Economy

Beijing's Migrant Workers Are Still Living in Storage Basements and Bomb Shelters

Government promises haven’t changed much for the city’s underground-dwelling underclass.
Chinese migrants rest in front of a advertisement for a new real estate project in Beijing.AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan

China’s incredibly fast urban growth has also been incredibly unequal.

In its cities, residents who have migrated from villages have long been considered second-class citizens, both in the eyes of the government and the original residents. Decades of exclusionary urban policies coupled with skyrocketing housing prices have forced China’s urban migrants to live in unlit, unventilated, often-illegally rented basements originally intended to be bomb shelters and storage facilities. Some are even living in sewers.