The Stubborn Nails of China
For over a year, Luo Baogen and his wife lived in a house in the middle of a major road in the Zhejiang province of eastern China. The government asked them to move to make room for a highway but, unwilling to give up their recently renovated home for inadequate compensation, they stayed put and watched as a highway was paved around their house.
Luo Baogen and his wife are part of the “dingzihu,” or a class of “stubborn nails,” in China. The stubborn nails are people who refuse to leave their homes after being asked to relocate by the government or large corporations in order to make room for developments. Many of the stubborn nails are in the remnants of hutongs, which are the narrow streets that make up the tight-knit communities of old cities like Beijing. Hutongs began to form in the 15th century during the Ming dynasty in the alleys formed by more spacious residences outside of the Forbidden City. By the Qing dynasty in the 20th century, the creation of hutongs had taken a more haphazard approach and the formerly neat appearance disappeared as the communities began to rapidly expand. The hutongs have been a crucial part of the identity of cities like Beijing for over 600 years, and their destruction erases centuries-old communities.
In order to make room for new high rises and office buildings, the Chinese government buys up land from homeowners and then resells it to private developers at large profit margins. On average, the government charges developers 40 times the per acre price they paid to those dispossessed of their property. Guan Qingyou, of Tsinghua University, estimates that these land sales accounted for about 74% of local government income in 2010. The amount actually offered to the evicted as compensation is too low to make up for their forced relocation, much less give them the opportunity to move back into their old communities after their development. When a migrant worker from the Jianxi province came home from the Chinese New Year holidays to find that his ancestral home had been razed, he was only given $16,000 for compensation. Families who have been living in the same hutong for decades are forced to scatter farther away from the center of the city, away from their communities and their jobs, because they can’t afford housing in the area. In the cases where the developers guarantee housing for those evicted, the new homes are frequently smaller than the originals and poorly constructed.
People have tried to fight their forced relocation by organizing protests and pursuing litigation, but these efforts are rarely successful. Some with money and connections, like Luo Baogen, are able to get better settlement deals, but most people are already in the marginalized parts of society and are unable to instigate much change. The occasional house in the middle of a shopping mall, or on the corner of a major metropolitan street, is certainly quite a sight, but development continues with or without the cooperation of individual homeowners.
Mr. and Mrs. Baogen’s house was eventually bulldozed after a higher settlement price was reached, and their family was one of the luckier ones. Most people are forcibly evicted at a certain point, and receive even less compensation than the small sum they were originally promised. The best that many of these people and communities can hope for is the “museumification” of their homes for the tourist industry—but even then the family would still have to leave.
The communities and cultures that have developed in these neighborhoods over hundreds of years are swiftly being destroyed to make room for more capitalistic enterprises, and this trend shows no sign of stopping. Starbucks and other transnational commercial enterprises are replacing the old family-run businesses, using traditional hutong façades to stylize their storefronts.
The government released a plan last year to bring 85 million people from rural into urban areas by 2020, to reach the goal of having 60% of China’s population in cities. The move is being promoted as “human centered,” with an expansion of health insurance and other public welfare services. However, over 200 million Chinese lack a record in China’s household registration system, which enables citizens to access these types of services. With 30% of the population already living below the poverty line, the concept of bringing 85 million people (ten times the population of New York City) into cities over the next five years will likely have disastrous outcomes and exacerbate problems related to urbanization, like semi-coerced land appropriation.
As the homes and the communities of the stubborn nails of China are bulldozed and razed, so are the livelihoods and the cultural heritage of the region. The “stubborn nails may be a minority in Chinese society, but their vocal struggle represents the plight of millions.