression of the space — until when you are on the
bottom level and you look up there is just a
crack of sunlight. And they call that ‘xian tien’
or ‘line of sky’ in Chinese. It’s almost like seeing
light under a closed door. It’s just
a little bit. And so imagine that. And
you have open sewers. These kind of burbling open
sewers that smell like sewage. So I think a lot of people
walking into the space would say: yeah, this is unacceptable
for urban living. We are in the urban
village of Baishizhou. Once again, we have
no permit to shoot. It's loud
and stifling. The humid air condenses
on the sides of the buildings. The houses are
overcrowded, and the narrow, dark alleys
wreak of old food, mold and urine. Many of the buildings
don’t have working toilets. Running water or
a washing machine are luxuries hardly
anyone here can afford. The urban villages are
scattered throughout the inner-city
areas of China's major cities. Their inhabitants paid the
price for their country's boom — and they are reminded
of that every day. Even by those who
are less unfortunate. In China, even in a
city like Shenzhen, the prevalent public image
is that they are all dirty, they are all unsanitary,
they are all bad. That is the
public image. The low-wage
workers who live here are major contributors to the
cities’ economic flourishing. Yet even so, they are a thorn
in the side of the government. They want to build profitable
apartment buildings there, and they want to sell the land
for a lot of money to developers. Because this is a
primary source of revenue still for many
cities in China. It’s not tax revenue, income
tax. It’s revenue from land sales. Huge profits
are to be had in the property and housing
market in major Chinese cities. By the summer
of 2019, average property prices in
Shenzhen had skyrocketed compared to
10 years earlier. In Beijing they
also rose sharply. Land for construction is
becoming increasingly scarce, and anyone who snaps it up
cheap can expect a hefty profit. This creates a situation
where the city is determined to get the land
of the villagers and they don’t want to
pay a fair price for that land. They want it cheap, so they
can sell it at a profit to developers. All over the country, the
government forces urban villages to give way to new construction
projects - in the name of progress. Local protest
is mostly in vain. Police, city administrations
and building contractors form a powerful alliance — something
the public shouldn't be aware of. The land is not owned
by individual villagers. The land is collectively
owned by the village. What that means is that the
village collective is, in some cases, a hand full of elderly men who
hold a lot of negotiating power. So most
of the time, when there
are negotiations between a developer or the government
about the fate of certain villages, they are not going
to all the villagers. They going to see the
representatives of the village — which is usually the village
elders, the village collective. The villagers are
at the mercy of their representatives’
negotiating skills — and they do not always act in
the best interest of the community. Again
and again negotiations take place
completely behind the backs of the homeowners
concerned. There have been examples
where the villagers had no idea that the head of the
village collective company has signed an agreement with
a developer to sell their village. And they took the
money and left China. In recent
years, hundreds of thousands have been forced
out of their homes in urban villages. Only few dare to take a stand. One
of them is Li Qizhong in Guangzhou. He's pitted against
the city administration and a powerful
contractor. His family has lived in the urban
village of Yangji for generations. Once it was a farming
village with 3,000 inhabitants. Now it has become home to
over 70,000 migrant workers in the middle of the financial
district of Guangzhou. Why are they tearing it
down so early — at 6 a.m.? Because they want
to do it in secret. We first met Li, his wife
and two children in 2012. They are the last remaining
residents in their building. Not long ago, 50 people
shared the same roof. They had come to the
city from the countryside in the hope
of a better life. Li Qizhong’s family has owned the
house and the surrounding plot of land for
generations. He has documents
to prove it. This is a title deed from the
32nd year of the Republic of China. That would
be 1943. In the eighth
month of the moon. 70 years
ago. 70 years! Older than the Communist Party. Older
than the People’s Republic of China. This document is
not just a title deed: it also shows that Li is
officially a rural citizen with fewer
rights in the city. China has a system of what’s
called household registration, where the people
are actually registered to their either urban or
rural area — usually of birth. The system
dates to the 1950s. At that time, every household
had to make a decision. “Rural” meant they were entitled to a
plot of land for subsistence farming. “Urban” guaranteed a
workplace, subsidized housing, access to education and
healthcare, and a pension. Legally speaking, Li
Qizhong is a rural resident. Outside the urban
village he lives in, he has no right to
use public services. Unless he manages to
buy an apartment in the city. But until you purchase
a property in the city, you cannot get your local registration
card: what’s called the Hukou. You just do not have
local registration, which means it’s almost
impossible to get into local schools, your kid will not have a school, and
you won’t have access to healthcare. Fair compensation
for the house would help ease the family’s
desperate financial situation: they could stay in the city, buy an
apartment, register, and find work. This is what Li
Qizhong wants. But neither the city administration
nor the building contractor will hear
anything of it. But he won't back down. He’s
agreed to let us film his struggle. That night the utility lines
to his house are cut off. They cut the power. Here come
the police. But that won't stop them. No-one expects any
help from the police. The family is
forced to improvise. Water is only available on the edge
of what has become a desert of rubble. To get
there they have to run a gauntlet
of angry construction workers. A generator supplies
the family with electricity. Li is always on guard and has
not left the house for months. He has heard
of cases where construction workers have been
quick to deal with residents like him, and that
scares him. But he wants to hold out until the
end, for himself and for his family. And this is
why you have this whole phenomenon
of what we call ‘nail houses’ or in Chinese:
‘Dingzi hu.’ Individual landowners, property
owners - they call them ‘owners’ ... Villagers who decide they are
going to stay in their property — that they going to hold out and
wait for proper compensation by going head-to-head with the local
property company and city leaders. And they
stay there. They call them
‘nail houses’ because they are like
nails that can’t be pulled out. There are hundreds
of nail houses in China, some of which have made the front
pages of international newspapers. A sign of protest that is
usually broken at some point. The chances of winning
the battle are slim. The other side
is too powerful, and people evicted from their homes
are often injured in the process. Li Qizhong knows this and
is gearing up as if for battle. You can throw that out the
window. It has a brick as an anchor. Then I can light the
fuse and run away. Li Qizhong has prepared
enough homemade explosives to bring it
all down. If anyone gets in, they
won’t make it out alive. He films himself as he places
them throughout the building. That fuse is
for this room. This is for the stairs one
floor down — the second floor. The entrance
stairs. That one there ... is for the
rooms on the ground floor. This connects the gas to the roof.
The bombs on the roof: here and here. Everything
is labeled. If you are going to do
it, you have to do it right. So the individual nail-houser — who
basically arms his six-storey building as an explosive device ready to go
off as soon as his home is invaded — is only the mirror image of
the violent city government that is in cahoots with
the property developer that will cut your electrical
lines and beat up your relatives and harass your kids
on the way to school. The tactics aren’t very
different on either side. Both sides are resorting to
violence and the threat of violence to get what
they want. It’s the law
of the jungle. Li Qizhong’s resistance
has put the construction work months behind
schedule. Tension is rising
at the building site. The bosses pass their
frustration on to their employees: If nothing gets built,
no one gets paid. The first workers lose their
patience and attack a former neighbor. Li Qizhong, stuck in his own
home, can't come to her aid. The police arrive,
but don’t intervene. You police are all crooks!
Nothing but small-time crooks. The big crooks are
the corrupt officials. You just represent
the government. You only say whatever the government
tells you to. I tell the truth. Go ahead and write me up.
Charge me with whatever you want. I’ve already been in court. You only
act in the interest of the government. Your job is to defend
the law, but you don't. Officially, all
homeowners in the village have received
generous compensation. Li Qizhong denies this and speaks
of corrupt officials embezzling funds. Sure, the government has
paid out money, he says, but it doesn’t
care who gets it. There are lots of examples of
corruption in the area, including: the government would provide
a certain amount per month — a certain number
of yen per person, per resident of the
village, per month, for a period of three years, for
example, from loss of livelihood — as they took
farmland. Because this was the
source of livelihood. And I had documents of the
time that were provided to me, that would show that
basically the head of the village had over-reported the
number of villagers eligible. So you look at the roster of
the population of the village and what was reported
to city authorities — with all the stamps,
from the county level, from this office, from that, from
everyone, who were probably involved, to over-report the amount of
compensation that was due. But where did the
compensation go? For years, corruption has been
one of China's most serious problems, and the government is
determined to tackle it. It seems to have spread everywhere,
even into the housing market. If you speak to the majority of
people in the city like Shenzhen, they would say the
villagers have hit the lottery — that most of the villagers in exchange
for their land or their building did receive an enormous
amount of money Li Qizhong swears he has
yet to see a single yuan. But after months of psychological
warfare, he has given way a little. His wife and two children have
moved into a small one-room apartment in another urban village
that’s still standing. From now on, Li
Qizhong is on his own. He's not sure if he will
ever see his family again. The only thing
he is certain of is that the construction workers
will continue to pressure him, if need be,
with force. It’s a huge
problem. Because they learn
from the system that violence is what
solves the problem. Each night we watch as
the construction companies send out another
gang of hooligans. They throw rocks
at the windows and make sure the few remaining
residents can't find any rest. As soon as the thugs
disappear, the police surface. As long as the thugs stay,
the police never show up. It's been over 60 weeks, and Li
Qizhong is completely worn out. Sleep is out
of the question. The risk is too great
that he will miss an attack and will not be able
to defend himself. I don’t know if
it’s day or night. The construction company
thugs usually attack after midnight. They smash windows,
bang on the doors. It's constant
chaos. They put us nail-house residents
under such enormous pressure. It’s past midnight now,
I’d guess: 4 in the morning. They will probably strike
again at around 5 o’clock. He feels condemned
to sit and wait. For months he's defended
his home like a fortress. The broken windows are closed off
with metal rods and wooden boards. Hardly any
daylight gets in. In his previous life, Li
was a simple worker. Now he's facing down a
huge enemy in a war of attrition. Stability is used
as a justification for going after these
resisting villagers. They are seen
as dangerous. But the upshot of this kind
of conflict is: a real instability. The fact that they can’t protect
the rights of these villagers in a systematic
and fair way. Li Qizhong’s situation
became desperate in 2013, after more than
a year of conflict. One morning, a demolition company
arrived with heavy equipment. Li used the camera
we gave him to document what was happening
to the residents of the nail house. When he couldn't think
of anything else to do, he dialed the number
of the citizens’ hotline. The situation threatens to spiral
out of control. We retreat to safety. The construction workers force
their way into the nail houses intent on beating Li Qizhong
and his last remaining neighbors out of the
house. Technically that's
against the law, so they try to do it as quickly
and quietly as possible. But the men fight back and
detonate their self-made explosives. They’re loud and
anything but subtle. The noise caused by the
explosive devices and Li’s loud cries make the thugs
call off their attack. Li Qizhong’s stubborn battle
might be an exception to the rule, but he's not
the only one. All over China, protests against
the demolition of the urban villages have been growing
for more than 10 years. The demonstrators
often wear the red hats that signify membership in
the ruling Communist Party. Who dares to use
violence against them? Their protest attracts attention —
both abroad and in China itself. This collective
community was basically turning
to collective action, and not even just that: village after
village, but village to village ... villages linking with other villages
that were facing similar problems ... sharing information
about how to protest. What are the
effective ways? What are the legal ways — in
terms of protest or petitioning; how does it work,
what’s effective. Ultimately, Li
Qizhong succeeded. In his case, his loud protest
led to an amicable settlement. The construction company
finally offered him a sum that he
could accept. He won't say
how much. But his struggle
left behind scars. To this day Li lives in
constant fear of revenge. What is the
knife for? What if they come after me?
What would I do without it? I can’t defend
myself unarmed. Yes, but those
knives... ... I’m ready if they attack
me. They’ll pay for it! That's what
you think! No chance
without a knife! Hu Jintao was president of the People's
Republic of China for 10 years. Xi Jinping became his
successor in March 2013. He announced he would take more
decisive action against corruption. And the situation has improved
for homeowners from the slums. There are now rules
for compensation, but they vary widely from
one region to the next. We have no way of knowing to
what extent they are complied with. The sums being
paid are insanely high. They mostly
buy living space — not just here, but
elsewhere in other regions. The number of conflicts over
the demolition of urban villages has
decreased. But that doesn't mean
circumstances have improved for the roughly 300 million
low-income and migrant workers. The razing of entire
slum neighborhoods has left countless
homeless. The migrant workers who suffer
— if you want to see it that way — under these poor conditions
are in another urban village. Further out
of the city. They have to commute further
for their job at the supermarket, which this handful of rich,
who now live there, shop in. It’s a real kind
of vicious cycle. Yet China’s real
estate boom continues. In 2017, a typical apartment in Shenzhen
cost 41x the average annual salary. By comparison: in the German city
of Munich, it cost 13 years’ salary. As a result, 22% — nearly a quarter
— of apartments in China are empty. Because nobody is willing
or able to pay the rent — or because the owners hope
the price will increase further. 50 million vacant apartments.
And there’s no end in sight. Now Beijing is set to merge with
Huairou, Tianjin and parts of Hebei, so it will form
a huge triangle. And the population is expected to
grow to an estimated 60-70 million. I don’t know if
that will happen, but if the past 10-11 years are
any guide, it’s entirely possible. Shortly after, expectations
had risen to 130 million. By 2030, experts estimate that 80%
of the population will live in cities. And none of this would have been
possible without low-wage workers. And for them, one question is becoming
ever more pressing: At what cost?
I live in China, and yeah the housing crisis is pretty interesting here. Buying property is crazy expensive where I live, but rent is still pretty cheap. Chinese people invest in real estate like crazy because bonds have hardly any appreciation and they don't trust any of the Chinese stock markets. Chinese people buy second or third or fourth homes and don't even rent some out. I'm currently renting a flat and my landlord for sure has at least 5 properties around Shanghai alone, and that's not uncommon.
I have Chinese friends whose parents had their property bought by the government for rezoning and they got a lot of money for it so they weren't too fussed. They used it to get a better apartment in their son's name.
I don't know what will happen, or when, but it probably won't happen anytime soon. People keep saying the housing bubble will burst here but I think until rents begin to rise way beyond the wages, the housing will just keep sprawling and people will just keep buying second and third homes and either renting them out or hiding their money from the new digital yuan.
Horrific, this could very well be the future of the US housing scene.
I feel bad for that lady who jumped off the building because the government took her home.
hunger games wasn’t a movie it’s a prophecy huh
SS: Published today by DW Documentary, this 43 minute documentary shows the living conditions of poor Chinese communities living against the backdrop of bustling megacities (such as Shenzhen). The government is kicking people out of their homes more and more - to make way for developers. Police are forcing homeowners to sign "confessions" that they don't own the house or land. Some citizens are starting to fight back violently, with boobytrapped explosives installed throughout the buildings, and some developers are meeting this resistance with increasing force.
Towards the end, the documentary mentions that over 50 million residences (22%) are not occuppied, either because the millions of migrant workers in and around the cities cannot afford them, or because the owners refuse to lease them - hoping the rents will continue to soar
I really can't say much good about mao(understatement) , but there was something communist about homes and landlords back then, maybe they will repeat this?
Really great documentary indeed, shocking even. This is the future of Canada... and it's gonna happen during my life time
Is this US? Sounds like the United States. Two empty homes for every single homeless person here.
A lot of the ghost cities and construction done in china is collateral for western loans they have no plan to pay back. I've seen some expats go in and punch holes in the concrete, paper, corn husks etc as filler. Its a scam, the buildings cost pennies to make, artificially boost the economy at western lenders expense.