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In the history of mankind, this is the most massive migration: population China is moving to cities so swiftly that by 2030 approximately every eighth inhabitant of the planet will live in Chinese the city. Due to such a huge influx of population in cities the largest slum colony in the world is being formed. Already China now has 220 million migrant workers. These workers live without hukou – a special residence permit allowing the Chinese to buy apartments or send children to state schools. Without such a residence permit, these workers at home turned into second-class citizens and live in poor little rooms on the outskirts cities – in winter without heating, and in hot summers – in the stuffy. Dwellings these are overpopulated, people live in crowded conditions, they have only public toilets surrounded by piles of rubbish. Some of them live in huge city basements in which they rent rooms without ventilation – there are not enough beds for everyone, and they forced to sleep in turns. And others have to live on the territory factories and factories – close to indoor workplaces, hastily adapted for an overnight stay, or in tents next to construction sites. Last summer, in one of the most expensive areas of Beijing – next to elite houses, a tent city has grown. Builders were sleeping in green army tents, dried clothes on ropes stretched out along the sidewalks, and in the evenings they played table tennis. “By this people are constantly being dictated by the new rules of the game, “says Tom Miller, author of The Million Chinese Citizens: a story about the most massive migration in human history “(China’s Urban Million: The Story Behind the Greatest Migration in Human History). Miller works as a quarterly editor for China’s economic issues China Economic Quarterly, in China he lives since 2002, and during this time visited 85 Chinese cities. In his The book provides a chronological description of this rapid growth. urban population and how such migration has affected city life. He believes that this influence cannot yet be called. positive. Cities, he says, are “damn what.” The space in them is distributed irrationally, there are many traffic problems, dirt everywhere, pits gaping on the sidewalks, where pedestrians fall. In addition, the cities are simply ugly. how Miller believes that part of the blame lies with the Soviet Union, which launched the construction of huge buildings and endless avenues, among which a person feels like a bug. In Chinese cities also try to build everything “no worse” than in Beijing with its huge monuments of power. For example, boundless open spaces Tiananmen Square with its many fire extinguishers (to protesters were discouraged if they suddenly you want to set yourself on fire), or the House of the People’s Assembly, which is spread out on an area of 171.8 thousand square meters and in his hall can accommodate 10 thousand people. “Communists, unlike other people, aren’t capable of nostalgic feelings, “Miller notes. And that’s means that they absolutely do not consider it necessary to maintain, say, ancient city walls. “It’s important for them to build on the future and create such cities, which will become mainly centers of production. The main thing in a communist city is functionality. “And cities in China built in the expectation that people will live in the same place where work, and will never go anywhere. “But when happens system change, and capitalism sets in, people begin to make different purchases, they have to move around the city, and familiar the model (of the city) suddenly becomes ineffective, “says Miller. Representatives of China’s fast-growing middle class want look at the windows of Gucci stores, buy a BMW and drive for the city on modern fixed gear bikes. A cities do not change – they only get bigger. Cities like Chongqing, attracting millions of peasants from the province, and by 2010 their population will increase from 10 million to 20 million residents. These peasants will exchange their homes for public housing and small plots of land that did not produce special crops, and will move to city apartments. “For those workers who do not have skills that could be useful in the city, such relocation can only be a disaster, Miller said. – If I a peasant and settled in a new high-rise building … there will be nowhere keep chickens, and I myself can’t find a job. I do not know how to live in the city. And as a result of such a relocation, a class is formed second-class residents who are unable to integrate into society, live and work well. ”
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