OPINION> Commentary
Floating population needs equality, freedom
By Tong Dahuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-10 08:06

On a recent forum, an expert on disaster consequence assessment released his estimation for the 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province on May 12. According to him, at least 100,000 residents of the quake-affected zones must be resettled.

Doubtless, this is a figure less than the estimate of most people. After the strong tremor reshaped the mountains and rivers in Sichuan, so many people lost their homes as well as the land they lived on. The destruction of the local ecological system also threatens the residents' lives in the long run.

Therefore, a dozen of counties, towns and villages must be rebuilt in new locations to make free from future geological risks. And a huge number of people might not settle down properly for many months.

As for the resettlement of people in affected areas, I would be very optimistic about this challenging mission. I thought the fast pace of urbanization would be able to solve this problem.

As the country's most populous province, Sichuan sees a large outflow of labor every year. A considerable proportion of the affected people have family members or friends working in cities or towns in other provinces. If these people are allowed or encouraged to stay with their family members or friends in other cities, the government would have much less people to resettle.

According to a recent report of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Beijing, Shanghai and 19 other economically more developed provinces and municipalities would become partners of the 21 badly-affected counties in Sichuan. Besides offering more medical staff members, tents and other relief materials, these regions should also show their support to these affected people by offering favorable conditions to them in the household registration system, the government-sponsored low-priced housing and other policies.

Besides these areas that have a clear responsibility to help resettle the affected people, other cities should also welcome the quake-affected people to live and work there.

However, considering the reality, these seemingly reasonable and efficient plans may not be easy to carry out.

In Dongguan of Guangdong province, the city government recently proposed to raise house rents so that the "new residents of Dongguan" would go back to their hometowns to start their own businesses. The "new residents of Dongguan" refers to the 10 million of its 12 million residents who do not have the Dongguan identity papers under the household registration system.

Translated into plain words, the city government wanted to reduce the floating population by increasing their accommodation costs. Whether such an attempt works in influencing the individual choices of the people whose work has contributed to local prosperity, this show of cold-blooded rejection will hurt their feelings, especially since it comes from the local administration.

And this is not unique to Dongguan.

Shenzhen, the country's most famous special economic zone, has a population of 12 million, 2 million of whom have local identity papers under the registration system. The rest of them have to overcome a lot of hurdles in almost all aspects of social life.

About one-third of the Shanghai population has no local identity registration and the proportion in Beijing is roughly the same.

Instead of living on donations, aids or government subsidies, the quake-affected people have their modest wish, which is similar to all common people everywhere - to earn their bread with their own hands.

The jobs of peddlers, hairdressers or plumbers create values for the society as well as for themselves. Equal access to education, employment and other aspects of social life would help them settle down and take the city as their new home. Given enough time and patience, scientists, scholars and successful businessmen could be nurtured from among these people.

However, the current household registration system still stands in the way.

Considering the large group of people to be resettled and the long time span needed for restoring them to normal life, the over 40 billion yuan worth of charity looks really limited.

In daily life, many kind people make donations and work as volunteers in remote areas to show their love to people as well as to the society. They are admirable. But a bigger and deeper love is to tolerate and love people around us.

An institutional affirmtive action could express such a profound love by treating people from other cities fairly and granting them the equality and freedom they deserve.

The author is a senior news commentator

(China Daily 06/10/2008 page8)