Catshanghai

I just saw this video podcast from BBC Newsnight about White Horse Village in China, highlighting many of the urbanising pressures being felt by modern Chinese villagers. 150 million migrant workers have left their villages to work in the wealthy eastern seaboard cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Meanwhile many other places in the countryside are rapidly being transformed into cities.

The film is an update of a report that was filmed in the middle of last year. It focuses on the lives of Xiao Zhang and her family who have high hopes for the future but are struggling to get by. Her husband, Long Changsheng, has gone to work in a factory Beijing for £20 a week and only returns once a year to see his family during Spring Festival.

XieTingMing is the local businessman and main employer who is profiting from the urban development of White Horse Village.

There is also Xiang Caiguo who is the local Communist Party Boss. His job is to persuade local farmers to leave their homes as part of White Horse’s development. He and the Party are caught in a balancing act between the interests of the locals and the developers.

I see migrant workers all the time in Shanghai. They provide a lot of the labour and construction work throughout the city. Whenever you see a building project, there are often make shift huts or blocks that are erected to house them for the project. I once saw a dormitory that was open to the street on the building site for the new flower market in Shanxi Nan Lu. The dormitories were packed with rusty bunk beds. Migrant workers are separated from their families and they are treated quite badly in terms of poor pay, no privacy, long hours and they are regarded as second class citizens. Anyway, this Newsnight film is a great glimpse into the life of modern China experiencing unprecedented urbanisation.

Link