This year, the world hit a major landmark: most of the population is now living in cities. Nowhere is that trend more dramatic than in China. Just a quarter century ago, 4 out of 5 Chinese were farmers.
Now, almost half live in urban areas - and the number's expected to grow to two-thirds within a few of decades. The United States went through a similar transformation in the 19th century. But in China, it's happening faster and on a much larger scale.
The Worlds' Mary Kay Magistad begins our series on the effects and challenges of China's rapid urbanization in Shenzhen, a former fishing village turned mega-city, just across the border from Hong Kong.
All photos: Mary Kay Magistad
Magistad: It's dusk in Shenzhen, and on a street in a blue collar neighborhood where couples stroll and kids play before dinner, a couple of old friends are sitting at a small metal table outside, sharing beer and peanuts. One is a Shenzhen native. When his parents grew up here, this place was a village. One is a Shenzhen migrant, named Zhong Zhirui. He came here as a 19-year-old, in 1981, to manage his uncle's factory.
Zhong: "Back then, Shenzhen was full of yellow dirt. There were no roads or decent restaurants or decent hotels. Everywhere was yellow dirt, because so much building was going on. For example, this place where we're sitting now, when I came here, this was a village surrounded by rice fields."
Magistad: Now, this former village is a dense urban neighborhood, with plenty of shops and restaurants. Zhong's wife runs one, dishing out spicy tofu and cubes of congealed pork blood. The streets are lined with what Shenzheners call "handshake buildings" - built so close together you could shake hands with someone in the one next door. They're like that because, as Shenzhen urbanized, villagers who used to farm here were allowed to keep their land. Many transformed their rice fields into apartment blocks that could earn them rent from the many migrant workers coming in. That's what the parents of Zhong's drinking buddy, Shenzhen native Zhang Yehua, did. As Shenzhen's property values have soared, these Chinese-style tenements have made their owners a fortune. Call them unsightly if you will, Zhang says, but they sure beat what he grew up with:
Zhang: "There'd be ten of us living in a small room, and with no guarantee we'd get three meals a day or even heat on a cold night. Since then, there have been earthshattering changes, and the people who were villagers here are a lot richer. It feels very good."
Magistad: And no wonder, says Zhong, the migrant, teasing his friend.
Zhong: "All the locals need to do is know how to collect rent from the migrant workers. It doesn't matter if they don't know anything else. They just need to keep raising the rent, and collecting it."
Magistad: Meanwhile, Zhong says, the migrant workers do all the hard work, and the original Shenzhen villagers just take their money, and look down on them. Zhang, the local, laughs it off. He says Zhong is like an older brother to him, and Zhang himself has a good job. But when it comes to relations between many original Shenzhen villagers, he admits there is a grain of truth to what Zhong is saying:
Zhong: "Like what he said, we look at the migrant workers in an unfair way, as if they are of a lower class than us."
O'Donnell: "People in Shenzhen talk about three general classes."
Magistad: Mary Ann O'Donnell is an anthropologist, who's been living in Shenzhen for most of the past 14 years. Over noodles at a crowded canteen, she ticks off the hierarchy of Shenzhen's social classes:
O'Donnell: "One would be the local people, the villagers who were here before. So they're the original 300,000 or so of the population. They talk about people who have come here to work, which would be the migrant workers. And they talk about 'Shenzhen people.'
Magistad: Those would be the white-collar workers who have poured into Shenzhen, helping to transform a village to an edgy modern mega-city in three short decades. O'Donnell says the white-collar workers look down on the original Shenzhen villagers as crass "nouveau riche," while the original Shenzhen villagers - some of whom now run factories where their fields used to be - look down on the migrants who come to work in them.
O'Donnell: "That they don't know how to live properly. Seriously. There's this idea of civilization, and that there's a way of being a completely civilized human being that comes from education. And education involves not only schooling, but also comportment. How do you behave? How do you dress? All of these kinds of social skills that villagers did not originally have access to." Magistad: But isn't it similar in some ways to the story in the States, where the first generation maybe were country bumpkins, but then the next generation is able to use the money that their parents built up to get a good education, they're integrated into city life, grow up, being part of the culture, so they're already at a different level? O'Donnell: But, like the States, where you live is really critical here. If you are still living in the housing of the first generation, it's guilt by association in a certain case. You have to leave the ghetto to actually get integrated into the society. You have to leave the villages to become something else.
Magistad: That's what Li Bingyuan has done. He's a 32-year-old auditor with a top international company. He spent a few years studying and working in England. He wears a smart suit, drives a nice car, and seems sharp, confident and on his way up. It's 10pm, and he just got off work. His day began 14 hours ago. He jokes that the stress of trying to get ahead is why he's so thin - and he still can't afford to buy his own home here yet, because property prices have soared so much, so fast.
Li: "My family used to be very, very poor. In his hometown, there was not much opportunity to develop himself and to make much more money."
Magistad: So Li's dad became one of the first migrants into Shenzhen after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping opened the era of economic reform and declared Shenzhen a Special Economic Zone - an island of capitalism in the midst of a still Communist state. Li's dad worked in construction, helping to build the new city. Li grew up, moving around with his dad from construction site to construction site, and watching the city transform:
Li: "I think I like the way that it changed. Because over 20 years, ago, Shenzhen was a small village. And now it's a kind of international city. In China, there is a saying, Ren wang dichu zou, Shui wang dichu liu. Everyone wants to improve their life. Everyone wants to be a rich guy, right? So once the city develops, you may try your best to obtain an opportunity for yourself. Maybe some day or one day you can grab one. You never know."
Bilboard with former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
Magistad: And that's one thing that's pulling ever more of China's villagers into China's cities - all around the country. Anthropologist Mary Ann O'Donnell says another pull is the frustration that comes with being on the wrong end of the vast inequalities between urban and village life in China:
O'Donnell: "We know we're important in a society if we live in a clean environment, with running water, with good sanitation so we don't get sick, that's warm. We know we're important to society through those things. And so, we also know we're not important, when those things are absent. And so, I don't think it's just that people are motivated by, "I want to get rich." They're kind of fighting for social respect. And that's why you can't stop them from coming."
Magistad: But the government used to try to stop hordes of farmers from coming to cities through a system of residential permits called hukous. These gave you access to such basic services as education and health care, but only as long as you stayed put. Of course the services were much better in cities, so urban hukous were like gold, while village hukous were like a curse. Now, the system is relaxed, and only two million of Shenzhen's more than 10 million people have hukous. That poses a challenge for city planners, like Huang Weiwen:
Huang: My office tries to keep up with the number of people who are actually in the city, providing enough water, electricity, sewage treatment and everything else. But they're planning for just 13 million by 2020, and some unofficial estimates say migrant workers are streaming in so fast that the population's already hit that mark. Like any big city, Shenzhen has had its growing pains - crime, poverty, pollution, and social tensions, and the government has tried to deal with each of them.
Magistad: But back in the neighborhood that used to be a Shenzhen village, the former migrant Zhong says the government could and should do more to help migrants, and recognize their contribution:
Zhong: "Shenzhen is a city of migrants. The government does not care enough about the migrant workers who built and developed this place into what it is today. For instance, housing is really expensive, and the government is making available inexpensive apartments, but only to those with Shenzhen residence permits. And the children of migrant workers have a hard time getting into local schools. The government really should help them, because they are the future backbones of our country."
Zhong: "Shenzhen is a city of migrants"
Magistad: A small crowd has gathered, of migrant workers who rent rooms around here, and some nod vigorously. Behind them, catching the last light of sunset, are the sophisticated skyscrapers and sleek shopping malls people like them, and like auditor Li Bingyuan's father have helped build. They might not get the respect they feel they deserve, but many still say, it's easier here than anywhere else in China to do what many migrants dream of doing. And that is - to arrive as a stranger and build a life - a new life, a successful life, a life where you can reinvent yourself and test your limits. It's what many an immigrant to America's cities did a century ago, when the United States was going through its own rural to urban transformation. It's what's many a migrant is doing now in cities throughout China - driving one of the most dramatic waves of urbanization the world has ever seen.
