ON A recent afternoon excavators and dump trucks crammed into what remained of the alleyways of Xupu on the western edge of Shanghai. Their task was to remove debris from the place, formally a village but in reality an urban slum. Officials had had enough of the eyesore: in October they had sent in demolition crews which, within two months, had evicted some 13,000 migrants and flattened buildings with a total of 6,000 rooms. “Seven out of ten people I know here have left,” says Zhuang Shiguo, a 42-year-old kitchen worker from Jiangsu, a neighbouring province, standing next to a heap of rubble. In recent months the authorities have targeted more than 30 other slums in Shanghai for similar “makeovers”.
Shanghai is stepping up its efforts to control the growth of its population. One of its techniques is to make it more difficult for unskilled workers from the countryside to live there, such as by knocking down their cheap, ramshackle accommodation. Similar efforts are under way in the capital, Beijing. The governments of both cities have been deluged with complaints about pressures on transport, schools...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/1NWPIHA
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