Beijing starts gating, locking migrant villages

[Robbien]

Source: AP

The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.

So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.

. . .

"To put it crudely, gated communities in the city are a way for the upper middle-class and urban rich to keep out trespassers, whereas gated villages represent a way for the state to 'keep in' or contain the problem of 'migrant workers' who live in these villages," Pow Choon-Pieu, an assistant professor of geography at the National University of Singapore who has studied the issue, said in an e-mail.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012353840_apaschinafencedin.html?syndication=rss

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Allow the poor to service the rich during the day and then gate them up at night so that the rich can safely play.

[Selatius]

1. This will only antagonize the working class more.

It's one thing to underpay and treat workers poorly. It's one step more to pen them up and lock them in like cattle. Are they going to wall off portions of the city as if it were East Berlin?

[Robbien]

2. The article says the working poor like it

Being locked up in slums is much better than being back home on the farm.

Or so the media tool says.

[maxsolomon]

3. is there even lip service being given to Socialism in China now?

pretty harsh on the proletariat!

[harmonicon]

7. supposedly not

I'm in no way an expert on any of this, but I do remember recently hearing that any mention of communism had been scrubbed from state propaganda. It's not as if the country has a fairly recent history of oppressed workers starting a revolution to overthrow their government, or... oh! That China.

[Odin2005]

14. China is the New Modern Fascist State.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. awful

[Romulox]

5. If you ever visit SoCal, these "gated communities" are the norm for a certain class of people. nt

[Jkid]

10. If this was implemented in America, it would immediately be implemented towards the modern ghettos

Accusations of racism would be almost immediate.

[SunnySong]

11. Belive it or not there are progressives right here on DU who propose the exact same solution.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=230x1855

[totodeinhere]

12. The difference is of course that people live there voluntarily, and they can move out any time they

want to. So I don't think it's valid comparison.

[proteus_lives]

6. The People's Republic everyone!

:applause:

:sarcasm:

[conspirator]

8. That chinese capitalism good for everyone is a such a fabulous stuff (sarcasm) n/t

[Heywood J]

9. Awesome way to run a People's Republic, China!

Workers of the world, unite... in being locked away so as not to embarrass or threaten the rich!

[Odin2005]

13. Fascism with Chinese Charactaristics.