Waves of migrants spark debate on movement
By Zong He (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-09-28 06:16

Suggestions for ways to put the brakes on the capital's rapid population expansion were put forward by members of the public at a forum sponsored by the Beijing municipal government last month.

One of the proposals was making it harder for non-Beijingers to settle in the city. Barring immigrants that do not have hukou, or permanent residence registration, would naturally slow population growth.

This seemingly effective and direct method has provoked fresh heated discussions among sociologists and demographers.

The continuous large-scale influx of immigrants is a key contributor to the capital's ever-expanding population.

Beijing has nearly 15 million residents, with more than 300,000 new arrivals every year between 2001 and 2004.

The unchecked and explosive population growth has exerted heavy pressure on Beijing's environment and limited resources. It has also posed a challenge to the city's sustainable development.

Bringing the situation under effective control is testing the expertise of policy-makers, experts and scholars concerned.

It is not certain that simply raising the qualification threshold for non-native residents through purely administrative means will be effective.

"The population issue, as a systematic project, should be closely related with industrial development, land utilization, and reasonable transportation layout. It is not the issue of simply opening or closing the door to non-native people," Ji Weidong, a law professor at the Japanese Kobe University, said in an article published in the Beijing News.

Beijing's population only accounts for a little more than 1 per cent of the country's total, while its fiscal expenditure is about 2.7 per cent of the nation's overall outlay.

The two proportions were both about 10 per cent in Tokyo during the 1950s.

"Given its population and fiscal expense proportions in the country's total, Beijing should have much better public facilities and be able to accommodate more residents," Ji said. "So now is not the time that the capital's population growth should be given an immediate brake."

There are two factors behind the high population density in the capital, according to the professor.

One is that government organs are concentrated in the city, so enterprises and individuals find it convenient to acquire information for development.

To effectively cut costs, it has been inevitable that they would choose the capital as an ideal place to base themselves. Using this reasoning, many foreign corporations have transferred their headquarters or offices to Beijing, as opposed to other Chinese cities.

The other factor is the fast pace of economic growth the capital has experienced in recent years.

A location with a fast-growing economy is inevitably a magnet for economic migrants, no matter how strict administrative rules are.

"A simple residence permit system only means conferring a special approval power upon relevant government departments," Ji cautioned in the article.

For a long time after the 1950s, there was no true freedom of movement in China.

However, since the reform and opening-up programme was adopted, and especially in recent years, the Chinese people have become unprecedentedly able to migrate.

With continuous economic and social development, large-scale population movement is to be expected. But it is also a fact that the excessively concentrated flow of immigrants into certain big cities like Beijing has put a huge strain on infrastructure.

But even such large-scale population movement can gradually settle to a rational level if appropriate management measures in accord with basic population migration principles are adopted, according to Ge Jianxiong, director of the Institute of Chinese History and Geography Studies at Shanghai-based Fudan University.

Migration is a dynamic problem that should be tackled in the framework of a city's development strategy, he said.

"That a region is highly attractive to outside people fully demonstrates its huge development advantages over other regions," he was quoted by the Beijing News as saying.

"Beijing's attractiveness to non-native people exactly shows nothing but that the city is regarded to be more hopeful to them.

"For a country, a region or a city, it only means the beginning of decline or fall if none wants to transfer to it," he added.

His viewpoint was echoed by Huang Keke, a researcher at the Institute of World History Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"I even feel extremely uneasy upon hearing the term 'immigrant population'," she said. "Population movement is an inevitable social phenomenon that emerges under the social development law."

China's population flow has generally benefited the country's social development, according to the researcher.

"Every country in the world should go along such a kind of development path," she said.

Huang predicted the population movement has not yet reached its peak.

The experiences of other countries show a reasonable industrial structure is one under which primary industries should account for the least population proportion, secondary industries more and tertiary industries the most.

But in China, according to population statistics, about 50 per cent of the country's labour force was based in rural areas in 2002, with secondary industries accounting for 21.4 per cent of the population and the tertiary sector 28.6 per cent.

This shows the country has a large surplus labour force, which constitutes a huge potential floating population.

Bringing the forthcoming population migration climax under control in an orderly manner poses a severe challenge to the authorities.

According to Ji Weidong, while a country experiences high-pace economic growth, it should shift its public investment to other regions instead of big cities.

If more public money is diverted to other regions instead of a few big cities, their economic development and social welfare will inevitably improve, making them more attractive to local residents who will thus be persuaded to stay, he said.

Also, more preferential polices should be adopted to encourage more Beijing-born students to apply to universities outside the capital, and to make it easier for residents to move out of the crowded city.

(China Daily 09/28/2005 page4)

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