Chinese cities should stop expelling Chinese migrants

IN ALL countries, a big influx of migrants tends to provoke grumbles among the natives. In China, however, the migrants most frequently grumbled about, and treated with the greatest hostility, are not foreigners but other Chinese: rural folk who move to the cities in search of a better life. This has been on show in the past few days in the capital, Beijing. On November 18th a blaze in a ramshackle warehouse-cum-apartment-block killed 19 people believed to be migrants from elsewhere in China. The authorities are now using “fire safety” as a pretext to drive thousands of other migrants out of the basements, air-raid shelters and shanties where they live (see )—often by cutting off their electricity and water. It has amounted to a mass expulsion from the capital.It is clear that officials are not simply aiming to prevent future fires. A few volunteers who have tried to set up shelters for people who have found themselves suddenly homeless in sub-zero temperatures have been ordered by police to close them. The capital has a long record of trying to limit the population of migrants from the countryside by making it harder for them to rent crummy accommodation, the only kind that most of them can afford. They cannot buy a home without being formally employed (which most are not) and having residency papers (which are almost impossible for them to obtain).