The economics of the equation
Communities require not only housing, but other social facilities as well – education and healthcare, for example. Families at the bottom of the economic pyramid – Callick cites examples with incomes of US$200 and US$240 per month – self-evidently will not be able to contribute to the cost of their social facilities. Rehousing these people in the center of Beijing therefore creates an obligation not only to provide accommodation there, but to provide and finance their other social requirements there as well.
COHRE's first report talks of:
"school aged children, unemployed adults with few marketable skills, the handicapped or chronically ill, and retired and elderly living on meagre pensions…" x
Who pays for the nurseries, the schools, the clinics, and where do you put them? Where do the teachers and the nurses live? If - as COHRE suggest - it is unreasonable to expect the residents to make a 10 km trip into the city for their work, then do the teachers who teach their children and the nurses who look after their health not merit the same consideration? Will they too be housed in the center of the city at public expense?
Who sets the economic limit, and on what basis? How much would be needed? In the context of central Beijing's astronomical housing prices alone, a fully-costed estimate for providing accommodation and services of US$100,000 per head, or US$300,000 per family, is probably conservative.
Compare this with the case of Tongxin County xi in Ningxia Hui, where US $406 million is being invested to resettle 206,000 people in 42 new settlements along the Yellow River, or Xinjiang xii where US $1.5 million is being spent to resettle 1400 families as part of a project to protect the environment of the Bayinbuluke grassland.
The cost of these projects amounts to less than US$2000 per head. Is it really justifiable to spend fifty times more on Beijing's poor, to spare them from what to tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of people across China would seem trivial inconveniences? COHRE don't need to worry – they don't have to find the money.
No Magic Wand
There is no magic wand solution to Beijing's problems – or those of any other city, for that matter. Economic development, safety, health and sanitation, environmental and cultural protection, financial considerations, and the needs of individuals are all factors that need to be taken into account, and in many cases one factor will place itself in direct conflict with another. To favor one factor will automatically mean penalizing another. Any active policy that is implemented might result in a need for rehousing thousands of people. Some will leave willingly; some will not and will have to be evicted. It literally does not matter what you do – someone, somewhere is going to lose out in the process.
I might suggest that COHRE consider extending the range of their activities to cover actually providing economically viable housing for poor people. But I suspect that the transition from lecturing other people for their shortcomings, to having to find solutions and implementing them – and thereby discovering how complicated the real world can be – might prove too rude an awakening.