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I think that the reason the poor move to city slums and accept bad housing, working conditions, services, and infrastructure is because the poor consider their lives improved by urban living.

I think the choice isn't between bad urban conditions and good conditions somewhere else. The choice is between bad urban conditions and bad rural conditions. Bad urban conditions provide people with better economic opportunity than bad rural conditions. Urban conditions provide more social mobility and this also tends to improve the economic prospects of the poor.

As demanding and dangerous as poorly regulated manufacturing workplaces can be, they tend to be no more demanding and no more dangerous than agricultural work.

Got point. I think the concept even applies to 1st world countries, where in cities like NYC lower income people will endure decrepit conditions for similar opportunities.

There's also this notion that even if you're in poverty you can disguise it living in the city and bring part of it.

> As demanding and dangerous as poorly regulated manufacturing workplaces can be, they tend to be no more demanding and no more dangerous than agricultural work.

Sometimes changes in climate can also lead to agricultural work simply becoming impossible/unprofitable, thus forcing rural labor to move to the cities, looking for work which isn't impacted by the climate.

At least that's what happened in Syria [0], the sad part is that the final outcome wasn't all that unexpected [1].

[0] https://www.irinnews.org/feature/2009/09/02/drought-driving-...

[1] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08DAMASCUS847_a.html

Ongoing automation of the agriculture economy in China is a much bigger displacement of labor than climate change. Without deep study it would be hard to even guess if climate change will be a net positive or negative for agricultural output in a country as large and diverse as China.

Some what disappointing to see the "climate change" meme come up so often as the cause for some badness in the world when it is, at best, tangentially related to the issue being discussed.

> Some what disappointing to see the "climate change" meme come up so often as the cause for some badness in the world when it is, at best, tangentially related to the issue being discussed.

Nowhere in my comment did I make "man-made climate change" a topic, I merely pointed out that outside of economic factors there are also environmental factors which can make rural agricultural production unprofitable if not straight up unviable.

As such it's quite relevant to the parent's point of "Why do people move from rural areas to urban centers?"

Because I'm pretty sure that Syria isn't the only place on Earth suffering from droughts, or other changes in climate, impacting a regions viability for agricultural production.

I wonder how many days have ever stay in beijing?

As one grew up in Beijing and lived for 26 years, I can definitely say that comparing Hutong to Indian slum is really really ignorant. You can ask anyone in Beijing, they will tell you that many people live in Hutong is one group of the richest people in Beijing. Nearly all people live in Hutong are Beijing natives, and their houses inside the hutong are called "siheyuan" which are among the most expensive real estate in beijing. Most "siheyuan", houses inside the hutong, are build decades ago and owned by local natives for long time, and its value increases much fast than other real estates as nearly all located in the center of beijing. I just check on an agency site, the cheapest house are more than 5 million us dollar, and many are more than 10 million us dollar. only the most successful people in Beijing will buy those houses. (if you know Chinese, you can check on this site or by google translate: http://esf.fang.com/house/i34-kw%cb%c4%ba%cf%d4%ba/)

if you have ever been to, you can have a visit and talk to people in hutong, you will know how wealthy and happy like they are.

and there are also many other statements in you text are totally wrong and with groundless prejudice. No employer will threat to report to police because of work’s identity, you may again ridiculously think beijing as America. Beijing is china’s capital, more than third people there are not locals, they also don’t need any documents to go to and stay in their capital. And nowadays, most rich people in beijing are not locals, they come from all over the china.

I think pictures are worth a thousand words: http://designhotpot.com/infographic-four-perspectives-to-und...

Also from the article: "while life in the hutongs might sound exciting to some hipsters in town, most of the residents are facing living conditions which resemble those of slums in less developed countries."

I don't think that expression applies to a picture of a thousand words.

There are definitely some VERY nice areas with Hutongs (near the Forbidden City!), but I've (accidentally inside the second ring) seen some which appeared very run down (leaky roofs, open sewers, kids not in school). I actually see your point that real estate pricing is so high (and the subway is getting so much better) that it's strange for there to be such slums. My best bet is that the government can't tear them down due to historical local pressure, but nobody except rural immigrants (who can't afford to fix them, or send their kids to school) live out a bleak existence in them (still making more than their family does back home). Even college students live in basements that are pretty horrifying. My guess is that the land value appreciation doesn't go to them.

I remember only 20 years ago and all of Beijing seemed to be Hutong... with the ubiquitous locked gates that seemed a fire hazard to me. It's no wonder that from being so common some have become much nicer and some much less so, while most have fallen to the wrecking ball.

What do you have to say about this:

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/212...

i understand being upset at being included in a standard that is by any definition upsetting but just because the value increases doesn't mean it's not a slum fyi there are places in mumbai too w/ astonishing market values and disgusting living conditions

A key difference might be, Hutong stays as Hutong because the government specifically wants to preserve it as a homage to the city's history.

> there are places in mumbai too w/ astonishing market values and disgusting living conditions

Also in San Francisco

We have bad conditions for sure in San Francisco and poverty elsewhere in the US that all Americans should be ashamed of. Frankly the state of poverty in America is unacceptable. But the poverty we have is nowhere near the scale and absolute horror of Mumbai slums. I've traveled extensively through South America and seen horrific conditions there but nothing was as shocking as Mumbai slums.

I find posts like yours are misguided and demonstrate total ignorance regarding human suffering.

Having traveled extensively as well I agree nothing compares with the slums of Mumbai. But the bad areas in America carry an extra connotation of crime and drug use that poor areas elsewhere may not. I didn’t spend any time in the slums of Mumbai, only observed from afar, but I suspect I’d feel safer walking around them than the bad parts of SF, LA, Baltimore, Detroit, etc ...

That's because Mumbai slums are not just slums, but come with the whole racist ideology (low caste, etc).

Sounds like SF.

$5m is too much for me for a house with no hookup to district heating, running water, dried cow poop as heat insulation, and proper sewage... This is what I don't get about Beijingers or Shanghaites

Did China get rid of the hukou system? Otherwise wouldn't people still need documents to go and stay in their capital?

You should update the wikipedia page if it's been repealed everywhere, the current page just says that small cities have had restrictions abolished but large cities are still under tight control.

Most foreign people tend to overestimate the impact of hukou on normal daily life. You don't need it for anything, except things like getting your kids into free public school. You can totally go to another city, find a job, rent a room and work, save money, get a mortgage, buy an apartment, marry, have kids, put them in a paid public school and generally live your life.

Are you still at risk from it? If a policeman (or powerful person able to tell the police what to do) decided he was sick of you, could he simply run you out of town (back to where you came from)?

Not that I know of. Mostly hukou is used to "limit", not to outright prevent. E.g. in Shanghai and Guangzhou people without a local hukou cannot buy more than one apartment. It's much harder for people without hukou to get Shanghai car plates (that by themselves cost around ¥100k ~ $15,000 these days) that will allow taking numerous elevated roads during peak hours.

Oh interesting, reading the wikipedia page made it seem like a person was a second class citizen similar to being black in South Africa under apartheid; with no right to vote or buy property.

It's surprising and interesting to learn that China has total internal freedom of movement, something that the USSR and similar countries never embraced.

Let them keep their ignorance. I've decided to give up educating them for two reasons:

1) It's impossible for them to realize that China is a much better place than what western media depicts. It's even better than most western countries nowadays.

2) It's for China's benefits to keep them in thinking China still what China was 100 years ago.

Don't wake up them, let them live in their dreams.

If you've ever traveled to both India and China in the past ~10 years, you know how ridiculous the comparison the OP is trying to make.

Just use the bathroom rubric when comparing slums...

Even if the migrant workers were exploited by local residents and employers, they were still better-off than they could gain in their rural home. I worked in Beijing for more than three years without registering any residential permit, renting a shabby apartment, which is built and owned by the locals, in the village to the north of the city area. Such apartments were cheap compared with the roaring rental and estate price, at the cost of insufficient space and fire fighting facilities. All those rental apartment could have been evacuated/demolished by now.

Yes, Beijing used to be cruel to migrant workers. Other cities in China used to be cruel, too. Being caught without a permit could lead to detention and forced labour until repatriated in early 2000s.

It is not even the fault of the Beijing local residents be to blame for the tragedy today. The cream of economy development was either intentionally or unintentionally hoarded in the metropolises while the second tiers cities never get the chance. People have to migrate and follow the money.

>It is not even the fault of the Beijing local residents be to blame for the tragedy today. The cream of economy development was either intentionally or unintentionally hoarded in the metropolises while the second tiers cities never get the chance. People have to migrate and follow the money.

Here is my observation based on my experience as a person who was frequently visiting Shenzhen over the last 10 years.

Shenzhen usually deals with "undesirables" much smarter:

1. Moped taxis - Shenzhen was one of first Chinese cities that made taxi - a taxi business. The moment proper taxi rides became available to general population, moped taxis vanished. Although motorcycles are outlawed in Shenzhen, most people running moped taxis were relying on police being reluctant to chase all and every of them. The moment an economic incentive vanished, so they did too.

2. Street food - mostly vanished when the city started to get more zealous on food safety inspections. When citizens were made to understand that a food safety license in a cafe is more than a piece of paper, they began voting with their valets by choosing food safety attested eateries.

3. Garbage scavengers - vanished without a trace once the city kickstarted legal recycling businesses with minimal subsidies.

4. Garage factories - killed by ferric chloride and other chemical detectors in city savage.

and the list goes on.

Beijing usually goes simply - we don't like you, firing squads will come this afternoon.

Have you traveled to other places than Shenzhen? There are large parts of the world where motorcycle taxis and street food are not considered “undesirable” - quite the opposite. It boggles my mind that you could applaud their disappearance...

> Even if the migrant workers were exploited by local residents and employers, they were still better-off than they could gain in their rural home.

I’m hopeful you didn’t intentionally imply slavery was a good thing, but that’s essentially what you wrote.

Being poor is almost universally a negative experience, and has been for virtually all of human history.

Noting the degrees of awfulness between various poverty cases does not endorse of any of them. This attack is lazy thinking in the extreme.

With minimal research on the topic, the labor situation in these cases isn’t far removed from slavery for these workers, specifically outside the US. Especially look into the situation for the migrant construction workers from Pakistan (which I mentioned in another comment) in the UAE as one example. The work conditions can easily get them killed or permanently injured, they sleep in mud floor huts with no running water, and they can be killed if they try to “escape” without much in legal repercussions if at all (and it does happen!). The only thing stopping it from being the historical definition of slavery is that they signed away their rights to be able to send money back to their families. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel “signing under duress”, especially that kind of duress, is “doing it of your own free will and accord”.

If one think that’s “better off” as OP stated, then I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

It is not helpful to scatter snarly phrases like "if you did your research". Also here you have created a straw man argument by introducing ideas that are tenuously resulted and then criticising the parent as though they had taken a position on them. Please engage in the conversation in good faith.

> Please engage in the conversation in good faith.

Agree, thus toned down my reply a bit. After comments like “recalibrate your Bernie Sanders radar” (I’m a registered Republican if that matters, but haven’t voted along party lines in years) and being accused of being lazy and attacking someone (which I certainly didn’t), my tone might’ve caught a bit of unintended edge.

I do find it interesting that all three comments in reply to me added zero to engaging the conversation, yet you replied to me. I guess I’ll take it as a compliment that you saw merit in what I said if only it had a been a bit less on edge.

Nobody decides "hey I wanna become a slave". I would say the root of the problem is the lack of opportunity, not migration. Somehow, people rarely make an argument to stop all the rich people from migrating to orange county because they might overwhelm the infrastructure with the excess watering of their lawns.

>In order to raise the living standards of an entire area, you have to enforce issues like safe labor practice, minimum wage, vacation days, etc. Without heavy hand regulation in a developing countries, these things don't magically come at the kindness of employers. They must be forced.

And so I suppose there an no people working below minimum wage in a developed country like the US? Or maybe your solution of more regulation only works some of the time, and only in some cases, and is not a "must have" as you put it.

>but I'm glad Shanghai at least understands this is a problem instead of copying other Asian cities that have failed at this

How is what China is doing beneficial in any way?

"Ewww! Poor people! Slums! Ugh! They come here and mess up our urban real estate. Such an eye sore! Can we just get rid of them?"

When you have migrant floods, you get slums. The goal should be regulating the flood, keeping it more tame as a gentle flow over time. The Hukou system is good in this respect.

You mention illegal immigration, this is why illegal immigration is bad. It's essentially a flood of people that cannot be supported by the system. Floods are never good, the goal in population transfer should almost always be gradual movements.

The problem isn’t migration it’s clearly the conditions and wages they’re to allowed work for, as you admit. Free movement of human beings should be a human right. Restricting immigration is nothing more than descrimination. In China or the United States for that matter.

That's naive, the wages they're paid are what people are willing to pay them. Most are paid illegally so setting a minimum wage won't really help, and even if the minimum wage was followed, it surely wouldn't provide for a reasonable existence in an expensive major city which attracts migrants.

If you raise the minimum wage high enough so that it provides for a liveable wage in a major city and are able to enforce it, then the amount of people willing to pay migrants for work will collapse and the migrants will stop coming to the city.

So you either accept the conditions and wages the migrants are being paid, or you eliminate the very reason migrants travel to cities in the first place.

I want everyone to live in comfort, but it's much more complicated than "just open all the borders and raise minimum wage".

One reason migrants anywhere get paid less is not economics but exploitation: They have limited power, including legal rights and limited access to the legal system to enforce those rights. Unfortunately, others exploit them.

> If you raise the minimum wage high enough so that it provides for a liveable wage in a major city and are able to enforce it, then the amount of people willing to pay migrants for work will collapse and the migrants will stop coming to the city.

While I understand the theory, the reality in places that raise minimum wage is much more complex.

Regardless of the solutions chosen to make cities a better place, closed borders and immigration quotas are descrimination. People should be treated equally.

Why should all people be treated equally? Shouldn't a community have a right to set its own goals and standards? Shouldn't it have a right to decide how to balance the needs of its own people with the needs of its neighbors?

Anecdotally, tens of thousands of people have been moving to my city every year for over a decade. The rents have increased dramatically, forcing many out of their homes. Traffic is horrible. A few years ago, a severe drought led to serious water disputes between the city and nearby farmers. We're doing much better now, but another drought will come, eventually, and with all of the extra people, it will surely be worse. At the end of the day, there are only so many folks that an area can support at all, let alone comfortably.

In the US, at least, we are Constitutionally entitled to the equal protection of the law. So no, communities don’t get to make laws that explicitly privilege their own residents.

That’s why the Bay Area operates through proxies like building permits and rent control - explicit immigration restrictions are a violation of citizens’ rights and would be easily smacked down in court.

It doesn’t matter how convenient it would be to control migration - if you want to do that, you need to secede. The American community has rights that supersede your neighborhood’s.

People should be treated equally because it’s the compassionate and the right thing to do. I assume you want to be treated equally as well? Regarding the problems you attribute to people simply moving to the area you live in, those problems can be dealt with in ways that don’t exclude others. They also aren’t your problems, but problems shared by everyone including the people who recently moved there.

> Free movement of human beings should be a human right. Restricting immigration is nothing more than descrimination.

I agree free movement of sapients should match the ease with which capital moves. However, atoms and bits have different energy profiles, and hence different logistical tails. The logistical tail to support the marginal person moving into full citizenship benefits and rights of say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, versus say, Singapore, are vastly different. How would you propose to bridge this logistics gulf, which doesn't even address the cognitive and knowledge gulf of citizens from more impoverished nations moving into more prosperous nations with a higher societal- and culturally-expected baseline of cognitive abilities, skills, and knowledge? This has historically been a tough problem to crack at the developed nation side to achieve unrestricted immigration, hence why I suspect there is increasing emphasis upon improving the situation at the developing nation angle (a "rising tide" strategy).

> Without turning this into a pity post and sounding like an uncultured asshole, it was horrifying to see and really broke my heart that people are living in conditions like this.

I felt the same way when I first toured the shanty towns in the UAE where essentially “Slave” labor (mostly Pakistani / Indian / Bangladesh indentured servants) lived. In hack days I organized there in the early to mid 2010s, the students built a lot of wearable tech to help monitor the living and working conditions of these workers. Was very eye opening for all to say the least.

you really are ignorant if you think "Hutongs, which are slum like buildings", hutongs are oldest parts of Beijing with traditional architecture, narrow streets, often still missing infrastructure/plumbing, but in no way have anything in common with slum, it's one of the oldest residential areas of Beijing which are being destroyed, while they should be preserved as heritage

i guess just because smething it's cramped and small you would say also to residents of Tokyo and Hongkong they are living in slums

the poorest people in Beijing definitely don't live in hutongs, which is nowadays quite hipster area to live, because it's extremely central, the poorest people live in basemenets/nuclear shelters where they have one room basically without outside wall (once or twice I went to basement of my 25fl modern building as well to find out we have there these "rat" people) or they live far far away in suburbs basically in villages which may look like slums

but calling hutongs slum like buildings shows extreme ignorance, I guess you would then call half of Europan historical capitals with narrow streets also slum like

and you can't really compare India and China, it's two different worlds, I was in richest areas of Mumbai and could still easily children sleeping on sidewalk just on cardboard, can't see such thing almost in any Chinese city, China is economically and pretty much in any field miles ahead India which is decades behind

I doubt the people in slums appreciate this type of pity. Slums have vibrant and complex economies, just at lower denominations. Basic necessities can be met in all sorts of ways but people born in rich countries have distorted notions of basic and can end up forcing "luxuries" upon people. Luxuries that cannot be afforded and so actually destroy economic activity and the ability to work and strive.

Americans are especially prone to this as the current generations are so far removed from the realities of the world. Economically it is impossible for everyone in the world to live like middle-class America but because of their compassion (guilt) when facing actual market conditions, react by trying to hide ignore or outlaw slum economies.

This is the road to hell being paved with good intentions. I am also prone to this as despite being incredibly welathy relative to the world as a bay area software engineer I still feel like something is "missing" and am striving for something. This desire, which drives my life, is disrupted when I see things like slums. The self-interested striving can only be justified is I am a striver than someone who has a certain responsibility to the world.

Smart people considering others "dumb" instead of the self smart also dodges this responsibility so that the individual can self-indulgent ly pursue interests rather than teach and not be appreciated.

I suspect culturally and biologically we renomalize so quickly so that there is always something better for tomorrow so that we have a reason to live for today.

Is there evidence that capping residents “cures” cities of Slums?

It would seem that if the various other laws on migrant labor aren’t enforced effectively, this isn’t likely to be either.

Is there any evidence that capping resident count is possible at all? Even for China?

> What's the balance? I've no idea,

An obvious solution is rural development, looking to India as an example. The accelerating urban migration in India in the 90s/2000s was not organic: young people were forced to leave their homes because they didn't have job opportunities or enough land to farm, and then older people had to follow for cultural and economic reasons. The ultimate goal is sustainable urban growth, but cities can't immediately handle what this would require. Instead, India has instituted fairly successful rural development programs that are aimed at increasing jobs, improving social safety nets, and empowering women. I think China should seriously consider ramping up similar efforts.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/what-india-...

Beijing's slums are not in the central city hutongs, but rather farther out past like ring road 5 or more.

Source: that's where I got sick and almost died lol.

Stuff changes rapidly though, so if I go back to where I was before there's probably a subway line and brand new development. Slums get pushed out to another spot.

Slum is a relative concept. In the eyes of Upper east of NYC, all the other places in NYC are slums! So after getting rid of all the slums, guess what? Some part of upper east thinks other parts of upper east are slums!

You said it like city slums are problems. To me it is not, it is a sign of "organic" growing cities. If I am allowed to take a startup metaphor. Slums are just tech debts. And apparently you didn't understand what the policy in the article means. Instead of enforcing "safe labor practice, minimum wage, vacation days", they simply enforce an upper limit of population. It is like to guarantee productivity you enforce your employee to produce x lines of code every day. Of course it won't work. And you just went way off topic.

We will probably achieve development nearly worldwide by the end of the century and much of the currently developed world will be hurting for workers.

> The problem they're trying to solve is city slums,

Source? The original article doesn't seem to suggest this.

I.

Seeing Like A State is the book G.K. Chesterton would have written if he had gone into economic history instead of literature. Since he didn’t, James Scott had to write it a century later. The wait was worth it.

Scott starts with the story of “scientific forestry” in 18th century Prussia. Enlightenment rationalists noticed that peasants were just cutting down whatever trees happened to grow in the forests, like a chump. They came up with a better idea: clear all the forests and replace them by planting identical copies of Norway spruce (the highest-lumber-yield-per-unit-time tree) in an evenly-spaced rectangular grid. Then you could just walk in with an axe one day and chop down like a zillion trees an hour and have more timber than you could possibly ever want.

This went poorly. The impoverished ecosystem couldn’t support the game animals and medicinal herbs that sustained the surrounding peasant villages, and they suffered an economic collapse. The endless rows of identical trees were a perfect breeding ground for plant diseases and forest fires. And the complex ecological processes that sustained the soil stopped working, so after a generation the Norway spruces grew stunted and malnourished. Yet for some reason, everyone involved got promoted, and “scientific forestry” spread across Europe and the world.

And this pattern repeats with suspicious regularity across history, not just in biological systems but also in social ones.

Natural organically-evolved cities tend to be densely-packed mixtures of dark alleys, tiny shops, and overcrowded streets. Modern scientific rationalists came up with a better idea: an evenly-spaced rectangular grid of identical giant Brutalist apartment buildings separated by wide boulevards, with everything separated into carefully-zoned districts. Yet for some reason, whenever these new rational cities were built, people hated them and did everything they could to move out into more organic suburbs. And again, for some reason the urban planners got promoted, became famous, and spread their destructive techniques around the world.

Ye olde organically-evolved peasant villages tended to be complicated confusions of everybody trying to raise fifty different crops at the same time on awkwardly shaped cramped parcels of land. Modern scientific rationalists came up with a better idea: giant collective mechanized farms growing purpose-bred high-yield crops and arranged in (say it with me) evenly-spaced rectangular grids. Yet for some reason, these giant collective farms had lower yields per acre than the old traditional methods, and wherever they arose famine and mass starvation followed. And again, for some reason governments continued to push the more “modern” methods, whether it was socialist collectives in the USSR, big agricultural corporations in the US, or sprawling banana plantations in the Third World.

Traditional lifestyles of many East African natives were nomadic, involving slash-and-burn agriculture in complicated jungle terrain according to a bewildering variety of ad-hoc rules. Modern scientific rationalists in African governments (both colonial and independent) came up with a better idea – resettlement of the natives into villages, where they could have modern amenities like schools, wells, electricity, and evenly-spaced rectangular grids. Yet for some reason, these villages kept failing: their crops died, their economies collapsed, and their native inhabitants disappeared back into the jungle. And again, for some reason the African governments kept trying to bring the natives back and make them stay, even if they had to blur the lines between villages and concentration camps to make it work.

Why did all of these schemes fail? And more importantly, why were they celebrated, rewarded, and continued, even when the fact of their failure became too obvious to ignore? Scott gives a two part answer.

The first part of the story is High Modernism, an aesthetic taste masquerading as a scientific philosophy. The High Modernists claimed to be about figuring out the most efficient and high-tech way of doing things, but most of them knew little relevant math or science and were basically just LARPing being rational by placing things in evenly-spaced rectangular grids.

But the High Modernists were pawns in service of a deeper motive: the centralized state wanted the world to be “legible”, ie arranged in a way that made it easy to monitor and control. An intact forest might be more productive than an evenly-spaced rectangular grid of Norway spruce, but it was harder to legislate rules for, or assess taxes on.

The state promoted the High Modernists’ platitudes about The Greater Good as cover, in order to implement the totalitarian schemes they wanted to implement anyway. The resulting experiments were usually failures by the humanitarian goals of the Modernists, but resounding successes by the command-and-control goals of the state. And so we gradually transitioned from systems that were messy but full of fine-tuned hidden order, to ones that were barely-functional but really easy to tax.

more at http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like...

China is still a relatively poor country (1). I lived in Shanghai for a few years back, and even if you just go into the side streets a few blocks from the richest area in Shanghai (Pudong, Huangpu), you can see slums and sometimes dead people lying in the streets with no assistance. And if you go 10 minutes out of the richest areas, you have people living in hutongs and communist-style buildings with low level life qualities.

The problem is that these immigrants will never be able to become a first-tier city citizen, due to hukou. The government is trying to move these people into empty buildings in second tiered cities, but there are no jobs there. (thus alot of these migrants actually moved back to the farms last I heard)

1.) Statistica says that in 2016, China rural households only made about $1000/year. and urban households only made about $3000/year. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/259451/annual-per-capita...)

Are hutongs really all that bad there? When I was in Beijing, they were nice areas typically, albeit they smelled worse because of things like drainage not running as low, but overall it didn't seem terrible and many of them were pretty big areas for local business.

I ask because I always thought Shanghai was more developed pretty much everywhere in comparison to Beijing. I mean, I'm sure the actual commie-blocks were the same (I visited one that was actual nearer to the center of the city and it was ridiculously run-down) but hutongs often consist of people living in houses their grandparents' grandparents once lived in, so they're usually reasonably well kept.

The qualities will vary, of course, but the bad hutongs can mean 1.) shared outhouse (no indoor toilet) 2.) dilapidated building 3.) communal politics from what I've heard (hutong grudges and fights for example) 4.) poor immigrant families stuffed into a small room

I don't know much about Beijing, but I found a good article on it: http://designhotpot.com/infographic-four-perspectives-to-und...

basically recreating criminal "hoods" but in the megablock style of judge dredd

>Without heavy hand regulation in a developing countries, these things don't magically come at the kindness of employers.

They would "magically" appear if first world countries like the US added incremental import tariffs based on labor law adherence.

I have to say, you know nothing about China. India is not comparable to China in every aspect. You just deduct from things happen in India, that is ridiculous. You said hutong is similar to slum, this showed your ignorance. Go to learn more, then talk about hutong again.

I assume you're an another Chinese.

If you are, I recommend you to provide more information in your comment before posting.

For example, why it's unfair to compare India with China? You need to provide a reasonable ... will ... reason.

Not everyone here knows what is it like to actually live in China, so it's fairly reasonable for people to be ignorance about it. Don't be offended or attack other people because of that.

For curious people, you may watch this guy's video (China vs. India by serpentza): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLbGCHHT3F4&index=4&list=PLn...

I assume you are a typical so-called westerner. I just expressed my own opinion here, and according to my knowledge and experience, his statement is definitely wrong. This is not an essay, I have no time to write too much. If you want to know more, you should explore it by yourself.

Serpentza? I watched most of his videos, and found he is just a hypocritical racist. You see, he never communicate with the locals, and just live in his own circles and make judgement based on his own kind of imagination. So I quit and never watched his videos again. I think People should explore the world by himself/herself.

For sure, you can keep your opinion, maybe seemed ignorant to me, but it has nothing to do with me. I just expressed my own opinion, that's it.

I get the feeling that you might not understand why you're being downvoted. There's nothing wrong with expressing your opinion. But on Hacker News especially, it is important to contribute to and elevate the discussion. After you post your comment, people should learn something from it. If people do, they appreciate your thoughts, and upvote you, especially if your thoughts are very insightful. If you don't contribute anything new to the discussion, people don't appreciate your comments and prefer to downvote you.

In both of your comments, you say that someone is wrong, but don't offer any detailed examples of why someone is wrong. You state, "This is not an essay, I have no time to write too much." But this is Hacker News. If you read through many of the discussions here, many of the comments that get upvoted the most are actually essays that go into a lot of detail, logic, and evidence to explain each writer's thoughts. And those essays are appreciated because they elevate the discussion so that everyone learns something new.

did you see the author provide any evidence? the author say something you'd like to hear then you instinctively think it's logic. if you have known how ridiculous it is to compare hutong with indian slum by the author, you will know nearly all of what he said is bullshit. (see on my explaination on another reply to him)

Looking at his comment, I believe he relied on his experience living in both India and Beijing to make his statement. He also did not say that Beijing hutongs were the same as Indian slums. He said "to a lesser extent" and "slum-like". He also said he wasn't trying to be judgmental. He also qualified his statements by saying that it was a while ago, so his information may be out of date.

Having lived in Beijing myself in 2014, most hutongs are not comparable to Indian slums; some might be. But there are definitely problematic housing situations for migrant workers, even now. Many live in dangerous conditions, if not slum-like conditions, though some would consider these to be slums (certainly, many would agree that these properties are run by slumlords). At this point, we are quibbling about the meanings of words, when we should really be focused on whether people can live healthy, safe, and productive lives on their current salaries.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2098843/tales...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/underground-basement-ap...

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/07/368760646/a-universe-beneath-...

the author say something you'd like to hear then you instinctively think it's logic. Given that this is a complaint I have about many people, it is an interesting feeling to have someone else have this complaint about me.

http://www.virtualshanghai.net/Texts/Articles?ID=76

It's ignorant to equate hutong to slum. The well-preserved and updated BJ courtyard(residences in hutong) is worth over 100 million RMB (16 million USD) on average.

p.s.I agree with your view on Serpentza.

Sorry for off-topic, this branch is gone out of hand.

OK, No, instead, I'm teaching you how to preform an argument so other people can understand you well, rather than get yourself a brunch of down votes and nobody believes what you said.

It's very clear to me, most Chinese people didn't receive any proper training on how to make an argument that could yield good results. Everybody in the end is just ranting to each other without generating or putting out valuable information.

Unfortunately, you are among those who don't know how. For example, from your comment I quote:

> I assume you are a typical so-called westerner.

> Serpentza? I watched most of his videos, and found he is just a hypocritical racist ... he never communicate with the locals, and just live in his own circles ...

First of all, I consider myself Rational. You're welcome if you treat it as a synonym of 'westerner', I don't put it that way, however.

Secondly, be careful when you want make this kind of assumptions, because it's actually quite easy to be proved wrong.

For example, I could ask you what you mean by 'westerner', then you may answer "Chinese people who favors west ideology", then I can either say "No, I just rational" like what I just did to save my time, or, if I want to hook you up, I could just let you explain "What is west ideology?", after that, I can just simply put out a question "Can you point out any of my words up there which gives you that impression?" while knowing you can't.

About that video host, I don't think you knew hes personal life out of the camera do you? So how do you prove "he never communicate with the locals"? Especially when hes wife is a local Chinese.

I'm not ensuring you hes 100% correct, in fact some part of it is not. However, that video is good enough for people who interested on the topic, a informative watch for them.

To preform an good argument, one fundamental rule you need to know is it's required for you to show your respect, by correctly understanding what's your opponent is saying and their reason, and by putting out your reason of why your opponent were wrong if they did.

A high quality comprehensive comment will bring you likes, bad one will give you down votes. If you in a hurry, don't post anything until you have time to do so. Because you need time to research the problem.

And the reason of why there are a population limit, is not because what you said:

> Some stupid officers can make all kinds of ridiculous policies, sometimes the basic reason is just to consolidate their regime

You need to have some basic understanding on politics and history to provide a reasonable answer, don't assume our government are just made of a brunch of idiots, this will not make you look better.

In my point of view, the reason of limiting the population of those tier 1 cities is complex, simply put:

1, The government needs to found a way to limit how many resources (both nature and welfare) a single city can consume. Because of a lots of reason (geo location for example), the city cannot hold too many people. (Shanghai for example, relies heavily on piped and shipped natural gas[0], which is expensive and not a long-term solution)

2, Many cities in China is not well designed. When it needs to handle huge amount of population, problems (Pollution, traffic jam, security problem etc) will occur.

3, Tier 1 cities are sucking resources (Intelligent people, welfare, infrastructure etc) from other cities, makes them harder to grow.

However, I skeptical about such hard limit will hold, because it's too hard to implement (What? they want to install doors for every city?), and you just can't stop people from seeking better life. We'll see how it goes.

[0] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/29/content_...

Most American people don't receive training on how to make valid arguments either. Maybe Israel...

American people do more or less received it.

Ever been given an assignment that requires you dig through a whole library to prove a point? Or having to conclude a book all by yourself? There are lot's of critical thinking and reasoning involved there, because if you don't do that ahead of time, other people may criticize you and it's embarrassing. So, you actually received some of the training by doing those things.

In China, the text book often concluded most of the things for student, so you end up just copying content from the book into your submission. And teachers will verify your submission by check whether or not you included the right content.

Because of that, people lost many of chance to exercise their abilities of forming a sophisticated opinion.

I am a chinese and lived in Beijing for more than 25 years, i have the same feeling with you about how ridiculous it is to compare the hutong with Indian slums and many other wrong and tendentious statements. I will explain in another reply to that guy.