Housing in China is a really hot market. Prices are skyrocketing. Yet there are some very curious trends. More farmland is being converted to tall apartment buildings, but when finished are hardly occupied. In fact at night there are few lights on, and few people live there. What is the point of all these empty apartment buildings? Meanwhile housing prices continue to rise, becoming more out of reach to the average Chinese family. Speculation abounds.
Every tool used by humans can be used for good or evil. It is up to the individual to determine its use. Smartphones are some of the newer tools for modern living. Their longer-term implications for everyday use are as yet unknown. While we in the West, where I see this in Canada, take steps to preserve privacy, this is untrue in China. The Chinese government has turned the benign too of the smartphone into a personal tracking device for its own political purposes.
Recently there was a fire in a Beijing suburb. The fire was located in an area and building that housed migrant workers. This trigger sparked not only the fire but the legal expulsion of a large number of migrant workers and their businesses from Beijing. These expulsion movements are not new and have occurred with regularity in the past. Use and abuse of migrant workers in China has long been a point of contention. This article also mentions the migrant workers, poverty and the hukou program. Chinese intellectuals have spoke out against the mass evictions in the middle of winter.
Chinese farmer with a traditional hoe. Notice he is not fat.
There are some government social systems that affect society so profoundly that without it we would be much worse off. In Canada, I would recommend our universal healthcare system. China’s hukou system is the mirror opposite, a tool to suppress and control the movements of China’s rural population.
