I plan to visit Shenyang, the capital of China’s rust-belt Liaoning province, in May. I’m going because I want to get a first-hand sense of how the switch from the production to the consumption economic model is affecting the losers.
Liaoning, one of the only areas in China (partly due to a now exposed inflated figure scam) to record a fall in GDP growth last year, is undeniably one of, if not the biggest, losers.
I therefore found the paper highlighted this week especially interesting.
It’s one in the Discussion Paper Series from the Germany based Institute of Labor Economics. In it Xin Li, Reinout Kleinhaus and Maartin van Ham, all from Delft University, look at how urban redevelopment affects the lives of those upended in the process and they did this by conducting face-to-face interviews with residents of condemned danwei (work unit) or urban village areas in Shenyang.
If you’ve visited China, even the advanced Eastern coastal cities, you’ll have seen this process first hand. It’s estimated that between 2008 and 2012 as many as 12.6m households may have been force-migrated out to effect urban regeneration across the country. So, getting a better handle on how those affected cope with this process is probably no bad thing.
The authors don’t provide recommendations per se as to how authorities can help residents affected adjust to their changed circumstances but they point out that unease and anxiety begin long before people arrive at their new dwellings.
They seem to suggest that earlier engagement with affected citizenry may be wise in addition to the piecemeal response to problems that occur later in the new towns.
The mental trauma and often feelings of low self worth and isolation associated with these forced relocations have deep roots and understanding this better may help provide a more nuanced response.
You can access the paper in full via this link Ambivalence in Place Attachment.
Happy Sunday.