“Chinese Cities Need Slums”
Today in Xinhua:
A Chinese scholar from one of China’s most prestigious universities claimed slums should be allowed to exist in China’s big cities to provide shelters for the urban poor.
"It is no shame for big cities to have such areas. On the contrary, Shenzhen and other cities should take initiatives to build cheap residential areas for low-income residents including migrant workers who want to stay in the cities where they work," said Tsinghua University Professor Qin Hui.
"By building those areas, big cities could show more consideration for low-income residents, and provide them with more welfare," Qin said in his speech at a public forum on urbanization in Shenzhen over the weekend.
It’s too bad that there isn’t a better word than "slum" to use here. This really does this professor, who was discussing an extremely important issue, a disservice. For someone to advocate "slums" (in English) is quite a negative, sort of a Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake" kind of thing.
Very different from advocating adequate low income housing, yes? The Chinese term used was "???" – if anyone knows a better translation than "slum" please let me know.
“???” ? “Slum” seems appropriate. It is a negative term (“”?”, “?”) “?” means it is not a regular dwelling, house. It’s more like a hole. But “Slum” is usually a house, though in very bad condition. So, “slum” may not even be negative enough. But I find it very close translation of the term. It may not reflect the reality. May be in reality, “???” are not bad, with permanency, nice buildings, etc.
From what I understand, these “???” have really good sense of communities. Residents care about each other, just like other slums.
On the other hand, Xinhua did a really bad job writing the title of the piece. The professor said: “slums should be allowed to exist” and not “need”. I think the professor don’t want the local thugs, erh, officials, to drive these people out of their homes with nowhere to go. He must be saying that because he sense that’s what’s in the plans of the officials. Xinhua twisted it from a negative comment against the officials to a positive spin, claiming that the local officials did a great job, making something needed to happen.
There is much more than reading between the lines required reading Xinhua.
I agree with optimizing’s post that it could possibly be in connection to a future policy change. Slums in China already exist. Migrant workers who come from other parts of the country to the cities to work often live in the outskirts of the city, where they face poor living conditions (crime, sanitation problems, lack of schooling for children), because they can’t afford better housing, and/or lack the proper hukou and residency permits. The speech seems like a call to ackowledge this.
What the government really needs to do is change the hukou system to allow more (legal) freedom of movement, allow these workers to settle long term in a city of their choosing, which would create a market demand for the creation of low income housing, that I think developers would be happy to fill.
Hi,I just come across your blog when I was surching the word “slum”, I am studing the slum upgrading thing in the uk. By the way my hometown is beijing.
ya, it’s good to give the people in the slum some opportunities to access to the regular sociaty and chance to self-upgrade.
Are you doing research in that area? in china?us?