Tag Archives: rural urbanization

三打两建：ideology in guangdong

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Guangdong Party Secretary, Wang Yang has been busy shoring up his position as a reliable, upstanding, and neo-liberal party member.

Since February this year, all of Guangdong has been engaged in “three attacks and two establishments (三打两建)”, a movement that has its own, quite extensive website. The three targets of attack are “illegal monopolization of the market through violence (欺行霸市)”, “manufacturing and selling fake goods (制假售假)”, and “commercial bribery (商业贿赂)”. The two principals to be established are “a system of social trust (社会信用体系)” and “a system of market oversight (市场监管体系)”.

It seems on first glance a call to rationalize highly local systems of production, consumption, and regulation because I have usually seen movement banners in urban villages, rather than in malls, making villagers the target of Guangdong’s current ideological movement. For example, “illegal monopolization of the market through violence” and “commercial bribery” seem to be descriptions of how markets and shops are actually run (with their reputed mafia ties) in villages. Likewise, “manufacturing and selling fake goods” also seems to be located in villages, with low-level investors setting up shanzhai factories in older, under the radar of municipal oversight spaces and then distributing these goods through local outlets. In contrast, the double aim to establish systems of trust and market regulation point to the government’s determination to bring all production, distribution, and consumption under a system of generalized oversight.

Currently, Shenzhen’s villages have all been incorporated into the municipal apparatus and villagers given citizen status. However, to the extent that industrialization in the Pearl River Delta has created rich villages that cultivate loyalty to the collective (or extended family) rather than to the state (as an abstract system), the next step in rural urbanization has become transforming villagers into citizens. Currently, one of the defining characteristics of a citizen in contrast to a villager is that “citizens” position themselves with respect to national laws (shared with strangers), while “villagers” position themselves with respect to traditional values (shared with familiars and intimates).

Point du jour, an important task of Chinese governance has become shifting how the state interpellates rural residents, hailing them as individualized “citizens”, rather than as collectivized “farmers” even when and despite the fact that many villages (such as Xiasha) are investing in symbols of collective identity, and the “urban village” has become a stereotype of Shenzhen cultural identity.

land reform, again.

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An Old Shenzhener once complained to me that since the 1989 Crackdown, in Shenzhen “reform” has been too often interpreted to mean “refining the state system”, rather than actually reforming society. His point was simple. During the first decade of Reform, people had an opportunity to participate in and even direct the direction of development in Shenzhen. The fact of widespread participation made Shenzhen “special”. In contrast, after June 4th, Shenzhen became increasingly bureaucratized – like Beijing – and participating in social transformation was no longer possible for the common people. Instead, the Government had become the key social force and thus, social agency meant “works under the guidance of government bureaus” for the benefit of government officials and their cronies.

The Municipality’s latest “land reform (土改)” program illustrates the problem that aggrieved my friend. Last week, the government released three documents that legislate the scope and direction of land reform: The Comprehensive Plan to Reform Shenzhen Land Administration (深圳市土地管理制度改革总体方案), The Immediate Short Term Plan (2012-2015) of the Comprehensive Plan to Reform Shenzhen Land Administration, (〈深圳市土地管理制度改革总体方案〉近期实施方案(2012～2015年), and Notification of the Establishment of the Shenzhen Land Administration Reform Guiding Committee (关于成立深圳市土地管理制度改革领导小组的通知). Together these documents determine the target of reform, the method of reform, and the people who will interpret and implement land reform. Moreover, even a cursory reading the documents indicates that at stake in these documents is (1) finalizing the transfer of outstanding land rights from village holdings to the Municipality and (2) determining the status of informal property rights in urban villages so that (3) developers can more easily realize the goals outlined in the Municipality’s Comprehensive Master Plan, 2010-2020.

And there’s the rub: During the 1980s, villagers and various entrepreneurs collaborated to build the urban villages. My friend understood this situation be “true” or “ideal” reform because ordinary people could realize projects outside the purview of government plans. At the time, none of those projects were “informal” or “illegal” because the villages held legal land rights. He also thought that this freedom to develop land was the precondition for true social reform. He didn’t think that all villages had done a good job with the opportunity, but nevertheless believed that the idea of small-scale development and common participation was the point of reform. However, once the villages had been incorporated into the Municipal apparatus, that first round of development could be reinterpreted in terms of illegal buildings and informal property rights, alienating villagers and unofficial developers from participating in future development projects except as recipients of compensation packages.

Shenzhen property rights are a muddle that the Government needs to handle carefully to avoid aggravating extant (and growing) inequality. On the one hand, by incorporating village lands into the state apparatus and compensating villagers and independent landlords for their extant holdings, the Government creates ill will on two counts. First, people without hereditary land rights or informal property rights have no chance to benefit from this process. Second, with the exception of farmers, the process enriches government officials and corporate executives, which is the common sense definition of “corruption”. On the one hand, if the government were to reform property laws to allow for individuals to develop land, this would mean completely restructuring the state apparatus and concomitant property rights. This is what my friend would like to see – capitalist opportunities for individuals, rather than for government officials and large corporations. But this seems more a definition of “revolution” than “land reform” as it would mean redistributing rights to high-rises, shopping malls, neighborhoods, housing estates, and industrial areas.

Guanwai village lands were not only extensive, but also remain underdeveloped. Consequently, the experimental target of overall land reform in the 2012-2015 short term plan is Pingshan New District, while the experimental targets of “second round development (第二次开发)” are be Gonghe Community, Shajing Precinct, Baoan and Shanxia Community, Pinghu Precinct, Longgang.

the wanfeng model and its demise

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Today, episode 10 from The Transformation of Shenzhen Villages (沧海桑田深圳村庄三十年): “Lonely Wanfeng”.

In 1957 at the height of collectivization, Wanjialang (万家郎) was changed to Wanfeng Village. Located on the eastern banks of the Pearl River, Wanjialang had been settled for over 600 years, and was part of the larger Shajing xiang or village federation. As narrated in the documentary, the rise of Wanfeng Village was inseparable from Village Secretary, Pan Qiang’en (潘强恩), who in 1981 made a pre-emptive decision to raze village agricultural land and build factories despite the fact that Wanfeng was located in New Bao’an District and thus, technically, still a commune.

Pan Qiang’en based the design of Wanfeng’s industrial zone on the Shekou Industrial Zone, which had been designated only three years previously. Also, like Yuan Geng at China Merchants, Pan Qiang’en mobilized Hong Kong capital for initial investments. Also, like Yuan Geng, who deployed official networks to raise investment capital, Pan Qiang’en took advantage of opportunities created through his position as a local cadre. Indeed, it was in his role as a Wanfeng cadre that he would have had opportunities to visit Shekou and meet with Yuan Geng.

The critical difference between Wanfeng and Shekou, of course, was and remains, status within the state apparatus. China Merchants developed Shekou as a Ministry work unit with a national ranking. This meant that China Merchants developed Shekou as a direct expression of national policy, and Yuan Geng could hire and deploy an educated workforce, as well as negotiate legally binding contracts. In contrast, Wanfeng was a village with traditional land rights, but limited appeal to urban educated intellectuals and limited knowledge of international business practices. Nevertheless, Wanfeng Village boomed, with 145 companies opening factories in village industrial parks and when the documentary was made, village fixed assets were estimated to be over 20 yi yuan or 316.5 million US dollars (based on today’s exchange rate), earning Wanfeng the nickname, “the first village in the South (南国第一村)”.

In 1985, Pan Qiang’en spearheaded the transformation of Wanfeng from a hybrid village-brigade into a stock-holding corporation in which stock and property rights were determined by one’s status as both a villager and a worker in the collective. Pan Qiang’en did not call his experiment a stock holding company, instead, he referred to it as “socialist collective holding system (社会主义公有制)”.

According to the blog 中国法制 (China’s Legal System), the Wanfeng Model had three distinguishing characteristics:

  1. The means of production belong to all villagers. The model has five kinds of stock options — state holdings, enterprise holdings, legal person holdings, workers’ holdings, and personal holdings. The first three stock options are collective and the final two are private;
  2. Government and enterprise are completely separate, specifically, the enterprise is completely responsible for economic losses, and thus enjoys all rights to profit. Government administration is based on a different budget and thus the government has no right to interfere with economic decisions made by the enterprise;
  3. Villagers stock holdings were based on three considerations: their salary as a worker in the collective; their status as an owner of collective property; and, their rights to social welfare.

In 1990, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences held a conference on the Wanfeng Model (万丰模式) and in 1992, the president of the Academy came to Wanfeng, declaring that the Village had out urbanized urban areas. Wanfeng’s national influence reached its highest point in 1993, when the People’s Daily published,”The Wanfeng Model: On the Farmer and Social Philosopher Pan Qiang’en and His Social Praxis (万封模式－－记农民社科理论家潘强恩和他的实践). Subsequently, village leaders from throughout the country came to learn from Wanfeng.

However, in 2001, when Pan Qiang’en decided to stop paying dividends in order to finance the village’s expanding enterprises, opposition to his leadership became increasingly widespread. By 2006, he was openly opposed as a “village tyrant (村霸)” and he stepped down from power in favor of his son. The documentary ends here, speculating on the relationship between individual effort and historic transformation.

However, an important footnote follows. Also in 2006, Shenzhen nationalized all land within the city borders, taking away villagers’ absolute right to the land. Henceforth, the city and district governments also shared in the profits generated by village land sales. This would have critical consequences for Wanfeng, where Pan Qiang’en’s son and government cronies sold village lands without either notifying villagers or distributing dividends, generating huge profits for those involved in the sales. Consequently, in 2012, Wanfeng Village “learned from Wukan” and brought down the Pan Qiang’en’s son, and elected a new village head to investigate how much of “collective holdings” had been expropriated by Pan Qiang’en, his immediate family, and corrupt officials.

海湾村: land locked futures

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The Transformation of Shenzhen Villages (沧海桑田深圳村庄30年), Episode 9: Haiwan Village tells the story the Nantou Peninsula and the reclamation of land in Houhai (the southern coast facing Hong Kong) and Qianhai (the northern coast facing Guangzhou). This was the platform from which Hong Kong entered China and Baoan villagers once launched themselves to Hong Kong.

During the Mao era, Wanxia Village was divided into two production brigades, one land based for agricultural cultivation and the other water based for oyster farming. Eventually, the Wanxia Oyster Brigade was renamed Haiwan Brigade, creating two administrative villages through the division of one natural village. This division points to the importance of production — rather than history — in defining Maoist administrative units, especially in rural areas, where villages were integrated or split depending upon production needs. Importantly, however, these administrative categories were not naturalized in the same way during the early years of Reform and Opening, when some administrative villages re-instituted traditional boundaries while others did not. Haiwan retained Maoist status and began building village level factories.

Access to the sea shaped village demographics, with a population gap of people, ages 45-65 who escaped to Hong Kong in the last large flights in 1968 and 78, respectively. Nevertheless, traditional land rights enabled Haiwan to prosper. In addition, we learn from an older, Cantonese-speaking villager that Haiwan Village is an Overseas Chinese village, with many descendants scattered throughout the world with village association buildings in the United States and Hong Kong, representing support, ranging from monetary to knowledge to investment connections. The village has also maintained its identity through traditions and ritual that centered on a small Tianhou Temple.

Watching this episode, I suddenly realized something that was clearly obvious to the filmmaker: Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour coincided with the establishment of guannei villages as stock-holding corporations and urban neighborhoods. In other words, the second tour did result in new policies or breakthroughs as they are known. My a-ha moment was in seeing the connection between politics and the radical restructuring of the south china coast.  The episode ending rhetorically juxtaposes images of Wall Street with Houhai, asking if Shekou can become the next Manhattan. The question is illuminating not for its booster-hype pretensions, but rather because it clearly reiterates the primacy of investment and real estate over traditional livelihoods such as oyster farming. In such a world, insofar as the sea becomes a factor in determining property values and not an independent source of value, reclaiming the sea makes good business sense.

nanling to danzhutou, impressions

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Nanling and Danzhutou Village-Communities are located just next to Dafen in Buji Precinct. Walked the area today with Sarah, Carina, and Lorena. Impressions, below:

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because not all villagers were created equal…

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The stereotype of the second generation of Shenzhen villagers being “rich, lazy, mah johng playing, playboys (who might also do drugs)” is not only predicated on the idea that all of Shenzhen’s original inhabitants are rich, but also that their children have grown up aimless. However, Bao’an County’s original 300,000 residents and their children were not all created equal. What’s more, they increasingly find themselves belonging to antagonistic economic classes, while their children come of age grappling with problems that none of their parents imagined facing. Some second generation SZ farmers must look for wage labor in factories that (rumor has it) do not hire locals, preferring instead to hire migrant workers, even as other second generation SZ farmers are the first in their family to gone to college, and still others are, yes, struggling with too much wealth.

The inequality among locals has been created through reform era legislation and urban development projects, which have built upon and elaborated historical inequalities and traditional norms. In an earlier post, I charted the borders and corridors that have shaped economic possibility and subsequent patterns of urbanization in the SEZ, arguing that three borders have enabled urbanization in Shenzhen: the border with Hong Kong, the second line, and the city limits, which abut Dongguan in the northwest and Huizhou in the northeast. Two economic corridors have facilitated Shenzhen’s growth: the Guangshen highway corridor and the Kowloon-Canton Railway. The Guangshen highway corridor parallels the area’s riparian trade routes, which were the means of Han expansion from Guangzhou southwardly on the Pearl River and its tributaries. The KCR, of course, was the British attempt to preempt and redirect the PRD’s extensive trade network.

Not unexpectedly, proximity to a border or corridor has been a condition of reform era riches. Villages near the nexus of these borders and corridors have had disproportional opportunities to build and manage industrial parks and real estate developments. The earliest villages to get rich, for example, were all located along the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border at corridor checkpoints — Shekou (Fishing 1 and Wanxia) and Luohu (Hubei), first, but then Huanggang (Huanggang, Shuiwei, Xiasha, and Shangsha). However, guanwai villages retained land rights a full 12 years longer than did guannei villagers, with the result that largest and wealthiest village joint stock companies are now primarily located along the Pearl River Delta (Shajing and Huaide) and KCR corridors (Nanling near Buji). Consequently, many villages have remained “stuck” in between these two different modes of production, neither farming nor investing in manufacturing, let alone transitioning to the new creative economy. Areas of relative poverty include many Longgang District Villages as well as villages in Gongming and Guangming.

However, proximity to the borders and corridors has not in itself created the conditions for villages to transition from lives based on rural production to lives based on urban industrial manufacturing. In addition to the construction of infrastructure, differences in Mao-era administrative designation have also shaped current inequalities among villagers. First, successful villages have operated as collectives, rather than relying on individual efforts. These villages not only inherited Maoist organization, including management experience, but also inherited common ancestry. Thus, single surname (一姓) villages, which have renovated ancestral halls and promoted traditional rituals have generally been more organized than random surname (杂姓) villages, which were created during the Maoist era for production purposes. Second, successful villages have had traditional land rights, which were extensive. Indeed, most traditional villages have made their fortune through land deals. In contrast, fishing villages (渔村) and overseas Chinese villages (桥村) had foundation rights (宅地), but not land development rights. This meant individual villagers could build private homes, but that villages could not collectively invest in industrial parks or real estate developments. Moreover, villages did not benefit from compensation deals between developers and nearby traditional villages. Third, as recent events in Wanfeng demonstrate, some village heads have been less corrupt than others, while the success of Huaide, Nanling, Huanggang, and Xiasha Villages has been directly attributed to the foresight of the incumbent leader.

It is an open secret that legislation has been the source of Shenzhen’s competitive advantage, both for outside investors and for indigenous Bao’an villagers. What’s more, this legislation did provide the framework for many local villages and individual villagers to become rich. Indeed, when Deng Xiaoping died in February 1997, Shenzhen villagers openly wept and brought funeral wreathes to the statue at Lianhua Park and his Shennan Road billboard. Nevertheless, the emergence of class differences within and between villages directs our attention to the ways in which Shenzhen has displaced Bao’an as “the local”. Within this new locale, hometown status no longer provides a viable identity because locals have been segregated into urban classes that have disrupted traditional rural relations, even as they learn to navigate a hometown that is no longer theirs, assimilate the mores and customs of urbanites, and speak standard Mandarin, rather than local Cantonese or Hakka dialect. And in this new world ordering, poor Baoan locals embody a poignant form of global tragedy.

渔一村：of old men and the landfilled sea

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Yesterday’s bloggy romance with the sea continues and although I have shifted my gaze from Cuba to Shekou, it is worth mentioning that the writers’ emphasis on masculine conquest continues; today, in episode 8 of The Transformation of Shenzhen Villages (沧海桑田：深圳村庄三十年), Chen Hong tells the story of Fishing Village 1 (渔一村), Shekou. Again, the story begins in a village, but this is also where similarities between the two narratives end. Hemingway figured human life through the isolated figure of an old man navigating the Caribbean on a rickety skiff and superstition. In contrast, Chen Hong figures humanity through the construction of ports, trading ventures and the world-making connections that they enable, suggesting that the opportunity to launch one’s skiff is itself a political decision which once made determines the fate of villagers. For those who remember the 1988 television documentary, River Elegy (河殇) which linked China’s decline and ultimate humiliation to the Ming decision to ban maritime activity, a not-so-subtle critique of Maoist isolation, Chen Hong’s passion for the sea and the [free trade] world it symbolizes is self-evident.

Episode 8 opens by juxtaposing images of Ming and Qing trade centered on Guangzhou with pictures of the construction of Shekou, reminding viewers that Zheng He (郑和) set forth from or loaded supplies at Chiwan Port at least five times. Lest the viewer forget the consequences of isolation, the opening sequence ends with bleak, black and white footage of a backwater port, overgrown and clogged with weeds, small wooden boats berthed in stagnant waters. Boom! The first explosion opens the door to new world order, which is also, new village order.

Traditionally, the villagers of Fishing 1 weren’t actually villagers but individual fishing families who lived on boats, coming onshore to sell the day’s catch. Families came from all over the Pearl River Delta forming a community through their livelihood, rather than through ancestry or even a common version of Cantonese. However, in 1959, the political decision was made to organize them as a brigade (生产大队). They were 90 households with a total population of 450 people and settled as four small production teams (小队) in Nantou, Gushu, Neilingding Island, and Shekou. The Fishing Brigade worked to modernize the fleet and in 1978 during a meeting on scientific production, Hua Guofeng actually gave the brigade a first place award. Indeed, at the beginning of Reform, the Brigade had 69 ocean fishing vessels, 72 transport ships, and 18 oxygen boats that fished the South China Sea and Pearl River Delta bringing in fresh seafood for Cantonese dishes and by 1992, had accumulated enough capital to invest in modern industrial deep sea fishing vessels.

From 1978 through 1986, the Fishing Brigade lived the socialist dream, which was a traditional Chinese dream; the men fished, going as far away as Guangxi, the women kept house, children went to school and had medicine, and all ate in a common canteen, where the work team provided delicious food, including squid and shrimp. The system was called the 8 provisions (八包). However, by the late 80s early 90s, the scale of urbanization and land reclamation meant that traditional fishing areas had been contaminated and fish breeding grounds buried, and it was impossible to continue living from the sea. Suddenly, the advantages of the sea declined as property values soared and Fishing 1 faced a contradiction that many other villages would eventually face — what to do when urbanization decimated the conditions of traditional livelihood?

Once the sea was gone, Fishing 1 had no way of making a living because it did not have any land, except for that which the government had given it for housing in 1959, including a section on Neidingling Island, which Fishing 1 decided to develop as a resort and in 1992 as part of the guannei rural urbanization movement, the Fishing Brigade became the Fishing 1 stock holding corporation. However, after Fishing 1 had already invested their accumulated capital and borrowed against the development, Shenzhen and Zhuhai began a court case over who actually owned the island. Traditionally, the Island belonged to Zhuhai. However, in 1955, the Center had assigned Neidingling to Baoan, but no one could actually prove whether or not the transfer had gone through until 2002, when a copy of 1955 decision was found. In 2009, the Guangdong Provincial government finally ruled in favor of Shenzhen’s claim to Neidingling Island. However, the case raged long enough to impoverish Fishing 1 as the joint stock corporation/ fishing brigade/ village could no longer fish and except for Neidingling had no other traditional land rights. Indeed, by 2009 when the case was settled, Fishing 1’s deep sea fishing rights had already been bought out by China Merchants, which in turn sold them to Wanxia, one of Shekou’s original land-based villages.

And so here’s the neoliberal twist in Chen Hong’s story of old men and their vanishing sea: Fishing 1 re-entered Shenzhen urban planning as part of the Together Rich Project (同富裕项目), and over the past decade restructured and invested elsewhere: an industrial park in guanwai Gongming and fish breeding farms in Zhanjiang, for example. In addition, the Municipality organized training for fishermen to learn new skills. Nevertheless, the members of Fishing 1 have not only been proletarianized over the past 30 years, but are still paying off one of the debts that fueled Shekou’s growth. After all, Fishing 1 had no rights to any of the coastal property developments that enriched both China Merchants and neighboring Wanxia Village. Instead, Episode 8 ends with exhortations — from the Municipality and from the filmmaker — for individual development and initiative, ironically and inexorably returning us to Hemingway’s sea, where old men struggle feed themselves because they have been isolated by .

For more on my obsession with Houhai Land reclamation, more entries, here. A wander through the earliest Shekou landmarks, including the Shekou and Neilingding fishing families settlements, below:

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as yet shenzhen has no capital h history…

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The experience of walking Shenzhen is significantly different from visiting, Beijing or Shanghai, Xi’an or Guangzhou, where the meaning of the past has already been codified, renovated, and can be consumed on a nostalgic tour. In school we learn that Beijing’s history is Ming-Qing imperial, Shanghai’s history is East-West colonial hybrid, Xi’an’s history is ancient, while Guangzhou’s history is South China sea commerce and migration. We then go to the respective tourist destination to have our knowledge confirmed and perhaps enriched by and through an appropriate activity. We walk Beijing’s hutong and the Forbidden City, drink coffee or cocktails in a stylish restaurant in Shanghai’s shikumen and the Bund, admire Xi’an’s beilin and terracotta soldiers, and wander the small shops of Guangzhou’s West Gate. Indeed, each of these tourist destinations succeeds as such precisely because the site metonymically represents the respective city’s place in China’s “5,000 years” of civilization. We leave thinking we have a deeper understanding of where we have been. Maybe we do. Most likely we don’t. But there is something reassuring in having our stereotypes confirmed, and those stereotypes are what I mean by capital h history.

Now, there are historically significant sites in Shenzhen — Old Nantou, Dapeng Fortress, the Chiwan Tianhou Temple, Dongmen, and Yumin Village. However, municipal efforts to promote Old Nantou and Dongmen, notwithstanding, none of these historical sites has captured the imagination of either residents or visitors. I suspect this is in part because each of these places represents a portion of Chinese history that is already preserved elsewhere. Old Nantou and the Chiwan Tianhou Temple, for example, represent ancient efforts to develop the Chinese salt trade and settle the Pearl River Delta, but there are finer examples of that era to be imagined and seen in Guangzhou, while ancient Chinese history is more elegantly preserved in Xi’an and Jiangnan. Even the Tianhou sea cult is more closely identified with Tianjin and Xiamen than it is with South China temples and shrines. Likewise, Dapeng Fortress is an outpost of Ming-Qing military imperialism, but of a failed variety, rather than successful garrisons to be explored throughout the north.

Dongmen and Yumin Village are perhaps more representative of Shenzhen’s importance as the epicenter of early reform. However, both are historically compromised. Although Dongmin is identified with so-called Shen Kong commerce, for example, there really are more upscale malls throughout both Shenzhen and Hong Kong where one might purchase global products. And what about Yumin Village? Deng Xiaoping visited Yumin Village in 1984, inspecting one of the three-story private homes that local villagers had just built. He declared that Shenzhen speed was a good thing and that the rest of the country should follow. The 1995 exhibition to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen SEZ included an installation that reproduced the interior of one of those homes, which at the time, was more luxurious than the homes of urban cadres in Beijing and Shanghai. Here’s the rub: although Yumin Village has been integrated into the Shenzhen municipal apparatus as a Luohu neighborhood, nevertheless the actual buildings that Deng saw and even the home he inspected were razed over ten years ago. There is a history board there, but nothing from 1984 remains and Yumin Village continues to function as a border urban village, with low rents for migrants who work nearby, spas and massage parlors for visiting Hong Kong people, and places where villagers play mah jong and gather to drink tea and gossip.

The absence of an agreed upon master narrative means that walking Shenzhen allows individuals to judge what does and does not represent capital h history in the SEZ. Now Shenzhen does boast upscale skyscrapers that represent achievements within this process — Guomao, Diwang, and the Civic Center all come to mind and are worth a visit. Those wanting to see the “real” capital h historic Shenzhen, I suggest visiting either an industrial park or an urban village. Early 80s work unit housing in Luohu and Shekou are also great examples of how industrial urbanization transformed the area. Personally, however, I believe that if Shenzhen has a place in China’s 5,000 years narrative it is as an epicenter of rural urbanization, including transformation of the local environment, proletarianization of rural migrants to SEZ factories, and the forms of urbanization that returned workers have promoted or their remittances enabled. However, even after over 30 years of reforming and opening Baoan villages, the city is only just starting to come to terms with this legacy and most villages, even the most famous such as Baishizhou are scheduled to be razed. All this to say that as yet, the meaning of Shenzhen’s cultural and historical inheritance is still up for grabs because we are only just starting to come to terms with the urban legacy of Reform and Opening. This means that as yet the city has no capital h history and no corresponding historical sites that one can visit and say, “Yes, I’ve been to Shenzhen and I know where I’ve been.”

Walk anyway. The Shenzhen you experience will be only loosely tethered to stereotypes about China and you might make something else of it. Below, impressions of a recent walk in Fuyong.

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怀德村：virtue’s rewards

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It’s been a while since I’ve summarized an episode from The Transformation of Shenzhen Villages (沧海桑田深圳村庄三十年) and so today, episode 6: The Secret of Huaide Village (怀德的秘密), which puns the village’s name and also means “the secret to cherishing virtue”.

The episode opens by telling viewers that Huaide is a revolutionary village, which contributed over 40 soldiers to the People’s Liberation Army. The connection between good Party leadership, virtuous villagers, and getting rich is then personalized through the story of Pan Baliang, a Huaide villager, who fought in the Korean War, (or the Resist American War as it is known in Chinese). However, during the Cultural Revolution he was jailed because his children were abroad, and was only to be rehabilitated in 1980, when out of gratitude for his fellow villagers continued support, he petitioned the village/ brigade if he could open a factory.

In 1988, Huaide was chosen as the location for Shenzhen’s Baoan International Airport. At the time, the SEZ decided that guannei land should be saved for urban development, rejecting a proposal to build at Baishizhou, which was then considered the suburbs and choosing instead to stimulate the guanwai economy by converting Shenzhen’s largest duck farm into an international airport. The Shenzhen airport expropriated over 1,000 mu of village land and in return Huaide received a compensation package of 3.5 million yuan. The question became: should the sum be divided evenly and distributed to each villager (as many villages had chosen to do) or should the village create a jointly held corporation and invest the money in common cause?

In 1988, guanwai New Baoan County was still rural. This meant that the village was still organized as a collective brigade, which provided the organizational infrastructure for Huaide’s subsequent development as a jointly held corporation. Huaide’s current CEO and current Party Secretary, Pan Shansen earnestly explains that Huaide Party leaders understood that unless they could correctly direct the thinking of the villagers, the village was in danger of making a collective mistake. Collective and Party leaders then went to work on villagers with dissenting opinions in order to make sure that everyone was on board with the next step — using the money for capital investment to build and manage Cuigang Industrial Park. Pan Shansen then expresses his gratitude for the previous Party leaders’ foresight in using the Airport compensation to create a strong, collective economy.

Pan Shansen describes the work of creating “a center where there was previously no center” as arduous and only possible through the cooperation of the people and their government. In addition to creating a large wholesale furniture market, in 1996 Pan Shansen established a venture capital fund that provided interest free loans to young villagers who wanted to start up companies. The fund started with 1/2 million when and grew to 2 million, and loans grew from 20-50,000 per project. In 2005, this venture capital project was expanded through collaboration with Shenzhen’s rural bank, providing low interest loans of up to 300,000 yuan to Huaide Villagers. By 2010, when the documentary was made, in addition to the villages collected holdings, over 40 families had used Village venture capital to create family businesses.

Fiscal conservatism of the defining features of Huaide Village’s success. Huaide Village has its own “constitution” that requires any private investment over 5 million yuan to be approved by the village, they set up a legal aid office for villagers to consult when writing contracts, and since 1992 have not sold any village land rights. Telling, Pan Shansen makes a point of reminding documentary viewers that Huaide Villagers are farmers — to break their ties to the land and the village is tantamount to destroying what makes them who they are, regardless of how they actually make money. Land is at the heart of Huaide’s neo-Confucian CCP virtue and unlike many Shenzhen villages that no longer have collective land, Huaide still owns almost 1/2 of the land they owned before 1980. What’s more, the Village has actively purchased land rights from other Shenzhen villages, leaving its own land for future use.

The rewards of Huaide’s virtue are a neo-Confucian-socialist hybrid capitalist success story, or as it is sometimes said, villagers washed their feet and left the paddies. In addition to its village venture capitalist fund, Huaide invested in social services and local culture. Huade provides medical insurance, education, including college scholarships, and old age activities for its 700 villagers, and in 2010, its Lion Dancing Troupe was the only village level troupe to receive an invitation to perform at the opening ceremony of Belgium’s Chinese Culture Festival. And thus, the moral to this episode tallies with Shenzhen’s ongoing campaign to promote Confucian ethics: good party cadres are at heart neo-Confucians, serving their people, who become collectively rich. In turn, inquiring minds wonder: to what extent has Huaide’s ethical sensibility extended to the organization of workers’ rights in the village’s three industrial parks?

Cultural postscript: the Lion Dance Troupe is talented and fun. Check out a performance, here.

three class theory: speculating on the scale and possibility of reforming china

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A while back I heard a princeling turned Shenzhen nouveau riche (and they do surface every now and again, entrepreneurs in their late 50s and 60s, who came to the SEZ to live well below the national political radar, but nevertheless take advantage of their status to reap economic benefits in the city that launched Reform) half-mockingly challenge a lunch table of intellectuals, saying:

China has three classes — high ranking officials (高干), national intellectuals (高知), and peasants (农民). Officials need help governing and are good to those who help them, but that’s not the important issue. The real question is: do you really want to share power with peasants?

That smug question provoked self-conscious chortles because most at the table were low-level national intellectuals, not peasants, no, but certainly ecclesiastes, who Gramsci defined as the category of intellectuals “who for a long time…held a monopoly of a number of important services: religious ideology, that is the philosophy and science of the age, together with schools, education, morality, justice, charity, good works, etc. The category of ecclesiastes can be considered the category of intellectuals organically bound to the landed aristocracy.”

The a-ha moment in “three class theory” is the emphasis on political, rather than economic power. Take a look at Chinese society and what becomes obvious is that high-ranking officials are, by and large, China’s property-owning class and national intellectuals are, by and large, members of the bourgeoisie. Within each of these classes, of course, exist various opportunities to confirm and strengthen social status, as well as opportunities to transfer and exchange socially valued goods, including money, but also including housing, medical care, and other social benefits. In contrast, peasants are those organically tied to the land, with all that the status has historically entailed: providing quota grain under Maoist collectivism to fund socialist urbanization, and presently being excluded from China’s urban boom except as members of the proletariat. The point, of course, is that in Chinese society economic opportunity is a function of political and social status, rather than the reverse.

The status of peasants and their ties to land are at the center of Shenzhen’s development.On the one hand, as rural areas urbanize, the question of land comes to the fore and in it we see how officials and intellectuals cooperate to expropriate land and justify its expropriation. In this scenario, the class struggle is over the terms of proletarianization and the creation of what are called “peasant workers (农民工)”. On the other hand, to the extent that villages retain control of their land and pursue capitalist projects, we see the stability of the three class system as local systems reproduce this hierarchy, producing “local emperors (土皇帝)”.  In this parallel scenario, the struggle is over the extent to which local emperors and local intellectuals might launch themselves into national politics. Obviously, although both historical trajectories transform individual lives, it is also clear that these changes are not bringing about a more just society, but rather using previous injustices to make and legitimate power grabs and the concomitant distribution of the spoils.

As China enters its fourth decade of reform, Gramsci’s call for intellectuals to theorize and provide alternatives to the present situation still haunts us. The fact that US and Chinese leaders continue to cosy up to one another and that US and Chinese intellectuals find so much in common makes salient the compatibility of US neoliberal ideologies and Chinese ideologies of socialist exceptionalism. However, this ideological compatibility has blinded many of us to a simple truth; the quality of life for Chinese nongmin remains the standard for evaluating the scale, possibility, and social forms of Reform and Opening, not the cross-cultural comfort level of high-ranking officials and national intellectuals, whatever their passport status may be.