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Native Place, Migration and the Emergence of Peasant Enclaves in Beijing*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Laurence J. C. Ma  and
Biao Xiang
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Abstract

Since the early 1980s, reduced migration control by the state and increasing economic liberalization in China have led to the movement of millions of peasants to the cities, creating various types of new “urban spaces” and “non-state spaces.” This influx has fundamentally changed the social, spatial and economic landscapes of the Chinese city, making the urban scene much more varied, lively and dynamic, but less safe and orderly than that of the Maoist era. Aside from the resulting expansion of city population, the Chinese city is also taking on some of the features common to other Third World cities, including the formation of migrant communities in both the cities and suburbs. In 1990, in the built-up areas of eight of China's largest cities, the “floating population” accounted for between 11.1 to 27.5 per cent of the total de facto urban population. At the same time, the urban population has also become much more diverse as peasants from different provinces group spontaneously in spatially distinct enclaves, producing a new urban mosaic that did not exist in Maoist China. Whereas some of enclaves are formed by non-Han minority groups, such as the two “Xinjiang villages” in Beijing where the Uygurs (more commonly but unofficially, “Uighurs”) from Xinjiang have congregated, most of them are formed by Han-Chinese. The Han peasant enclaves, however, are far from uniform in social structure, economic activity, population size or physical appearance.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 155 , September 1998 , pp. 546 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1998

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34.Rongshi, Li, Ibid. Between 1984 and 1990, the floating population in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Zhengzhou increased by between 158 and 261%, and the proportion of floaters in the cities' total populations also increased significantly. In 1990, floaters accounted for between 12.4% of Tianjin's total population and 37.8% of Hangzhou's total. Shanghai's 1993 floating population survey reveals a total of 2.81 million floaters which exceeds the previous high in 1988 of 1.24 million. The estimate for 1994 was more than three million.Google Scholar

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39. For pre-reform urban society, see Whyte, Martin King and Parish, William L., Urban Life in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984), especially chs. 8 and 9.Google Scholar

40. This occurred between 1961 and 1963 when 26 million peasant workers were “cleared and returned” (qingtui) from the cities, most of whom (19 million) had been recruited to support the frenzied industrialization programme of the Great Leap in the cities. The major reason for their removal was to alleviate the burden of state supply of grain to the cities. These two figures are given by Wang, Feng, “The breakdown of a great wall: recent changes in the household registration system of China,” in Scharping, , Floating Population, p. 152. In the reform era, however, reasons other than urban food supply can be cited. For example, just before the Asian Games in 1990, numerous peasants were driven out of Beijing because they and their makeshift housing were deemed unsightly.Google Scholar

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43. The formation of such groups should not be seen a result of any strategy designed deliberately by migrants to better protect themselves against the dominant population or the other “they groups.” Some of the local residents may be contemptuous of the outsiders, but there is no detectable hostility toward them. There has been no report of any serious confrontation between migrants and locals.Google Scholar

44. In the mid-1950s, a series of documents to control migration was issued by the State Council, using the term mangliu for the first time. See, for example, “Guowuyuan guanyu fangzhi nongcun renkou mangmu wailiu de zhishi” (“Directive of the State Council concerning the prevention of rural population's blind outflow”), printed in Population Research Centre. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhongguo renkou nianjian 1985 (Almanac of China's population, 1985) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1986), p. 108.Google Scholar

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46. Kinship and laoxiang ties are, of course, important not only to Jinan migrants in finding jobs; they are also crucial to other groups of migrants. For examples of how a girl from Wuwei, Anhui, was “brought” (dailing) to Beijing by her cousin to be a housekeeper (baomu) and how a young man from Zhumadian, Henan, went to Beijing to take a job in a garbage collection centre already “arranged” by a laoxiang, see Hao Zaijin, , Baqianwan liumin buluo (Tribes of Eight Million Floaters) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe, 1996), pp. 24–25. A recent report in Migration News (e-mail edition, Vol. 5, No. 3. (1998), pp. 21–22) also makes this clear. Citing the research of Zhao Shukai of the State Council Development Research Centre, the report states that although the number of rural workers in the cities increased less in the mid-1990s than between 1989 and 1994, due to rising prices for farm products and layoffs by state firms that increased local labour supplies in the cities, “more rural residents are reportedly waiting until their urban network contacts tell them about job openings before migrating.”Google Scholar

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50. In some cases an enclave may contain migrants from two or more provinces. Most enclaves are formed by the inter-provincial migration of peasants. However, intra-provincial migration can also create peasant enclaves. For example, the people from Yueqing near Wenzhou have established a “light textile town of China,” reportedly China's largest light textile centre, in Keqian Zhen in the same province, Zhejiang, where a Wenzhou community in excess of 10,000 persons has emerged. See Xiang, Biao, “Zhengfu de da he xiao” (“The bigness and smallness of the government”), Zhongguo qingnian bao (Chinese Youth News), 4 01 1997.Google Scholar

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52. Here we adopt Paul Knox's terms. He differentiates three types of spatial clusters: colonies, enclaves and ghettos. A colony serves as a port-of-entry for members of a minority group in a host society. Enclaves are clusters of minority groups that have persisted over a longer period of time, and they are a product of the interaction between external discrimination and internal cohesion, especially when the latter is the more dominant force. When the external factors are more dominant, the residential clusters are called ghettos. See Paul, Knox, Urban Social Geography: An Introduction, 3rd edition (New York: Longman, 1995), pp. 191–92. The word “discrimination” can be applied to the Chinese case if one sees the hukou system as discriminative toward the migrants. Systemic bias aside, the extent to which the dominating population socially discriminates against the migrants has not been systematically examined.Google Scholar

53. Unless noted otherwise, information in this section is based on our fieldwork.Google Scholar

54. Field observation and Shijie ribao (World Journal), 23 02 1997, p. A8. None of these enclaves have been studied by scholars or reported by journalists in any detail.Google Scholar

55.Meizhou wenzhai (Weekly Digest), 1 03 1993.Google Scholar

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57. We are grateful to Professor Arsilan Mamut of Xinjiang Normal University for assistance rendered during our fieldwork in the villages in December 1996. This section also draws from Arsilan Mamut, Liu Erxiang and Hu Zhaoliang, “Beijing ‘Xinjiangcun’ jiyao” (“Major features of Beijing's ‘Xinjiang Village’”), unpublished research report, Department of Urban and Environmental Studies, Beijing University, July 1997. We thank Professor Hu Zhaoliang of Beijing University for providing this report.Google Scholar

58. However, one informant told us that there are some 1,500 Uygurs in the Ganjiakou Village.Google Scholar

59. During the 1980s, the Uygurs also dominated illegal and speculative money changing in Beijing, following and soliciting business from foreign visitors on the street.Google Scholar

60. Most of migrants in Anhui Village rent rooms from private individuals.Google Scholar

61. Information in this section is based largely on fieldwork carried out in Wenzhou and Beijing since 1992, through interviews with informants and field observation, supplemented by published sources, including Xiang, Biao, “Beijing you ge ‘Zhejiangcun,’” (“Beijing has a ‘Zhejiang Village,’”), Shehuixue yu shehui diaocha (Sociology and Social Investigation), No. 3 (1993), pp. 36–39;Google ScholarXiang, Biao, “Beijing ‘Zhejiangcun’ diaocha,” (“An investigation of Beijing's ‘Zhejiang Village’”), unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Beijing University, 1993; Xiang Biao, “Chuantong yu xin shehui kongjian de shengcheng” (“Tradition and the formation of new social space”), Zhanlüe yu guanli (Strategy and Management), No. 6, (1996), pp. 99–111.Google Scholar

62. By “Wenzhou region,” which is a commonly used term but not an official administrative unit, we mean Wenzhou City (Wenzhou shi), a prefecture-level city. The name Wenzhou has two meanings. In its narrow sense, it refers to the densely populated urban and suburban districts of Wenzhou, which may be considered as the urban core or city proper. In its broad sense, it refers to the large administrative area that in 1994 contained six rural counties (Pingyang, Yongjia, Taishun, Wencheng, Dongtou and Cangnan) and the city proper (shiqu). Yueqing City is a county-level city with extensive rural areas from which many of the residents of Beijing's Zhejiang Village have come, and it is located within the administrative boundaries of Wenzhou. In this paper, we use the term “Wenzhou region” or “Wenzhou area” to refer to the larger Wenzhou, or Wenzhou City. In 1994, Wenzhou region had 6.9 million people, of whom 85% had rural hukou. The city proper and its suburban district had a population of 1.1 million, of whom 60% were rural. See China Statistical Bureau, Urban Statistical Yearbook of China 1985 (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1996), p. 41.Google Scholar

63. Typically natural villages (zirancun) are evolved spontaneously over time. To facilitate rural administration, two or more adjacent natural villages, together with their farmland, may be organized into an “administrative village” (xingzhengcun) under a rural township (xiang).Google Scholar

64. This is a 1995 figure contained in a report on Zhejiang Village submitted by the government of Fengtai District to the city government of Beijing.Google Scholar

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66. In villages and small towns, cotton has always been the material most commonly used to keep warm. New cotton balls require fluffing before they can be used for quilts or coats, and old cotton contained in quilts and coats tends to clog after some time and it also needs occasional fluffing to re-spread it. Cotton fluffing, a centuries-old skill, requires simple equipment but much labour.Google Scholar

67. To protect the identities of these individuals, we use aliases here.Google Scholar

68. According to one of Wang Chunguang's informants, as early as 1981, there were already a dozen or so families from Zhejiang making clothes in the Village. By 1984 the number of migrants had reached about a thousand people. See Wang, Chunguang, Shehui liudong he shehui chonggou: jingcheng “Zhejiangcun” yanjiu (Social Mobility and Social Restructuring: A Study of the “Zhejiang Village” in the Capital City) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1995), p. 35.Google Scholar

69. The difficulty of finding suitable clothing was only one of many problems faced by urban residents during the pre-reform era, due basically to the structural deficiencies of the pre-reform socialist system of production that de-emphasized consumer products and curbed the development of the tertiary sector. In the early 1980s, the lack of and the demand for such basic urban services as tailors, restaurants, porters, short-distance transportation, laundry services and various kinds of catering and repair trades were notorious. These jobs were largely looked down upon and avoided by the urban residents. At the same time, urban unemployment was severe, giving rise to a paradoxical situation characterized as “people without jobs” and “jobs without people.” See Jianzhong, Tang and Laurence, J. C. Ma, “Evolution of urban collective enterprises in China,” The China Quarterly, No. 104 (1985), p. 634.Google Scholar

70. In 1985, the city government began to pay serious attention to the development of the service sector in the urban economy. Many neighbourhood offices established “tertiary production offices” for this purpose. However, because of a lack of human and financial resources, most of the service establishments were subsequently leased out to peasant migrants.Google Scholar

71. These figures are based on 1996 field visits. By comparison, in rural Yueqing, Zhejiang, where most of the Wenzhouese in Zhejiang Village have originated, the average annual per capita cash savings in hand in 1996 was only 2,670 yuan. See Statistical Bureau of Yueqing City, Yueqing tongji nianjian (Statistical Yearbook of Yueqing 1997) (Yueqing: Zhejiang, 1997), p. 198. In Zhejiang Village, a family that can save only 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a year after living and other expenses is said to have “worked for nothing” (baigan).Google Scholar

72. The Wenzhou model is discussed in Kristen, Parris, “Local initiative and national reform: the Wenzhou model of development,” The China Quarterly, No. 134 (1993), pp. 242–263;Google ScholarYia-Ling, Liu, “Reform from below: the private economy and local politics in the rural industrialization of Wenzhou,” The China Quarterly, No. 130 (1992), pp. 293–316;Google ScholarLiu, Alan P., “The ‘Wenzhou model’ of development and China's modernization,” Asian Survey, Vol. 32, No. 8 (1992), pp. 696–711;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPeter, Nolan and Dong, Furen (eds.), Market Forces in China: Competition and Small Business – The Wenzhou Debate (London: Zed Books, 1989);Google ScholarZhang, Renshou and Li, Hong, Wenzhou moshe yanyiu (A Study of the Wenzhou Model) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1990); andGoogle ScholarZhaoliang, Hu and Qilan, Xie, Xin shiji de Zhongguo chengshi (The Chinese City in the New Century) (Taibei: Tangshan chubanshe, 1996), pp. 89–100.Google Scholar

73. This included Wangfujing Department Store, Dongan Market, Xidan Market and Fulong Tower (Fulong daxia).Google Scholar

74. The “Provisional regulations governing the leasing of counters by the commercial and service enterprises of Beijing City” allowed the lease of “surplus” counters to private businessmen.Google Scholar

75.Hansheng, Wang, Shiding, Liu, Liping, Sun and Xiang, Biao, “‘Zhejiangcun’: Zhongguo nongmin jincheng de yizhong dute fangshi (“‘Zhejiang Village’: a unique way for the Chinese peasants to enter the city”), Shehuixue yanjiu (Sociological Research), No. 1 (1997), p. 61.Google Scholar

76. The maximum amount of counter space that can be legally rented out is 30%. A business licence is required for a private businessman to rent counter space. As Wenzhou migrants work in rented rooms in peasant homes, it is impossible for them to obtain a Beijing licence, which cannot be issued without a fixed business location. But licences used to sign agreements of collaboration can be obtained in two ways. The most common is to use a copy of a licence issued by a town and village enterprise in Wenzhou, which is relatively easy to obtain through local guanxi networks. Secondly, licences can be rented from businesses located in Beijing. Some rent their licence from firms located in the poor regions of China. In the case of very small stores, no-one bothers to see any licence, especially since 1986 as collaboration between the state and private sectors has become widespread.Google Scholar

77. These include Muxiyuan Wholesale Market for Light Industrial Goods, Haihuisi Trading Market for Industrial Goods, Jingwen Apparel Market, Jingdu Light Textile Centre (a fabric and button wholesale market), Dahongmen Apparel and Merchandise Centre, and Chengzhongcheng (a large complex under construction in January 1998 to be used as an apparel wholesale market, with space for residential and other commercial uses).Google Scholar

78. The government authorities of the cities of Beijing and Wenzhou themselves are not directly involved in such joint investment ventures with the peasants. But the construction of so many large-scale projects in Zhejiang Village would not have been possible without the approval of Beijing's city government. The city's own benefits flow from more taxes collected in Fengtai.Google Scholar

79. The texts of these regulations are printed in Lanchun, Zou, Beijing's Floating Population pp. 289–337.Google Scholar

80. It is relatively easy to renew the card. The only necessary document is a valid resident card (jumin shenfenzheng) which all Chinese citizens have. But female migrants of childbearing age must also produce a document from government authorities at home showing marriage and fertility status. See Lanchun, Zou, pp. 297–98.Google Scholar

81.Yin Zhijing, and Yu Qihong, , Zhongguo huji zhidu gaige (Reforming China's Household Registration System) (Beijing: Zhongguo fazheng daxue chubanshe, 1996), p. 92. In June 1997, the State Council approved a pilot plan designed by the Ministry of Public Security to allow qualified peasants to move to the built-up areas of county-level cities and designated towns where they will be registered as urban resident population. The document specifies that migration to large cities such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai will continue to be rigidly controlled. See Ministry of Public Security,Google Scholar“Xiao chengzhen huji guanli zhidu gaige shidian fang'an” (“Pilot reform plan for the household residential registration system in small cities and towns”), Guowuyuan gongbao (Gazette of the State Council), No. 20 (27 01 1997), pp. 869–872.Google Scholar

82.Rowe, , Hankow, p.215.Google Scholar

83.Goodman, , Native Place, City and Nation, pp. 16 and 62.Google Scholar

84.Johnson, , Shanghai, p. 152.Google Scholar

85. Counties with a large number of emigrants do maintain branch government offices in Beijing (zhujing banshichu). Such offices, however, are not particularly helpful to migrants, as their main function is to help their own government units and leaders. In Zhejiang Village, a few respected senior members of the community often mediate disputes among the Wenzhouese. The Industry and Commerce Bureau of Fengtai District in Beijing has organized a branch of the Individual Business People's Association in Dahongmen (Geti xiehui Dahongmen fenhui) for the Wenzhou migrants, and some migrants do belong to it. However, this government-sanctioned organization has little influence over the migrants. The only association organized and run by the migrants themselves that we are aware of is the Aixin she (Loving-Heart Club) in the Jingwen Apparel Centre in Zhejiang Village. Organized with the help of students from Beijing University, the club has helped the Centre's tenants protect their interests.Google Scholar

86. More research is needed to find out the extent to which such tasks were led by leaders with rural or urban roots, and if they were from elite or common peasant families. Such work would contribute to a better understanding of rural-urban relationships in Chinese history.Google Scholar

87. Issues of urban poverty, economic hardship suffered by local citizens and the urban welfare system remain little studied. Stories of how some entrepreneurial rural migrants have become rich in the cities can be found in Hao Zaijin, Tribes of Eight Million Floaters.Google Scholar

88. Under the xiagang (literally, “stepping down from one's post”) system, laid-off state workers receive either a small monthly stipend or nothing from their work units, while their positions are not officially eliminated. The system has affected government employees and enterprise workers alike. It has been announced that, from 1998 to 2000, the railway system will cut 1.1 million workers, one-third of its total, while the textile industry will trim 1.2 million. See The New York Times, 20 01 1998, p. A8.Google ScholarAs of the end of 1997, some 11.5 million workers in state enterprises had already been laid off, and from 1998 to 2000 an additional eight to 11 million workers will be discharged. Beginning in 1998, the state will cut Party and government employees from the central government, and, from 1999 to 2000, the cut will be extended to local government agencies, affecting as many as four million cadres. See Shijie ribao (World Journal), 1 03 1998, p. A8 and 3 March 1998, p. A7. These cuts will certainly lead to serious urban unemployment which may adversely affect the employment opportunities of the rural migrants.Google Scholar

89.Honig, , “Native place and the making of Chinese ethnicity,” p. 147.Google Scholar

90. This notion is detailed in Naughton, Barry, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar