Chapter 7 Chapter 6 The Scourge of Modernization?

When I heard that I was going to Shenzhen, Huang Guangming, a reporter from Southern Weekly People Weekly, introduced me to someone: "If you are going to Shenzhen, you should go to Zhu Qiang. He founded a migrant workers' rights protection organization to help farmers who are disabled due to work-related injuries. Workers sue for compensation." Through the mobile phone, Zhu Qiang and I made an appointment to meet at Longcheng Plaza in Longgang District, Shenzhen. It was very hot that day, and the square of Nuo Da was completely covered, and the scorching sun made me, who was the first to arrive at the square, star-studded in my eyes.Ten minutes later, Zhu Qiang arrived. He was riding a bicycle with one palm, and the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing was soaked in sweat.

"My office is nearby." He didn't get off the car, but turned his head in the direction of his office, still riding the bicycle slowly with one hand.I had to follow his rear wheel closely. Only then did I realize that the right sleeve of his shirt was empty.He has no right hand. I didn't expect: the founder of the rights protection organization is also a disabled person due to work-related injuries. Zhu Qiang is 25 years old this year. He and another disabled worker co-founded the “Shenzhen Zhiqiang Information Consulting Department”, a migrant workers’ rights protection organization, which is located in a messy building near Longcheng Square.He carried the bicycle upstairs with one hand, opened the iron lock of the floor security door and the office door with one hand, poured me a glass of clean water with the other hand, took out the lighter and lit a cigarette with the other hand, and then looked at the door silently. with me.

I once offered to help him move the car, unlock the lock, and light the cigarette, but he politely refused.Zhu Qiang's office is very large, but there is no desk, only a few chairs, and a clean water machine. It is like an abandoned classroom, and every speech echoes.On one wall of the office, there are six or seven essays and drawing exercises written by migrant workers.One of the essays was written with twists and turns. It seems that a rural girl who just came to Shenzhen to work wrote down her impressions of her first day in the city. Nostalgia, confusion about the city, and confusion about the future are quite touching.

"Can I copy this exercise?" I asked cautiously. "No," Zhu Qiang said bluntly, "I cannot provide you with the works of our members without the author's consent." "However," he seemed to realize my embarrassment, and he took a breather, "About my situation, you can ask whatever you want." However, Zhu Qiang downplayed his experience of losing his right hand and talked very little.During the two-hour interview, he talked most about the experience of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta, China's position in the global industrial chain as a "world processing workshop", the status of migrant workers as marginalized people in China's urbanization process, etc. "abstract" question".

Zhu Qiang is from a village in Nanchong, Sichuan. At the age of 18, because of his poor family, he gave up the opportunity to take the college entrance examination that year and came to Shenzhen alone, hoping to raise tuition fees for future college through part-time jobs.He came to work in a plastic product factory in Shenzhen, but within two weeks of working, he lost his right hand in a work-related accident.He fought the lawsuit for three years, claiming 300,000 yuan, but only got more than 40,000 yuan in the end. After deducting the various fees paid for the lawsuit, there was not much left.

However, three years of experience in litigation has also made Zhu Qiang a half-legal expert.He also learned that in the Pearl River Delta, there are many migrant workers like him who are disabled due to work-related injuries, so he came up with an idea: to set up a migrant workers rights protection organization to provide legal consultation and rights protection services for fellow workers who share the same fate .Over the past four years, Zhu Qiang's work has been assisted by some institutions in China. During his work breaks, he has also received training from various universities and other NGO organizations, and he himself has passed the self-study exam for law majors.

When talking about the working conditions of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta, Zhu Qiang took a deep breath: "I have met many business owners who employ a large number of migrant workers. Morally, they all want to treat their employees better, but in essence, they don't want to treat their employees better. There is no way to treat employees better. Because as the "world's processing workshop", China is at the end of the global industrial chain, and the profits of enterprises are very low. Some of them choose to participate in international competition at the expense of workers' interests. Road. Of course, it is not ruled out that there are very few enterprises that are pursuing the pursuit of extracting the blood and sweat of workers and obtaining super high profits."

Our conversation seemed to be very difficult and depressing. I often hesitated for a long time, not knowing what to ask, and he was contemplative for a long time, not knowing what to say.Zhu Qiang said that he has lived in Shenzhen for seven years. He feels that he no longer belongs to his rural hometown in Nanchong, Sichuan, but he has no sense of belonging to Shenzhen. In this city, which is basically composed of immigrants and migrant workers from other places, He often feels a deep sense of alienation and indifference, and when it comes to the reason, he seems to have not cleared his mind, and often just came to a conclusion and then denied it.

"I can't tell." This was the most common sentence Zhu Qiang said during the two-hour conversation. On May 23, 2007, the day that was confirmed by American scholars as the first time in history that the world's urban population surpassed the rural population, I interviewed two Chinese scholars: Wen Tiejun and Hu Angang.But the two of them have very different evaluations of China's urbanization process: Hu Angang enthusiastically affirms this process and hopes it will be faster; Wen Tiejun is full of deep doubts and worries about this process and hopes it will be slower.

We've heard so much about the benefits of accelerating China's urbanization, so when I first heard Wen Tiejun question the status quo of China's urbanization, I have to admit I was a bit shocked. Western classic textbooks distinguish two types of urbanization in this way—— In human history, rapid urbanization has occurred twice: the first time occurred in European and American countries in the 19th century. The process of industrialization led to a huge demand for labor in mining centers and manufacturing centers, and its urbanization was the result of economic development. The second occurred in some developing countries after the 1950s. The two major trends of rural population outflow and high population growth rate led to the uncontrolled expansion of many cities. The urbanization was only the result of population movement rather than economic development. the result of.

So, what kind of urbanization process in China in the past 30 years? Many Chinese scholars believe that, as the contemporary "world factory", China's urbanization process must be the result of economic development.But the answer Wen Tiejun gave me seems not so sure. Compared with Zhu Qiang, who was born as a migrant worker, as a scholar, Wen Tiejun's thinking is much clearer, and his views are much clearer, but the conversation between us does not appear to be easier because of this.I even felt that there was a certain tension in the question and answer between us, and that there was a certain suspicion and hostility in his visit to me.Or to be more precise, he has a certain suspicion and hostility towards the current mainstream views in Chinese academic circles, and even international academic circles. Wen Tiejun is one of the most famous scholars in China who study the issues of rural areas and farmers. He has worked in the Rural Development Research Center of the State Council of China for many years and participated in many major policy discussions and decisions.Today, he is the dean, professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Agriculture and Rural Development, Renmin University of China.That morning, when I called to make an appointment with him, he was packing his documents and luggage, and planned to fly to another place to give lectures in the afternoon, but he still accepted my interview request: "Well, you come here now, but I can only give Half an hour after you, half an hour later, I still have a class, and I'm going to the airport right after class." When I arrived at his office, he was staring at the computer, typing away.He didn't shake hands or greet me other than nodding for me to sit on the sofa in the distance, but continued his typing.In this way, for about 10 minutes, there was only the sound of keyboard typing clearly between us.Finally, he finally sat across from me. He looked at the watch on his wrist and said succinctly: "We only have half an hour. Then tell me." I started asking questions and he started answering.To my surprise, he was able to quickly enter the role in just half an hour between packing up the files and attending the class, talking non-stop, and basically answering all my questions in an orderly and well-organized manner. As expected of a person who often gives lectures and lectures——I thought so.But I can also vaguely feel the emotion contained in his fluent question and answer: a faint but lingering emotion, a kind of worry and anger but helpless emotion, although I have to admit that he is very concerned about He is well aware of China's urbanization issues and migrant workers issues, and his arguments and expressions are also very penetrating. More than 20 years ago, Wen Tiejun was a member of the group of young and middle-aged "Memorial School" scholars who first advocated opening up urban and rural areas and breaking the dual structure of China's urban and rural areas. Appeal: China should not fall into the "modernization trap" where many developing countries experience rapid urbanization and slums. Why such a major shift?Wen Tiejun's answer seems to have a sense of vicissitudes: "Over 20 years of development, it should be said that a generation has passed. The experience and lessons of more than 20 years are enough. Today we must calmly reflect on the accelerated urbanization. As blind as it was many years ago, when we were in our 30s, we might have been more radical." But more importantly, it is his unique academic path and rich experience abroad in the past 20 years. "I have traveled to more than 40 countries, and the focus is on developing countries," Wen Tiejun said in a low tone, speaking Mandarin with a slight Beijing accent, "I am a large-scale Chinese who went to developing countries earlier. I am a slum inspector, so in the last few years I have been calling on policy-level discussions: all large developing countries with a population of more than 100 million have successfully urbanized, and all have created large slums , and slums are the root of social corruption, places where pornography, gambling, and drugs are rampant, places controlled by gangsters, and places where formal police and a formal society ruled by law cannot be established. Therefore, China must be vigilant, and we cannot go other ways China relies on large slums to speed up the road to urbanization." Although in the half-hour interview, Wen Tiejun made many ironic remarks about the "radical young people" who dominate the Chinese academic circles, if Wen Tiejun is therefore classified as a traditional communist scholar or a so-called contemporary academic The "New Left" is not fair either.A more fair statement in the Chinese academic circles is that Wen Tiejun is a scholar with no strong factional color between the "liberals" and the "new leftists". Still, the angry words between his speeches often slipped out of his mouth inadvertently.I don't know, this kind of anger is actually due to his dissatisfaction with the current impetuous style of study in Chinese academia?Or did it come from his worries about the reality of the large gap between the rich and the poor in China? No matter which school of thought you classify Wen Tiejun into, at least you will not regard him as an "anti-modernization faction" because he has participated in discussions and decisions on major reform policies in China many times, but when I asked him about the development When discussing the deep-seated reasons why there are so many slums in China, he blurted out without thinking: "The scourge of modernization." Talking about why China has become the "world's processing factory", Wen Tiejun's tone is still as low and steady as before, but I can feel the anger behind his calm tone: "That is when capitalism develops to a certain stage. The result of the transfer. Because the price of labor here is cheap, the price of land here is cheap, and you don’t care about the cost of resources and environmental damage. Of course, industries will be transferred here on a large scale and become a source of profit for multinational companies, so Multinational corporations make almost all the processing industry here zero-profit, so that you have no income, and then multinational corporations take away all profit-generating links except labor contribution and destruction of resources and environment. It’s become a company with very good fundamentals. It’s a way to make money, and I understand that if I were a developed country, I would do it too.” When I asked the last question, Wen Tiejun's anger seemed to be beyond words, although his expression and tone of voice did not change: "Look at Shenzhen and Dongguan, there are tens of thousands of migrant workers, several times the number of locals. , Calculated by per capita GDP, they have nothing to do with them, and they have no benefits, so what do you have? Isn’t it a typical labor surplus value? But at the same time, you bought a group of people and denied the theory of labor surplus value. It is claimed that there is no residual value, but only the risk and return of entrepreneurs. Isn’t it the same in our theoretical circles today? They also affect the entire public opinion. What can everyone become? When we really can’t do it, when Shenzhen raises so many baskets of fingers a year, when this kind of deprivation reaches a certain level, it will be individual revenge. Hand gangs, black car gangs, messes, gangsterization. What is the "benefit"? You can get rich in the short term, but your environment is destroyed, resources are destroyed, and the well-being of future generations is gone, okay? You guys If you think it’s good, I have no problem, we’re going to pass anyway, and our generation will retire soon. If everyone agrees, why do I have to stand up and say that you are the emperor’s new clothes?” "We are getting old." This is what Wen Tiejun said most often during the half-hour conversation.