

It’s been a bad week for Beijing. As yet another child abuse scandal at a private kindergarten horrifies middle-class parents, thousands of migrant workers are being evicted from their homes just as winter begins in the aftermath of a deadly fire last Saturday.

That evening, a two-story building on the outskirts of China’s capital went up in flames and smoke. While the building’s second floor was divided up into hundreds of tiny rooms for migrants to live in, with as many as three or four to a room, it had only two staircases.

17 of the 19 people killed in the fire were not from Beijing. Seven were children, brought by their parents to live with them in the city.



The disaster has triggered a city-wide safety check over the next month with local officials charged with inspecting the shanty towns that have grown up far from the center of the city, offering cheap, crowded, and unsafe housing for migrant workers who have come to Beijing for work.

In the city’s southern Daxing District where the fire broke out, eviction and forced demolition notices have been posted, giving residents of illegal structures or illegally rented rooms only a short time to vacate their homes before they are knocked down. Similar notices have also been posted in Changping, Fengtai, and Haidian districts, Radio Free Asia reports.

Photos and videos have been posted on Twitter in the last few days showing groups of people gathering up their belongings and walking out onto the streets, watched by police and public security officers. It’s not clear exactly how many people will be affected by the eviction notices, but it seems likely that the number is in the tens of thousands.



More on the on-going eviction in Beijing. Also via social media pic.twitter.com/0ZFBfkD3PI — Luna Lin (@LunaLinCN) November 23, 2017

Migrant workers leaving their rented homes ahead of eviction. The fire has become an excuse for local gov to drive them out. Truly sad story. Via social media pic.twitter.com/P0BipM3PGj — Luna Lin (@LunaLinCN) November 23, 2017

Population control the hard way. Mass evictions of migrants in Beijing. pic.twitter.com/MeTzo0Ay8Y — gilles sabrie (@GillSabrie) November 24, 2017



In a bit of good news, Washington Post researcher Luna Lin tweets that volunteers and NGOs are helping to provide assistance to those most vulnerable, while some restaurant owners are organizing to provide evicted migrant workers with jobs and accommodation.

However, it’s not clear where most of these people will go after being thrown out into the cold — whether back to their hometowns for the winter or whether they will be pushed out still farther, beyond the city’s Sixth Ring Road.

Chinese state media has been mostly quiet on this campaign and problem that plagues China’s mega-cities. Though, party tabloid the Global Times has published an article about the evictions. The piece ends by quoting one research fellow as saying that the campaign “does not target migrants in Beijing or is not aimed at driving them out of the capital.”

Meanwhile, Caixin has warned that the citywide safety checks may hurt delivery times in Beijing.

A child passed by a supermarket as it cleared out its last merchandise and stopped to take a look. The boss took a toy from the counter and threw it out. The child picked it up and said thanks. The boss said “Your parents have to go back home huh?” https://t.co/RIk5yf4qEz — CLB (@chinalabour) November 24, 2017



In a more compassionate take on the issue, China Digitial Times has archived a now-deleted blog post that was circulated earlier this week in which the author reminds readers that migrant workers “aren’t low-end labor, they are people.”



