Apartment closures are ostensibly part of a campaign to revamp the city into a sleeker capital
By Eva Dou and Dominique Fong
BEIJING—After two years of ferrying thousands of meals across the capital on his moped for Chinese food-delivery startups, Li Xiaolong was rushing to leave the city Wednesday rather than face the eviction crews that come knocking on doors around him each night.
Mr. Li, 29 years old, is one of thousands of workers clearing out of Beijing’s poorer neighborhoods this week, in the latest and more brutal phase of the city’s campaign to revamp itself as a sleeker capital with fewer people.
A deadly fire in a shoddy tenement building on Nov. 18 triggered citywide closures of apartment complexes housing migrant workers, leaving many with no option but to return to distant hometowns. The sweep, in the name of fire safety, has generated a groundswell of anger at the government’s treatment of the poor, just a few weeks into the second term of President Xi Jinping, who has cast himself as a champion of poverty alleviation.
Li Xiaolong, seen with his 2-year-old son Wednesday, is moving back to Hebei province after working two years in Beijing.
Years of urban growth have clogged the city’s streets and strained its water supply. Beijing officials have said they want to cap the metropolis’s inhabitants at 23 million by 2020 and shrink the population in the city’s center by some 2 million.
Without residency rights for Beijing, migrant workers have lower standing here and are often denied access to subsidized health care, education and social services. Nudges for them to leave—like closures of grocery or wholesale markets—have now turned into a hard shove.
As reports of mass evictions spread on social media, many wealthier Beijingers were shocked to see the people who deliver their meals or watch their children being pushed onto the streets on freezing nights, and they responded with outrage at the use of the term “low-end population” in government documents, referring to migrant workers.
Zhang Qinghua, a Peking University professor who studies urban development, said local officials may be using the fire earlier in the month as a pretext for the evictions. “They had long wanted to do it,” she said.
State media quoted a Beijing official on Sunday saying that suggestions the government was targeting migrant workers were irresponsible: “There is no saying like ‘low-end population.’”
More than a hundred Chinese intellectuals signed a statement calling the abrupt evictions a violation of human rights. “Any civilized society, any society with rule of law, cannot tolerate this,” the statement said.
Censors blocked at least one social-media post by a civil-society group offering beds for migrant workers without a place to stay. The intellectuals’ statement was quickly removed online.
The government has given instructions to media outlets to refrain from reporting or commenting on the Nov. 18 fire, which killed 19 people, according to Chinese journalists receiving the order.
Fu King-wa, a lead researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s WeiboScope project, which monitors activity on social-media platform Weibo, said censorship earlier this week reached levels exceeding those during last month’s Communist Party congress.
The evictions have left a number of well-known companies scrambling, with e-commerce companies Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.and JD.com arranging housing for employees of their delivery services who suddenly found themselves homeless.
Food-delivery services Meituan and Ele.me both said they were attentive to delivery workers needing help. Meal delivery has become wildly popular in China by combining low cost and convenience—a business model heavily reliant on an abundant pool of cheap urban labor.
Mr. Li, who worked for Meituan, left Beijing Wednesday with his wife and 2-year-old son to return to Hebei province. Each night this week, he said, eviction teams with flashlights have gone door-to-door in his neighborhood, sealing apartments with code violations and leaving their residents in the cold.
“I have a child, so we have to leave before they get here,” Mr. Li said. “We can’t get kicked out in the middle of the night.”
On Monday night, eviction crews caught up with financial-product saleswoman Wang Xinyi, 23. She huddled with neighbors outside as inspectors sealed each door jamb in her tenement building with a banner.
Ms. Wang slept that night at a friend’s apartment. The friend was evicted the next night, prompting a fresh scramble. She said she plans to return to Liaoning province in China’s north. “I feel really tired.”
In theory, those evicted can stay in Beijing if they find alternative housing, though in some neighborhoods, like Mr. Li’s, migrant workers say they were explicitly told they wouldn’t be welcome back when their apartments have been renovated to meet code.
There were signs that officials on the ground were uncertain how to proceed as the evictions drew increasing criticism.
Wu Panyong, right, is being evicted from his studio apartment and is facing a move to the city of Kaifeng, 400 miles south in Henan province, a “hometown” in which he has never lived.
Wu Panyong, 21, who delivers fruit and vegetables to an elementary school, said he woke Monday morning to his mother pounding on the door, frantic at a notice posted that they had to move out by 6 p.m.—a nine-hour heads-up. They had already taken away several carloads of belongings when word came just hours before that they could stay through the end of the year.
But the next day, their deadline changed again: Everyone now must clear out by Thursday.
Despite having lived in Beijing all his life, Mr. Wu, the son of migrants, doesn’t have residency rights. Now, for the first time, he faces a move to Kaifeng, 400 miles south in Henan province, a “hometown” in which he has never lived.
By Eva Dou and Dominique Fong
BEIJING—After two years of ferrying thousands of meals across the capital on his moped for Chinese food-delivery startups, Li Xiaolong was rushing to leave the city Wednesday rather than face the eviction crews that come knocking on doors around him each night.
Mr. Li, 29 years old, is one of thousands of workers clearing out of Beijing’s poorer neighborhoods this week, in the latest and more brutal phase of the city’s campaign to revamp itself as a sleeker capital with fewer people.
A deadly fire in a shoddy tenement building on Nov. 18 triggered citywide closures of apartment complexes housing migrant workers, leaving many with no option but to return to distant hometowns. The sweep, in the name of fire safety, has generated a groundswell of anger at the government’s treatment of the poor, just a few weeks into the second term of President Xi Jinping, who has cast himself as a champion of poverty alleviation.
Li Xiaolong, seen with his 2-year-old son Wednesday, is moving back to Hebei province after working two years in Beijing.
Years of urban growth have clogged the city’s streets and strained its water supply. Beijing officials have said they want to cap the metropolis’s inhabitants at 23 million by 2020 and shrink the population in the city’s center by some 2 million.
Without residency rights for Beijing, migrant workers have lower standing here and are often denied access to subsidized health care, education and social services. Nudges for them to leave—like closures of grocery or wholesale markets—have now turned into a hard shove.
As reports of mass evictions spread on social media, many wealthier Beijingers were shocked to see the people who deliver their meals or watch their children being pushed onto the streets on freezing nights, and they responded with outrage at the use of the term “low-end population” in government documents, referring to migrant workers.
Zhang Qinghua, a Peking University professor who studies urban development, said local officials may be using the fire earlier in the month as a pretext for the evictions. “They had long wanted to do it,” she said.
State media quoted a Beijing official on Sunday saying that suggestions the government was targeting migrant workers were irresponsible: “There is no saying like ‘low-end population.’”
More than a hundred Chinese intellectuals signed a statement calling the abrupt evictions a violation of human rights. “Any civilized society, any society with rule of law, cannot tolerate this,” the statement said.
Censors blocked at least one social-media post by a civil-society group offering beds for migrant workers without a place to stay. The intellectuals’ statement was quickly removed online.
The government has given instructions to media outlets to refrain from reporting or commenting on the Nov. 18 fire, which killed 19 people, according to Chinese journalists receiving the order.
Fu King-wa, a lead researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s WeiboScope project, which monitors activity on social-media platform Weibo, said censorship earlier this week reached levels exceeding those during last month’s Communist Party congress.
The evictions have left a number of well-known companies scrambling, with e-commerce companies Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.and JD.com arranging housing for employees of their delivery services who suddenly found themselves homeless.
Food-delivery services Meituan and Ele.me both said they were attentive to delivery workers needing help. Meal delivery has become wildly popular in China by combining low cost and convenience—a business model heavily reliant on an abundant pool of cheap urban labor.
Mr. Li, who worked for Meituan, left Beijing Wednesday with his wife and 2-year-old son to return to Hebei province. Each night this week, he said, eviction teams with flashlights have gone door-to-door in his neighborhood, sealing apartments with code violations and leaving their residents in the cold.
“I have a child, so we have to leave before they get here,” Mr. Li said. “We can’t get kicked out in the middle of the night.”
On Monday night, eviction crews caught up with financial-product saleswoman Wang Xinyi, 23. She huddled with neighbors outside as inspectors sealed each door jamb in her tenement building with a banner.
Ms. Wang slept that night at a friend’s apartment. The friend was evicted the next night, prompting a fresh scramble. She said she plans to return to Liaoning province in China’s north. “I feel really tired.”
In theory, those evicted can stay in Beijing if they find alternative housing, though in some neighborhoods, like Mr. Li’s, migrant workers say they were explicitly told they wouldn’t be welcome back when their apartments have been renovated to meet code.
There were signs that officials on the ground were uncertain how to proceed as the evictions drew increasing criticism.
Wu Panyong, right, is being evicted from his studio apartment and is facing a move to the city of Kaifeng, 400 miles south in Henan province, a “hometown” in which he has never lived.
Wu Panyong, 21, who delivers fruit and vegetables to an elementary school, said he woke Monday morning to his mother pounding on the door, frantic at a notice posted that they had to move out by 6 p.m.—a nine-hour heads-up. They had already taken away several carloads of belongings when word came just hours before that they could stay through the end of the year.
But the next day, their deadline changed again: Everyone now must clear out by Thursday.
Despite having lived in Beijing all his life, Mr. Wu, the son of migrants, doesn’t have residency rights. Now, for the first time, he faces a move to Kaifeng, 400 miles south in Henan province, a “hometown” in which he has never lived.
