Category Archives: noted

more community websites

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Shenzhen long since gave up on “neighborhoods (居委会)” and “villages (村)”. Instead, the ruralized urban hybrids that the SEZ has spawned are legally known as “communities (社区)”. Note du jour is simply to point out that many of the sites connect landlords and renters. Soufun or “Search for a house” web, has sites that not only include rental information, but also track real estate prices. Guloucun — literally Old Lou Village Community (古楼村小区网) and Tianmiancun or Tianmian Village Community (田面村小区网), for example.

However, some community websites are more community oriented, in addition to providing a commercial forum. For the curious, checkout these community websites:

Shangsha and Xiasha Community Website (上下沙社区网)

Baishizhou Community Website (白石洲社区网)

as shenzhen razes: the baishizhou urban renewal plan online

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Shenzhen developer, Lvgem Group (绿景集团) has uploaded a video of the Urban Renewal Plan for the Five Shahe Villages in Baishizhou (白石洲沙河五村旧改专项规划).

Wow. Just wow. And not in the good way.

The current built environment of roughly 580,000 square meters will increase 10-fold, to 5.5 million square meters.

The argument for razing the current settlement and replacing it with high, high rises and skyscrapers is that Baishizhou villagers live in grungy unpleasant conditions that need to be upgraded. The proposed solution is for the developers will work with villagers in order to bring them into the urbanization process.

In a nutshell,  the problem is that the video conflates the idea of “villagers” with the ruralized current residents of Baishizhou. There will be a resettlement area for “villagers”, but who counts as a villager? The actual population of Baishizhou is over 140,000, of which 120,000 do not have Shenzhen hukou. So, inquiring minds want to know: is the plan calling for ten times the space to house the 20,000 residents who do have hukou? Or does “villager” only refer to the actual members of the five villages, which means we’re talking about less than 2,000 people with resettlement rights. And if that’s the case, who will live in all this new, upgraded, hyper-modern space after the current residents have been forced to leave?

A quick visit to 58 net reveals how cheap housing in Baishizhou is relative to the surrounding area. In fact, many young office workers and professionals from neighboring Science and Technology Park (科技园) also live in Baishizhou as to designers and creative talents who work in the OCT Loft. Providing this class with livable (宜居) housing is an ongoing Shenzhen concern. Indeed, there is now an official plaque for hanging on a rental building which confirms a building’s livability.

It is estimated that over half Shenzhen’s population live in the villages, which account for roughly 10% of the area’s land. Arguably, the villages are the city, while high end housing estates and neighborhoods might be thought as wealthy suburbs, with lovely gardens and huge tracks of private spaces. Consequently, the question of who actually belongs to an “urban village” is the social, political, economic question because as Jonathan Bach has argued, the villages have been the incubators where (some of) Shenzhen’s migrant workers transform themselves into urbanites and potentially citizens.

As Shenzhen razes. Stay tuned.

xiasha plaza

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This afternoon, I sat in Xiasha Plaza watching children and their caretakers. The plaza is vast and the people hug the edges, chatting in the shade. The coi pond is particularly popular.

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land reform: the first SZ paper of 2013

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In its first document 2013 (2013年一号文件) Shenzhen announced that its intention to finish expropriating collective lands in order to transfer land use rights for high-end development to state owned real estate developers, like China Resources and Jingji. In official parlance its know as  land reform (土改), and yes, I’m starting to think I live in a post-ironic city.

The problem of Shenzhen urban villages is, of course, that they were not villages. Under Mao, they were incorporated into the state apparatus through collectivization. Villages became teams, several teams became a brigade, and groups of brigades constituted a commune. In turn, the communes were the basic administrative unit of Bao’an County, Shenzhen’s territorial predecessor. In short, the collectives had a modern bureaucracy, and did agrarian work in not quite primitive, but very rough conditions.

In 1978, led by liberalization in rural Anhui, teams and brigades throughout China began to dismantle, and Bao’an was no exception. Redeploying the administrative structure of the Maoist state, they created “new villages”, which continued to do agrarian work, but for collective profits. Traditional village relationships and historic identities facilitated this process. In Bao’an, however, the establishment of the Shenzhen SEZ meant that collectives could also invest in manufacturing and real estate development.

In 1992, Shenzhen incorporated the inner villages into the municipal apparatus and in 2004 the outer villages were incorporated. So technically, the villages, which had not been villages, were now urban neighborhoods. Except, they were also limited holding companies. And there’s the legal rub: Shenzhen urban villages were limited holding companies which owned investments that had been legally built on collective land, but now occupied state-owned land, creating a messy, grey area of compensation demands and property rights.  According to Shenzhen Urban Planning Chief, Wang Youpeng (王幼鹏),

The government cannot take [the land] back, and the collectives can’t use it (政府拿不回，集体用不了).

The Municipality’s convoluted description of the villages reflects this complicated history. In the first document of 2013, the villages are called “Former Rural Village Economic Organization Work Unit (原农村集体经济组织单位)” — hee! But here’s the not-so-funny point: The 2013 paper legalizes the direct transfer of collective lands to real estate companies. Previously, the villages negotiated with the Municipality, which in turn accepted bids from real estate companies. Now, the Municipality has stepped back from this role. Instead, the villages may negotiate directly with the companies.

In terms of asset transfer, it means that villages must remove their technically illegal buildings from municipal lands. Their are two compensation packages. Either, villages sell their buildings, giving half the price of the sale to the Municipal government, or the villages sell their buildings and give 70% of the price to the Municipal government, but receive up to 20% of whatever is subsequently built on the land.

Xi Jinping has come and gone. The Shenzhen People’s Congress has met and disbanded. Exhortations to study the Spirit of the 2013 18th National People’s Congress have proliferated throughout Shenzhen. And now we know what it means – there is a new means of legalizing the transfer of property and resources from the urban villages to Shenzhen Municipality, further concentrating property and resources in the hands of whoever happens to be in charge of negotiating this process on behalf of the People Party.

That said, after a surge in the stock market, the general response has been one of confusion. It seems the paper is unclear on how the process will actually take place.

shenzhen publications

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In the hope that they may be useful, I am uploading five academic papers from the dark ages of Shenzhen studies. Be aware: much has changed, although much has not. In chronological order:

1999: Path Breaking(on how gendered nationalism facilitated the construction of SZ)
2001: Becoming Hong Kong (on how Shenzhen emerged through globalizing urbanization)
2006: Cultural Supplement (on political power as a cultural value in contemporary SZ)
2006: Fox Talk (on the emergence of neo-liberal urban identities in SZ)
2008: Vexed Foundations (on cultural continuity in SZ urban villages)

gaoling: shenzhen’s eastern periphery

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Episode 13 of The Great Transformation, takes us to Gaoling Village (高岭村), which is located on Qiniang Mountain at Shenzhen’s eastern most edge on the Dapeng Peninsula.

The story of Overseas Chinese Chen Jiageng (陈嘉庚) opens the episode, connecting the history of Shenzhen’s eastern periphery to early modern Chinese nationalism. An ethnic Hakka, Chen Jiageng raised funds among to construct the Jimei School in his hometown Jimei Xiamen. For his nationalist efforts, Mao Zedong referred to Chen Jiageng as being “the banner of Overseas Chinese, the glory of the race (华侨旗帜，民族光辉)”.

Settled over 400 years ago by Hakka migrants, the layout of Gaoling reflected the founders need for safety and arable land. The village houses were located deep in the mountains, while village fields were located at the foot of the mountain. Every morning, villagers went down the mountain to work their fields and every evening, they returned to the relative safety of their homes.

The architecture of Gaoling reflected the agonistic relations between Hakka and local (本地 boon day [H], bendi [M], pundi [C]) peoples during the 19th Century. In fact, between 1855 and 1867, relations disintegrated into open conflict during the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars. During the early 20th Century, the village housed anti-Japanese troops, who were led by Hong Kong born Liu Peidai.

As in Xiamen, Gaoling villagers who lived overseas donated funds to build a school in their hometown. Over the course of the village’s history, Gaoling villagers immigrated to Singapore, Holland, the United States, and Canada, and many more lived in Hong Kong. Importantly, the Overseas Chinese funded improvements to their hometown, including modernizing the water system. The Euro-Chinese style of the school architecturally reflected these migrations and returns.

that time of year

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Several clear signs that Shenzhen is gearing up for the holiday:

(1) Everyone is in overtime mode to finish work by the end of next week, so that they can get off as early as possible. New Year’s eve is Feb 9 and the first is Feb 10, but elementary students are already off and the streets have emptied significantly;

(2) Lunches and dinners with friends have increased as everyone is taking time to sit down and visit, which is somehow at odds with all the overtime that is being put in;

(3) The traffic cops are out confiscating motorbikes. It is only legal to ride motorbikes in small communities or campuses, it is illegal to ride motorbikes on the road or sidewalk. Every year, the traffic cops start hanging out at intersections and confiscating illegal bikes. I’m told the reason is to earn a little extra for the holiday by selling the bikes elsewhere. I’m also told that this has been going on for decades, and that when a friend of mine was in middle school, the cops hung out at intersections and snatched bicycles;

(4) Flowers have appeared at all the plant shops. The annual flower market is one of the highlights of a Guangdong New Year’s, and individuals purchase all sorts of lovely flowers for their balconies and homes;

(5) I’ve received warnings not to help children who say they are lost or need money to go home because the common sense is that they are part of some scam. I’ve been instructed to take the children to the nearest police station because if they are truly lost, they will go and if they are part of a scam, they will run away;

(6) Snakes of varying degrees of cuteness are on sale everywhere.

mama troll

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The Mandarin expression for internet trolling — visiting sites, but not actually participating — is scuba diving or 潜水. Last night, I heard it used in the context of parental supervision. Apparently, there are mothers who have requested that their children give them their qq, we chat, and other social networking account passwords so that they can supervise them. The person describing the mother in question joked she was as “mama troll (潜水妈妈)”.

When I mentioned that I found this behavior highly disturbing, my friends responded that yes, it was a bit excessive, but what could you do? Children are an extension of their mothers, and if I didn’t understand this cultural root, I couldn’t understand Chinese mothers.

What’s more, another friend added, many of these mothers have nothing to do. They sit around and worry about who their husbands may or may not be seeing. They chat with friends and imagine all sorts of situations that their daughters might encounter. The most worrisome problem would be young love, especially because young love adversely affected grade point averages.

I then did another of my highly selective surveys, where I told this story to friends and cab drivers and the odd waitress to get their take. I asked if they thought it possible that a mother would go to such extremes? The 100% answer: yes. Most agreed that this kind of supervision was excessive. However, they pointed out that many mothers worry about their children, especially their daughters and so the concern was natural. Others remembered that when they were younger, their friends’ mothers might read their diaries for similar reasons.

I then asked why didn’t the children just sign up for another email or we chat account? Here the responses varied — maybe the children lived at home and their mothers paid for their cell phone and internet access; maybe the children always did what their mother asked them to do, and; maybe it was just easier to put up with the intrusive supervision than it was to set up independent accounts.

After all, another friend pointed out, as long as a child is living with her mother, her options are limited because sometimes teachers will request parents to increase supervision over a child. “It’s a conspiracy,” she then said half jokingly, “Teachers and mothers work together to make sure that children do what they should.”

沓饼节: the second annual pounded biscuit festival

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Yesterday, Bao’an District organized the second annual pounded biscuit festival (沓饼节). Pounded biscuits are a traditional local sweet that are especially popular at Chinese New Year’s. It so happens that a Shenzhen brand, 合成号 has been making said biscuits since 1901. The company celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2011, and to kick off its next century, in 2012, it became the sponsor of Shenzhen’s latest festival.

Local historian, Mr. Liao Honglei (廖虹雷) invited me to join the celebration. Mr. Liao curated the event and has been active promoting local Chinese culture. He is particularly attentive to cultural differences between Cantonese, Hakka, and Chaozhou settlements. Shenzhen inhabitants from outside Guangdong, refer to Cantonese as “baihua (白话)”, or local language. In contrast, Mr. Liao makes a point of calling each of these cultural strands by their official names, Guangfu (广府 literally provincial capital of Guangdong), Hakka, and Chaozhou in order to draw attention to Bao’an’s heterogeneous roots.

Also present was special guest, Professor Wu Bing’an (乌丙安), an 86-year old specialist in Chinese folklore. Professor Wu began his discussion by explaining why he opposes calling Chinese New Year “Spring Festival”. On his analysis, festival (节 jie) refers to a date on the calendar. In contrast, year (年 nian) refers to a period of time. Thus, jie mark the passage of time within a given nian. Professor Wu said that in order to leave one year and enter the next, Chinese people need sound and color. After praising the reintroduction of noisy, pounding to make New Year’s biscuits, he mentioned that firecrackers were the traditional “sound” for sending off and greeting the new year. Professor Wu also complained that too many safety restrictions had made Chinese New Year too quiet.

Impressions of the pounded biscuit festival, below.

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bao tong analyzes the southern weekend incident

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baotongZhao Ziyang’s former secretary, Bao Tong has weighed in on the Southern Weekend Incident. And once again, his quirky take sheds all sorts of light into the dark corners of power at the top of China’s massive state apparatus.

Bao Tong suggests that the Southern Weekend Incident has raised three questions.

First, inquiring minds want to know, who’s actually opposing Xi Jinping? According to Bao Tong, all seven members of the Central Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China had to agree on Xi Jinping’s take on constitutionalism before he announced it. Thus, when the Southern Weekend decided to run “China’s dream, the dream of constitutional government”, they were doing their job, pushing forward the national agenda. Thus, what struck Bao Tong as abnormal wasn’t that an opinion piece was unilaterally changed, but that we don’t know who actually did it because none of the top seven have said, “I’m opposed to the national agenda.” In other words, on Bao Tong’s reading, we still don’t know who exactly is opposing constitutional reform. Is it someone in Guangdong? In Bejing? In the Ministry of information? Somewhere higher and deeper?

Second, inquiring minds want to know, why haven’t the seven just said, yes China has a constitution and it is the legal standard in the country? The seven announced that they would participate in reforming the constitution. They also announced that the constitution was the legitimating authority in China. But when the Southern Weekend encountered a force that was anti-constitution, none of the Standing members said anything. Surely, any and all of them could have said, yes, Constitution, good? So, Bao Tong wants to know, in this case where speaking was more natural than not speaking, what exactly does the seven’s collective silence mean?

Third and most seriously, at present, the role of the constitution is unclear. If the seven aren’t talking in support of the constitution, is it because the constitution doesn’t actually matter? Or if the opposition to the constitution is so strong, why not just admit that constitutional government in China isn’t really an option?  Bao Tong’s actual words go right to the point, “If China’s constitution doesn’t have legitimacy, then we should take the opportunity to tell everyone to stop hoping for constitutional government. This way we can avoid the people dreaming their way onto an evil road and blindly wasting their time (如果憲政在中國沒有合法性，應該趁早叫大家死了這條心，免得全國全民在夢中走上邪路瞎折騰).”

Last year, as Chongqing Turns became an international melodrama, Bao Tong provided one of the most interesting takes on Bo Xilai, arguing that Chongqing’s most infamous Party secretary was in fact Mao’s true heir because he was not afraid to use power to achieve political ends.