"China begins gating, locking migrant villages; Anticrime effort sparks criticism" by Cara Anna, Associated Press | July 15, 2010
BEIJING — The government calls it “sealed management.’’ China’s capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.
It’s Beijing’s latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital’s Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.
The excuse for what all governments seek.
So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.
“In some ways, this is like the conflict between Americans and illegal immigrants in the States. The local residents feel threatened by the influx of migrants,’’ Huang Youqin, an associate professor of geography at the University at Albany in New York who has studied gating and political control in China, said in an e-mail....
When illegals are being hired over Americans while our jobs go across the sea people feel that way.
Gating has been an easy and effective way to control population throughout Chinese history, said Huang, the geography professor. In past centuries, some walled cities would impose curfews and close their gates overnight. In the first decades of communist rule, the desire for top-down organization and control showed in work-unit compounds, usually guarded and enclosed....
Seems to work PRETTY GOOD for ISRAEL, too, no?!
The gated villages are the latest indignity for China’s migrant workers, who already face limited access to schooling and government services and are routinely blamed for rising crime. Used to the hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants appear to be taking the new controls in stride....
“Anyway, it’s not as strict as before, when we migrants would be detained on the way to the toilet,’’ said Jia Yangui’s relative, a middle-aged woman who gave her family name as Zheng.
“Sealed management’’ looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., except for one main entrance with security guards or police, there to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.
“Closing up the village benefits everyone,’’ read one banner put up when the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.
And work will set you free, right?
But some Chinese question whether problems arising from the growing gap between the country’s rich and poor can be fixed with locks and surveillance cameras.
That is the way America is dealing with it.
“It’s a ridiculous idea!’’ said Li Wenhua, who does private welfare work with migrant workers in Beijing. “This is definitely not a good long-term strategy. The government should dig up the in-depth causes of crime and improve basic public services such as education and health care to these people.’’
Crime has been rising steadily over the past two decades, as China moved from state planning to free markets and Chinese once locked into set jobs began moving around the country for work. Violent crime in China jumped 10 percent last year, with 5.3 million reported cases of homicide, robbery, and rape, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported in February.
Related: Chinese Classroom
Wounds must have sealed up because the coverage stopped.
“Sealed management’’ began in the village of Laosanyu during the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when the government was eager to control its migrant population. The village used it again during the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist China last year. Officials then reported the idea to township officials, who decided to make the practice permanent this year.
“Eighty percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice,’’ said Guo Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu’s village committee. He didn’t say how many migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.
It does have echoes of the Arizona immigration law, doesn't it?
“Anyway, they should understand that it is all for their safety,’’ he said. Guards only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said....
That is what every government says about its imposition of tyranny.
And who could be against their own safety, huh?
Any of these guys showing up in cages?
"Dozens of activist blogs go silent in China" by Associated Press | July 16, 2010
BEIJING — Dozens of blogs by some of China’s most outspoken users have been abruptly shut down while popular Twitter-like services appear to be the newest target in government efforts to control social networking.
Related: Judicial Inc.
More and more Chinese bloggers are using the newer microblogs as their primary publishing tool, using their brief, punchy message format to chat with one another and promote their longer blog posts.
Yeah, I noticed that about Shitter, 'er, Twitter.
The LINKS are to EXPANDED BLOGS!!
But one of the country’s top four microblog sites is now down for maintenance, and the other three show a “beta’’ tag as if they are in testing, though they have been operating for months. The companies that run the websites aren’t saying why.
Chinese officials may fear that public opinion might spiral out of control as social networking — and social unrest — boom among its 420 million Internet users.
Then they have already lost just like the USraeli government.
China maintains the world’s most extensive Internet monitoring and filtering system, and it unplugged Twitter and Facebook last year.
I never plugged in to those spy-snooping sites.
--more--"
