Urbanization In China: Formation Of Urban Villages In Guangzhou
The urbanization process of Chinese megacities has witnessed a variety of forms and paces since the marketing and the commodification of housing in the 1980s. One of the most remarkable phenomena is the transformation of agricultural land into urban areas through the formation of urban villages. Urban villages can be considered “as a community of interest for urbanized villagers, a migrant settlement with low-rent housing, and an urban self-organized grassroots unit, respectively related to ambiguous property rights, an informal rental market and a vacuum of state regulation”.
Urban villages, often located in strategic positions within cities, maintain their place- and kinship-based social structure while accommodating newcomers and integrating a variety of small entrepreneurial businesses into the urban economic landscape. They offer their residents – rural migrants and foreigners – particular advantages because of the institutional vacuum left by the government and because social order and interactions at large are negotiated and maintained through personal networks built on trust. Such features make the urban village somewhat of a transitional neighborhood, a space characterized by a high socio-economic adaptability that merges the traditional rural identity with the modern urban one.
In Guangzhou, Guangdong Province’s capital and the largest urban agglomeration in the PRD area, there are well over 100 urban villages, resulting from the conversion of farmland into urban areas. Two of those villages, Dengfeng and Sanyuanli, are particularly known for the presence of relatively large African communities, mainly made of independent traders that make a living out of small-scale business between the Chinese market and the African one.
Urban villages were and are allowed to exist in order to reduce any contestation to land requisition as well as to avoid costly relocation and compensation processes. The villagers who lose their farmland to the State are left with their property rights on housing plots. This allows them to escape government regulations and official urban planning and to construct buildings ranging between 2 and 8 floors - often so close to each other that they earned the name of handshake buildings - and rent them to rural migrants and other foreigners for a lower price than those found in urban proper districts. Prone to fire hazard and equipped with poor air circulation and natural light access, urban villages are illegally constructed and are potentially at risk of demolition in case the government initiates a redevelopment of the area, especially in front of the pressing demand for land in strategic positions within the city.
Urban planning authorities, the media and urban citizens tend to associate villages with phenomena such as high population density, pollution and infrastructure deficiencies, improper land use and poor housing, crime and illegality, ethnic-related social disorder and deteriorated environment.
However, urban villages have proved effective in the provision of services that rural migrants and foreigners cannot legally access in cities, lightening the burden of urban poverty and easing the pressure of socio-economic development. Thanks to the presence of ambiguous property rights, the informal nature of the rental market and the vacuum of state control, urban villages act as self-organized, grassroots communities of interests and are thus able change according to the opportunities available and adapt to the needs and demands of those who reside within them.
The African community in Guangzhou started to be prominent in the 2000s and is now growing with individuals from a variety of African nations who pursue small-scale trade of goods such as electronics, clothing and other commodities from China to their homeland markets.
The majority resides in China only temporarily, for more or less periodic business trips that allow to go back home with some profit. This type of traders shows little interest in the culture and heritage of China and are rather exclusively interested in the economic returns derived from their business trips. Others instead settle in Guangzhou for the long term, occasionally marrying locals (mostly Chinese women) and embracing the local culture and manners to a much higher degree. The few that achieved economic success through low-end-globalization can often act also as cultural intermediaries and offer their fellow countrymen consultancy and guidance for conducting business in Mandarin and instruct them with tips on how to avoid being deceived and how to best deal with police document controls, visa restrictions and Chinese ways of doing business and bargaining prices.
Through interview, several studies have reported how the African community in Guangzhou has difficulties with visa regulation, cultural difference and mistrust among them and local Chinese residents and business partners. But despite the stigma, the unstable nature of the rental market and the obstacles to legal, documented stay, African traders continue to trade in Guangzhou and their community has caused the creation of a series of low-end business activities and services targeting them and other low-income population (often run and offered by local Chinese) around the residential areas of Dengfeng and Sanyuanli.
As a result, there seems to be a coexistence that works through pragmatism. African traders economically act as Chinese rural migrants, willing to rent the housing with the worst facilities in the urban village with the sole goal and chance of “making it” in the city. At the same time, the coexistence follows a village-like regime, where members are protected in order to protect the community. In some cases, for example, African settlers can bribe Chinese to cover them in case of sudden police raids. Also, village communities have developed an internal, unofficial welfare system that can support those who cannot rely on governmental social services (schooling, housing, etc.). Such services are granted to the local residents, but migrants can access them upon payment.
