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.
