China’s capital Beijing has become the subject of public criticism, after a 40-day campaign to crack down on illegal buildings saw a myriad of low-income migrant workers and small businesses displaced across the city. 

The campaign came in the wake of a deadly fire on Nov. 18 that killed 19 people in a rented apartment in Xinjian village in Beijing’s suburban Daxing district. The basement of the apartment had been illegally renovated into a cold storage area. When the heat preservation materials caught fire, poisonous gas was released and killed people living upstairs.

The building offered typical affordable housing to migrant workers who had come to seek opportunities in the area’s well-known clothing manufacturing business. But the fire prompted an immediate wipe out of Xinjian village, and what authorities call a “citywide safety check,” which resulted in an uprooting of tens of thousands of low-income workers from the capital’s basements, warehouses, and street-front shops.

Some were left in limbo, not knowing where to go or what to do with their assets. In extreme cases, demolition workers cut off power and water supply, forcing migrants to leave. This sparked public outcry, and authorities later promised to give the migrants more time and provide them with temporary lodging. But many who talked to CGTN said they were disillusioned.

When I first visited Xinjian village three days after the fire, its streets and alleys were blocked with cars and people trying to move out, but when I revisited the village, at the end of the controversial campaign, it was completely deserted. A local Xinjian villager told me most of the original residents of the village stayed, but the migrant workers were all gone. 

The aftermath of the fire allowed me to see China’s urbanization in a different light.

On the outskirts of Beijing lie many gentrified neighborhoods that were once industrial villages just like Xinjian village. In the 1980s, the municipal government encouraged the suburban villages to develop industries as a way to boost rural economy, and as a result, factories flourished, bringing with them a large influx of migrant workers. Such a move created revenue as well as problems. As both urban villagers and small businesses hurried to make quick profits, substandard housing and factory buildings mushroomed, posing both safety as well as environmental threats.

The fire had only accelerated the urban regeneration, but in the process it touched on a sensitive issue that’s been at the center of China’s urbanization: the rights of migrants. 

According to a plan published by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2014, the Chinese government aims to have 60 percent of its population live in urban areas by 2020, in the hope of shifting the economy towards domestic demand. But such a grand urbanization plan, which foresees a migration of tens of millions of rural residents into cities, is met with a number of challenges, the most urgent ones being a reform of farmers’ rural land rights and a reform of the household registration system to grant migrants equal rights as local urban residents. 

But the plight of migrant workers following last month’s fire seems to suggest there is still a long way to go before China achieves its goal of sustainable and inclusive urbanization.

(Top Video image: Firefighters work at the site of a fire in Daxing district of Beijing, capital of China, November 19, 2017. Nineteen people were killed and eight others injured according to local authorities. /Xinhua Photo)