Hong Kong's MTR: Some Caveats

In the comments section of my recent article in The Atlantic, a Hong Konger had some personal gripes about the MTR, and wound up making some interesting points in the process. I responded to her there, but I figure I'd share my response here too. In this response I discuss some of the caveats of the Hong Kong transit system that I couldn't explore in that piece

 
Hi Lina,

Thanks so much for these excellent comments! I wrote this upon returning from a research trip to China and Hong Kong and heard a lot of stories like yours first-hand as well. I absolutely agree that there have been many caveats to MTR's approach, which I unfortunately wasn't able to detail in this piece. So thank you for raising some of them here!

One of those is unquestionably the affect of Value Capture on real estate prices. Though I couldn't go into specifics, I wrote that "value charges are often displaced onto consumers, causing real estate prices to go up a little faster than they otherwise might." This is one of the effects you're seeing and rightly decrying in your neighborhood. That said, MTR has been practicing VC since its inception in 1979, but this real estate hyperinflation in Hong Kong has been more recent. So it's not owed exclusively to transit value capture, but to the huge influx of Chinese money into the Hong Kong economy, particularly the real estate sector, since the 1997 handover. You can probably tell us more about the broader inflationary effects of that, Lina, and I think the colorlessness of retail (especially in the malls) you mention is correlated with that bigger economic change rather than the MTR's specific malfeasance. I'm not sure which neighborhood you're referring to regarding new stations that are "not necessary", but given the time for construction, those kinds of capital investments are usually made in anticipation of future demand, not what's needed today. When the station is completed, people probably will be using it, maybe even inducing more demand. And with VC, those beneficiaries will be paying for those assets; riders won't. (Of course, it would be ridiculous for me to deny that decisions for transit planning are influenced by politics and power! Just look at this great Atlantic piece: http://bit.ly/18PPEoQ)

Second, you rightly flag the linkages between MTR and the government. An important detail I wasn't able to mention here, particularly to contrast private property-loving America, is that the government is the sole proprietor of land in Hong Kong and only leases it (and air rights) for extended periods. But more often than just giving land to MTR, it SELLS /leases that land and air rights to the MTR at "pre-rail" prices (say $1 billion). The MTR then "sub-leases" that property to other developers or renters at "post-rail" prices (the value of the land plus the monetary contribution of new transit that makes that land accessible, say $1.8 billion total), and then gets to keep the difference ($800m), which it invests in actually building the new transit infrastructure.

Despite this "market" orientation of the MTR, you're right about government involvement---before 2000, MTR was a public company; since then, the Government's been a 74% shareholder of the MTR Corporation. I'm admittedly not as personally familiar with Abraham Razack. But his presence on the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and as non-executive director of MTRC, is explicitly to represent real estate interests. But the composition of the LC as a democratic-corporatist hybrid representing different interest groups is a broader issue related to Hong Kong's model of democratic governance---not to the MTR and transit management specifically. (See this great FP piece by Adam Rose on how that democracy is managed and its relationship with Beijing, post-handover: http://atfp.co/18c6GRV).

And frankly, because mass transit is a PUBLIC good, I think that, though one can take issue with the make-up of any government, public sector influence in transport is vital; it not only helps steer economic development in ways that the market might neglect (such as the Fare Adjustment Mechanism), but ensures that its contributions remain fundamentally public and integrate land-use planning with access, even if its management is profit-driven. The fact that PUBLIC transit provides a tangible benefit to private interests---which should thus re-invest in the public good---lies at the heart of this model.

I wrote this primarily for those unfamiliar with Hong Kong, and specifically those interested in new models of transit financing. And on that measure, despite the challenges you highlight (and again, thank you for doing so!), the MTR deserves acknowledgement for those innovations.

Best,

Neil

Funding Mass Transit - The Case of Hong Kong

I wrote in my last post that "running good transit systems...comes with large financial costs," and promised to have a forthcoming explanation of how Hong Kong, one of the best run transit systems in the world, keeps fares cheap and quality high, while still turning a huge profit.


Below is the unedited version of a piece on the subject that I wrote in The Atlantic. 
There are some details (like government involvement, land grants, and real estate pricing) that are important caveats to this model's adoption elsewhere, but I unfortunately wasn't able to discuss them in depth in this piece. I did, however, make a presentation at the NYS Metropolitan Transportation Authority on this subject, which included lessons as well as cautions from Hong Kong and China. Please get in touch if you'd like to see that presentation live!
 

The Unique Genius of Hong Kong's Public Transportation System

Most subway systems around the world struggle to operate their services. In NYC, riders complain about the unreliable, squalid service they get for ever-increasing fares. And yet, the New York City system has one of the most subsidized systems, relying on supplementary taxes and state government subsidies just to keep trains running. Money collected from fares only covers about 41% of the day-to-day operating costs of the system. Capital costs (system expansions, upgrades, and repairs) are an entirely different question, and require more state and federal grants and borrowing (bonds) from capital markets. This is the situation most subway systems around the world deal with: struggling to pay for what they already operate and, if needed, going into lots of debt to pay for upgrades and expansions. 

Hong Kong seems to have figured out a pretty winning formula. Their Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation is considered the gold standard of transit management throughout the world. Within Hong Kong, the MTRC manages the subway and bus systems on Hong Kong Island and, since 2006, the northern sections of Kowloon Bay, as well as Harbor Ferries and bus systems throughout the city. In 2012, they produced a revenue of 36 billion Hong Kong Dollars (HK$), which is about 5 billion USD. After considering expenditures, they still brought in a total profit of HK$ 10 billion---about 2 billion USD. And most impressively, their farebox recovery ratio (the percentage of operational costs that are covered by just the fares people pay) for Hong Kong was 180%, the world's highest---compare that with NY's 41%---which means they made a 80% surplus just from operating their trains! If you're unfamiliar with most transit budgets, suffice it to say these numbers are unheard of anywhere. (The next highest FBR, Singapore is about 120%).

In addition to Hong Kong, the MTR Corporation runs individual subway lines in Beijing, Huangzhou, and Shenzhen in China, two lines in the London Underground, and the entire Melbourne, Australia, and Stockholm, Sweden, systems. In Hong Kong, they've got a pretty gleaming system that operates impeccably and has a number of different amenities that sweeten service: from public computers in stations, to wheelchair and stroller accessibility to the platform and spaces within the train to store them, to impeccably communicated signs for spatial orientation when you're in and when you exit the system (including "numbered exits" with landmarks), and even (on longer-distance subways) first-class cars so people can stretch out if they want to pay a little more.

 

So how do they pay for all this fancy stuff? Through a nifty concept called "Value Capture."

The MTR understands the monetary value of urban density---what economists call "agglomeration." When people live close to one another, it's easier and cheaper for them to trade, communicate, and share ideas to innovate. ("Transaction costs" are lowered). Plus, when located around a lot of people, one small business has a much larger potential market and clientele---a store would do much better if it opened on a busy street than in the middle of a barren field. ("Returns to scale increase," and dense cities produce "economies of scale".)

Of course, mass transit enables this kind of density and agglomeration. Lots of people can travel together in a relatively small box (subway car) that travels underground. But if each of those people had cars, they'd need space for ALL of those 15 foot by 8 foot boxes (cars), space to drive them on (roads), and space to store those cars when they're not using them (parking lots, garages). All of this car infrastructure takes up land and space, decreasing density and increasing sprawl. Mass transit, on the other hand, uses economies of scale (lots of people benefit from a little change) to take up less space and increase density. Take a look at this visual of how much space the same number of people take up if they use different modes of transport:

So, we know that density increases economic growth and opportunity, and that mass transit enables that density. The MTR, then, understands that transit access actually has a calculable monetary value---that access, and proximity to transit, increases property values. If the only way to get to a mall is by a train, then that mall would have no customers and make absolutely no revenue or profits if it weren't for that train. The MTR reminds the mall owners this and asks for a cut of the mall's profits. Sometimes the MTR corporation actually owns the mall so it can take that cut itself!

In fact, that's the secret behind MTR's success: a RAIL + PROPERTY (R+P) Model in which it is the developer and manager of transit as well as of properties that lie adjacent to that transit. Two of the tallest skyscrapers in Hong Kong are MTR properties, as are many of the offices, malls, and residences adjacent to every transit station (some of which have direct underground connections to the train), and all of the retail within subway stations (which are essentially large shopping complexes) is leased from MTR. 

The View from the MTR office of 2-International Financial Center , HK's largest tower and one of the MTR's properties

The proceeds from these real estate ventures go into the MTR's revenues and cross-subsidize transit development: most transit capital expansion and upgrade projects are paid for by these real estate profits, as well as that 80% operating surplus I spoke of earlier. So because the MTR is never struggling to pay for important capital upgrades, the Hong Kong system itself requires less stop-gap maintenance---and service interruptions---than other transit systems might. This reliable technology and service lowers operating costs, streamlines capital investments, and encourages more and more people to rely on transit to get around. With all these customers using this excellent service, there's more total revenue from fare payment---even though fares aren't that expensive.

Of prices, the longest distance subway, i.e. from the city of Shenzhen in China to downtown, was about HK$ 50-60, about $8-10, while a special train to the airport is about 25 USD. More normal commutes, though, are between HK$4 and HK$20, about $0.50 to $3, depending on the distance traveled. (Compare that to London, where a fare can get as high as $18). Any fare increases in Hong Kong are limited by regulations linking fares to inflation and profits. Still, the HK government  recently started giving a HK$600-per-month travel stipend to low-income households, i.e. those that earn less than HK$10,000 a month.

This R+P model of Value Capture and transit management works partly because Hong Kong is a closed island: there are no suburbs from which people can commute by car, so everyone is essentially forced to use transit if they want to be in the city. Plus, given that it's a public yet independent corporation (and not an agency, ministry, or authority), it has the freedom to develop real estate, to hire and fire who it will, and to take business-minded decisions---whereas many other transit systems are hemmed by union contracts and legal regulations.

Still, the idea of value capture is a very powerful one for transit management. Understanding---and quantifying and even just communicating---the important contribution that mass transit makes is the first step to making it a well-funded priority.

"Crying in a BMW" - The Ridiculous Social Stigma of Mass Transit

We know about the gender imbalance in much of Chinese society, in large part as a result of the One Child policy. Here's a silly and ironic story about the effects of this, plus urbanization, plus the rise of the market economy in those cities.

Douglas Raymond is a former Google executive who was trying to start his own company in China. When trying to hire employees, he realized that most Chinese engineers are usually only children who must be at the very top of their game in order to reap the most return on what's been a huge investment from (usually) his family to put him through a good school. This makes young Chinese engineers very risk averse when it comes to employment; so they're less likely to work with an untested start-up.

But to add to this risk aversion is the increasing expectation that, in order to sufficiently impress a woman that will marry him, a young man must already own, at the least, his own apartment. This is not easy in a place where many Shanghai and Beijing apartments often cost 27 times the average white collar worker's annual salary. Still, this expectation can exist because of the gender ratio: for every 119 men, there are only 100 women in Chinese cities, which allows women to have their pick of male partners. So with the increasing allure of material goods and capitalist comfort, home ownership is the mere cost of entry.

To illustrate this, Raymond recalled a popular television show called Fei Cheng Wu Rao ("If You are the One"), in which contestants make their pitches to eligible girls, who decide whether to choose or reject them. One male contestant tried to woo the girls by regaling them with promises to take his beloved around Beijing on the back of his bicycle, to show her the sites and experience love in his hometown. In her rejection, 20-year-old female contestant Ma Nuo replied, "I would rather be crying in a BMW than laughing on the back of a bicycle."

Soon after the airing of the comment, the Chinese government forced the creators to change the format of the show to discourage the kind of superficial and materialistic morals this comment, and the show, ostensibly promoted. Nonetheless, the clip and quote went viral, and spoke not only to changing urban Chinese values, but also to important symbols, namely that Beijing's nouveau riche are ditching their bicycles, buses, and trains in favor of (fancy) cars as modes of transportation. It evokes Margaret Thatcher's extremely dangerous quip that, "if a man finds himself riding a public bus at the age of 28, he can consider himself a failure."

If China's burgeoning upper-middle class all wants to drive cars, and that desire turns into pressure to build infrastructure to accommodate cars, we'd see a whole mess of problems: more pollution (on the scale that leads to health problems); congestion (on the scale that leads to not just frustration but also inefficiencies...that can compromise life quality); spatial design that separates people, things, and places (and makes the economy less efficient); to say nothing of the environmental and monetary costs associated with constructing and maintaining that car infrastructure. Mass transit presents an alternative that addresses all of these problems through economies of scale.

But the social association between type of mobility and socio-economic status is one of the biggest hurdles in making those necessary investments in a responsible manner. Ma Nuo derided bicycles in favor of a gleaming car (even if it cost her happiness). And in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, the mass transit rail has long been associated with the poor and downtrodden: its MARTA system is derided with the acronym, "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta," referring to the poor Black Americans who are the system's captive users (they don't have the choice of driving). This association makes it less likely that affluent (White) Atlantans would use the system willingly. Similarly, when the recently installed Pope rode the subway in Buenos Aires, the media took this as evidence that he is "pro poor".

The solution to this problem is, of course, to make mass transit so efficient, effective, (fun), safe, and comfortable that people don't use it simply because it is cheaper, but because it is better than driving a car. The way to do that---in Latin America, the United States, China, and elsewhere---is to give it the resources it requires to keep it in top shape. This is largely a challenge for politics, to ensure that priority and resources are given to transit. But it's also one for economics: running good transit systems, despite their economic benefits, comes with large financial costs, including necessary subsidies for riders, and expenses for operations, management, maintenance, and capital expansion. (I'll have a post forthcoming on how Hong Kong, one of the best run transit systems in the world, pulls this off).

Still, as China---and even the US---go forward, we ought to try and remember what Gustavo Petro, the Mayor of Bogota (which developed the world-renowned Bus Rapid Transit System, TransMilenio), said: "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."

Groped on the Subway - When Eyes on the Platform Aren't Enough

A couple of months ago, the New York Times posted this piece by a woman who was groped on a crowded subway in New York City. 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/i-was-groped-on-the-subway/

In a nutshell, she discusses her experience on her daily commute on a crowded subway, where, one day a lecherous and disgusting man gropes her. Though dozens if not hundreds of other passengers are mere inches away, they don't say a thing or intervene. And despite the numbers, she doesn't feel comfortable yelling or asking for help, and feels completely vulnerable and alone throughout the ordeal. When she gets off the train, a plainclothes police officer, having witnessed the crime, calls her over and asks her to identify the perpetrator, whom the officer has detained. The lady does so only reluctantly, fearing some sort of retaliation. The whole experience gives her a number of insecurities about interacting with the world, making her especially afraid of riding the train at rush hour.

You should definitely read the piece in full---I would never be able to capture or relay a harrowing episode like this with the same sense of pain, violation, shame, fear, and loneliness. I hope that her story did eventually end in some kind of more solid triumph. But sexual harassment is an all-too frequent occurrence on mass transit, certainly in places like NYC. Probably every woman in transit-oriented cities have their own story about this, and it adds to the reasons that people abandon public transportation. The piece raised a few important points with regard to what I've been thinking and writing about here. Despite everything the piece made me feel on a visceral level, I'll keep this discussion to one that's policy and planning oriented.

First, I wrote a few weeks ago about the "eyes on the street" concept of, for lack of a better word, community policing. Again, this is the notion that if you design a space so that there are people present at all times, passively keeping a watch over it, criminals are less likely to perpetrate crimes. This remains true; imagine what might happen without those eyes. But what about those other times, where dozens or even hundreds are watching, but that's still not enough to deter crimes, especially of a sexual harassment nature? 

A famous story that comes to mind is one in which a woman named Kitty Genovese was violently assaulted and screamed for help, with a handful if not dozens of neighbors hearing what happened but not even moving a muscle to help her or call the police. The episode was later reported to have been exaggerated. Still, the scenario was tested under controlled circumstances: grey smoke was billowing out of a room and when there was a sole witness, ze called the fire department immediately. But when dozens of people walked by and all saw the same smoke, and watched other people seeing the same smoke, nobody was compelled to act. "If they're not concerned or doing anything about it, it's probably not a big deal. Why should I intervene either?"

There might be a similar dynamic at play in crowded subways: if other people see it, and are okay with this groping, it's probably not that big a deal, so why should I do anything? It's a strange sort of social paralysis brought on by embarrassment...of disturbing the stability of the status quo. (Or maybe people are just too crowded and wrapped up in their own minds to realize or care about what's happening to others around them?)

The first priority, of course, ought to be to teach men not to be lecherous or worse. More on that in a moment. Second, in addition to creating a space where women feel safe, we ought to create a space where witnesses feel safe and responsible to intervene in things they realize are wrong. Public policy can help shape that: signs and announcements in the NY subway have recently begun to exhort victims and witnesses to intervene, call police, and speak out when sexual harassment takes place; and remind riders that sexual harassment is indeed a crime that must be stopped. It'd be interesting to find stats on what kind of a dent that's made in interventions or reporting.

Then there are always the more subtle ways of intervening in a burgeoning problem without even making a big deal of it; this guy intervened in a fight just by casually walking in the middle while still eating his snack:

And this intervention is related to my second big takeaway from this Times piece: how pleasantly surprised I was to read that a police officer not only recognized that this happened, but also intervened and attempted to bring the criminal to some kind of justice. This does not happen enough: victims are blamed, or often not even recognized as victims and dismissed. In an ideal world, the official police would not have to have a role in enforcing gender violence norms, as the problem would be effectively dealt with by society. But in the world in which we live, law enforcement plays an extremely important function.

And getting law enforcement to care comes back to that "first priority" identified above: to teach men not to be lecherous or worse---and to teach people to intervene when they bear witness to a crime. Awareness really is the beginning of that, and sharing information a big component therein. In Egypt over the last few months, reports have shown that over 99.3% of women have been sexually harassed in their daily lives (with some particularly gruesome cases of gang rape and molestation), yet in less than 14% of those cases did someone try to help. Much as Chinese women have been able to take to Weibo to share information about this while saving face, the creators of HarassMap are trying to leverage technology to get Egyptians to share information about incidents and map them for better societal awareness. Actually seeing and hearing about incidents really brings it home to people in ways that matter; it's less of an abstract idea that happens to "someone else." Once that societal awareness and concern is strong, it would more easily filter up into police training, if it's still needed at that point.

Of course, coming back to the notion of culture and sexual aggression we'd discussed before, that awareness goes much deeper. Chris Kilmartin, author of "The Masculine Self," says that the source of sexual violence is a "cult of hyper-masculinity, which tells boys that aggression is natural and sexual conquest enviable, and a set of laws and language that cast women as inferior, pliable, even disposable...'we teach boys to disrespect the feminine and disrespect women. That’s the cultural undercurrent of rape.'" Try to tackle that, and we'll be riding on a much safer train.

But the first step to ending a huge problem is to recognize when it recurs right in front of all of our eyes.

Gender in Beijing Transit - a conversation with the Lincoln Institute's Zhang Chun

I recently had a great conversation about transit development in China with my PKU colleague, Zhang Chun. She’s written a lot about the subject, including for a recent World Bank project on transit accessibility of the urban poor. In addition to transit, Zhang Chun and I spoke about broader gender issues in Beijing’s development.

So's to start: the first two lines of the Beijing Metro---Lines 1 (an east-west line) and 2 (a circular line that goes around the Forbidden City---were originally developed, starting in in 1969, for the exclusive use of the People’s Liberation Army. They were only made public in 1980 and expanded in 2004. The development of roads was under the central Ministry of Roads, while subways was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Rail, which no longer exists. (It's been broken into Ministry of Transport, which covers safety and regulation; the State Railways Administration, which does inspection; and China Railway Corporation, which oversees construction and management. As for funding, municipalities must fully fund and manage subway systems by themselves. (The case of Beijing is a little different, as it's also the national capital, giving it access to a few more resources and priorities than other cities might get).

It was only from 2003 that the Beijing authorities thought to develop subway transit with greater seriousness. They did this largely because they realized the folly of what they had been doing: Beijing's local automotive industry had long put a choke hold on the city's planning, so roads were prioritized over mass transit (and rail) lines, leading to massive traffic congestion and air pollution. What really spurred the authorities on to change things, of course, was the public relations surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Here's a great gif showing the evolution of Beijing's subway system:

So owing to these weird administrative snafus, and also the relative recentness of the subway's development, Beijing’s bus system is actually more extensive, more prolific, cheaper, and more used for mass transit. Both the bus and subway systems are heavily subsidized in Beijing. The Beijing subway system costs only two yuan to get anywhere within it, whereas other cities have fare systems that are priced according to how far and which districts you travel. (Guangzhou can go as high as 10 or 15 yuan for a ride).

The buses are managed in a very interesting way: there’s usually a male driver and a female conductor who collects tickets and keeps folks in the bus in line. In fact, it is the conductor’s responsibility to find a seat for pregnant women, old people, or the infirm (subways also put 'people with children' in this category)---and if these people are unable to find a seat and something happens to them, the conductor is liable. In the subway, on the other hand, there are signs that tell people to vacate certain seats for “those in need,” including the old, pregnant, with children, or infirm, but in practice that is not enforced and depends on how generous straphangers are feeling. This lack of certain provision makes it a little difficult for “those in need.”

This provision is among the biggest issues for women’s access, as discussed in my earlier post on transit access. Women with children usually have to carry their carriages down stairs, because only the newest stations and transit hubs (those that connect a few lines) will have elevators. Because of this, many women simply hold their children in their arms instead of bringing a whole carriage. (Plus carrying a carriage or bassinet in a crowded Beijing subway can be pretty unwieldy and tough. Not to mention, prams or strollers are actually a pretty recent arrival in China; parents have long preferred to hold their children in their arms).

Shanghai and Hong Kong have better transfer systems within subways (i.e. between different lines at transit hubs), which makes it easier to bring a bassinet or child across a system. Beijing, however, has been less good at this, making the subways in Beijing less accessible to the non-young. It’s been built into the urban planning building code, which is fairly strict in Beijing, that a subway station entrance cannot be kept close to any building, which makes it that much more difficult to access transit. This was owed to the earlier development of underground utilities such as pipes and electric wiring.

On the related note of women's travel patterns, China has mandated maternity leave of four months. And yet, there is no daycare provision until a child is 2.5 years old. Hence, between four months and 2.5 years, the child has minimal institutional support and the mother has to figure out how to take care of hir while the mother is working. Double income families were often the norm among Chinese couples, particularly before 2000, when the one-child policy was relaxed in urban areas. But the income of one person was insufficient to pay for a nanny while the mother worked (a nanny cost almost the mother’s salary). So instead, many women have simply been staying home as housewives instead of returning to their jobs after giving birth, while others keep young children with grandparents as babysitters. This lifestyle change altered transit patterns, to say nothing of economic and physical mobility.

In the 1990s, the worker welfare system was ‘reformed’ and essentially stopped nationally, with worker-provided public housing being terminated. (Prior to that they were heavily subsidized, with public housing residents paying as little as 21 yuan per month). But less than 1% of government employees have public housing, and more recently, a few companies have been providing their workers with 13,000 yuan to simply purchase their own houses. As the housing market has been privatized, many are forced to live farther and farther away from their places of work, given that central business district and central city housing prices have gotten so high.

This has been maybe the greatest folly of Beijing's urbanization, even with its emphasis on mass transit development: markets are increasing space and distance between buildings and neighborhoods, and even between uses (e.g. home and work). So even though density remains pretty high (compared with the US, for example), sprawl is still going pretty wild. And because, as the capital, Beijing serves as a model for the rest of the country, the tenets of its growth are affecting planning patterns elsewhere in the country. Without some fresher thinking, China's urbanizing billion---including its 500 million women---will have a number of difficulties adjusting to city life.

Half the Sky? - A Conversation with UN Women's Julia Broussard

Yesterday I met with Julia Broussard, Country Manager of the Beijing Office of UN Women. Julia has worked and lived in China for almost 20 years, and has headed this office for four, so she had a lot to share on the state of gender issues in China. The office's main purviews are violence against women (ending it), economic empowerment, job discrimination (stopping it), political participation (increasing it), and more generally looking at gender in Corporate Social Responsibility and in the media.

We had a great conversation that touched upon a lot of things, but I'll try and structure this post a little bit (and annotate it with some other stories and pictures). One of my main takeaways was that, on the whole, things are getting better in the gender space, but there's still a whole lot to do---not mention new challenges and opportunities that are coming up as the country changes and urbanizes.

A lot of the stuff I wrote about earlier regarding the effects of the One-Child policy remain true, particularly in the villages. An important thing she mentioned, though, is the effect of the Hukou System on women as the country urbanizes. First off, back in the 1970s, when China started to industrialize, it set up second and third tier cities (smaller than Beijing and Shanghai, the "first tier" or megacities) to host heavy and light industries. The government forced people to relocate to those cities to staff those factories---but they weren't allowed to bring their spouses or families. So these cities wound up having extremely skewed sex and age ratios. Heavy industry cities (like Dukou, which made auto parts) were male-dominated, while light industrial cities (like Jiayin, which produced textiles) were "cities of women." This imbalance had a strange consequence on the next generation's demographics.

More recently, when men alone migrate to cities for industrial work and leave their wives and families behind (because their hukou means they won't have access to any services in those cities), a greater household burden falls on the women that are left behind: not only do they now have to cook, clean and take care of the children as they did before, but they also are responsible for providing ALL of the labor for their family's agricultural and farming collective, for at least half of which the male had been responsible previously.

In other situations, when both the mother and father migrate to cities for work, they leave the children in the care of the grandparents. When this happens en masse, the whole social safety net of a village is broken. And worse, girls that have been left behind in villages often become victims of sexual violence when their parents are not around to keep them safe. That said, even if children were to migrate to cities along with their parents, because of Hukou, they would not have access to urban schools or any social services, leaving them in the streets in the daytime and perhaps victim to the same kinds of crimes. Two options to fix the situation are to increase income generating activities in or closer to rural areas so that parents don't have to migrate (this comes with other challenges of directly addressing rural poverty in a scalable way); or to relax Hukou to let families migrate together (though a sudden elimination of that sort might overwhelm urban services).

Meanwhile, heavy industry, dominated by men, pays more than light industry. The owners of light industrial operations often PREFER to hire women because they reportedly can be paid less and are retained for longer---lacking ambition to earn more money, they stay at factories even long after marriage.

In urban areas, even white-collar professions suffer from major gender discrimination. Even college education women face job discrimination, particularly in the technology, science, military-defense, and Foreign Service areas. And in education, women are required to have higher exam scores to gain entrance to these academic fields where they are less represented---a sort of reverse affirmative action. And yet, female-dominated fields like languages have quotas and lower test score requirements for men. Sort of an inverted scenario, huh?

All that said, women's representation in business and politics (by the numbers) is statistically higher than that in many other countries. In business, over 25% of senior managers are women (compared with around 21% in the US). And in politics, though most pictures of official ceremonies look like old boys clubs, with dozens of men dressed in penguin suits, the National People's Congress, the "legislative body" of the PRC, has over 22% women's representation---higher than the global average of 17% in the lower house of the legislature. We can't really know whether this has been enforced by quota or is just 'organic,' though, since the operating procedures of the NPC are so opaque. In an earlier NPC, here were a couple of the leading ladies:

They've never, however, gone above the Standing Committee level.

Speaking of opacity, let's talk about some statistics. The number of cases of sexual harassment and sexual violence per province are---well, we don't know, because official statistics of negative incidents like that are not recorded. Or, if they are, they're not openly shared. Julia says that UN Women has tried to do their own surveys to obtain their own statistics, but the government has never been keen enough on finding out to let them. Anecdotally, these kind of incidents definitely happen. They may not happen quite as often as they do in other parts of the world---Julia attributes this to a trait in Chinese culture that supposedly does not encourage as open an expression of any emotions (including lust) as they would elsewhere---but they do happen. Of course, a major reason they go unreported or underreported is that women are not as inclined to be vocal about what happens to them, for fear of their reputation (and the blowback of any legal or other subsequent actions) and also because of that issue of expressing emotions.

What's good is that the internet is changing that quite a bit. Sites like Weibo---China's version of twitter, which is locked here---are important means of complaining about or reporting sexual harassment while still maintaining relative anonymity and "saving face." And this avenue has also turned into a more open, wide-scale protest. In southwest China, women have organized to protest loudly against violence on women.

And in Shanghai a few years ago, when a woman was sexually harassed on the subway, the transit authorities posted a picture of a woman they deemed "scantily clad," and warned women that if they dress provocatively, they invite harassment. In response, a number of women dressed in head-to-toe provocative covering, with signs that said “I can be sexy, but you can’t harass me.” The protest was picked up by the media and went viral---with the organizers being given awards for standing up for womens’ rights. It was around that time---thought it wasn’t actually related---that the Shanghai government legally defined sexual harassment as a crime and identified mechanisms to enforce the laws and protected channels for women to seek redress.

(More recently, after the 17-year old son of an official was accused of gang-raping a Beijing woman, an idiotic Tsinghua University professor argued that "To rape a bargirl does less harm than to rape a good woman," presumably implying that "bar girls are more likely to consent to sex, and therefore it's more acceptable to rape them than it is to rape a normal girl." Fortunately, according to the website Shanghaist, "his message...outraged pretty much everyone.")

Workplace harassment also remains a major issue---as do equal compensation, hiring practices, and other workplace gender issues---and advocates like Guo Jianmei of the Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling and Service Center are working with employers and the government to work against it. Both she and Julia say that it was the 1995 UN 4^th World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, that really put the issue of gender equality on the map in China. The term “sexual harassment” officially entered the country’s legal lexicon and official steps began in earnest.

One thing Julia is a little concerned about is the changing media landscape. More movies, TV shoes, and especially advertisements objectify women---and reshape images of women’s beauty---in ways that have been prevalent in the United States, for example, for far too long.

There’s been an increased sexualization and objectification of women in ads that may not be very healthy for gender equality in China.

But as long as more people are talking about it---and organizing for it, and advocating, and empowering themselves and others---the upward trend will hopefully continue unabated.

Turning Pork into Beef: The Effects of Urbanization on China's Food Policy

One of the things I was most excited about in China, prior to coming here, was the food. Even though NYC has some incredible Chinese food---dim sum, Sichuanese, Xian, and of course the all American General Tso’s Chicken---I figured it had to be even better live. On the whole that’s been true; check out these pictures of some delicious treats I’ve had around the country:

Xinjiang Lamb with Stir-Fried Naan (yes, delicious fried bread)

Sauteed String Beans with Pork and Sichuan Peppers

Vegetable Buns

Some kind of delicious Shrimp

But, while on a fellowship to study urban development, I’d be remiss to not talk about the implications of urbanization on agriculture, food policy, and food quality. Yes, I’m about to burst the bubble of deliciousness that I’ve just inflated…with some depressing wonking and policy analysis.

So…in the vain of Communist Revolution, Chairman Mao had organized rural China into collective and communal farms---cooperatives seized from landlords---that people would farm collectively and share in the produce. The large communes were supposed to create economies of scale that would produce enough food to feed EVERYONE. The result was quite the opposite: the Great Leap Forward diverted people from real agricultural work (and encouraged them to melt their farm tools into poor quality metal to meet steel production quotas), while those who did farm had no incentive (or ability) to actually produce efficiently. The result was famine that cost tens of millions of lives.

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping returned China to the family farming system that had served China so well before communism: households could now lease plots of land from the government and produce at least enough to meet government quotas. And they were allowed to sell their surplus at market price for a profit (incentivizing more production). Though this improved agricultural productivity and decreased rural poverty for some time, it coincided with a slow dismantling of the rural social welfare system and underinvestment in rural areas, as the governemtn began to focus on manufacturing and foreign investment around cities. Over time, a large wage gap between rural and urban areas emerged, and food production could not keep pace with the rising demand of the growing¾and increasingly rich¾urban population.

In the early 2000s, the national government enacted more reforms to help rural areas: farming cooperatives (now voluntary) were legalized, farmers were allowed to lease out or transfer land-use rights to other people for other purposes, as in urban areas. Farming accounted for 70% of China’s labor, but contributed less than 12% of GDP¾productivity was low and farming was clearly not a lucrative profession. At the same time, demand---especially for meat products and the grain to feed livestock---kept rising as city dwellers' tastes got fancier.

Because farming collectives were now able to lease their land to developers, who began to 'urbanize' it with high rise apartments and other infrastructure, farmland itself was decreasing. Other farmers left for cities when local governments requisitioned their land for development. And finally, many farmers simply leased their land to large scale (often corporate) agricultural operators while continuing to provide labor for those new venues. The hukou system, of course, made migration and and alternative futures even more difficult. The bottom line was that farming was not lucrative and farmland was diminishing---so many farmers abandoned their trade while demand continued to skyrocket.

To make up for the lost product, corporate farming techniques entered the Chinese marketplace. One benefit of these large, usually industrial farms was that, by virtue of their size and scale of investment and operations, they were more easily able to create economies of scale and produce more food per unit than individual farmers ever could have. Another was that they had mastered many of the technological and chemical innovations that made farming even more productive: new breeds of seeds that produced more grain per stock; fertilizers that caused vegetables to grow faster; incubators that could hatch millions of eggs into chickens that could be raised in controlled environments for easier integration into the supply chain. Without innovations like these, the world might not have had enough food to feed its rising population---and millions of people might have died of starvation or malnourishment, as the 18th century economist Thomas Malthus had predicted. A "Malthusian Catastrophe" was averted by industrialized farming.

But this system of industrialized farming has arguably been abused and run amock in many places, especially China. Farmers have been known to buy chemicals that, they were told, would boost their output. With little proof of their success or quality, they used the chemicals, with great consequences for the quality of their produce. Watermelons have exploded from being pumped with growth hormones; pigs and livestock have been plumped up with chemicals that have harmed consumers; vegetables have been filled with chemical cocktails that have caused cancer (one third of the world's cancer deaths occur in China, where cancer is responsible for 21% of all fatalities). At a weird point, extracts have been used on pork to turn it into beef. For real. (This is to say nothing of pure scams, like the one in which dumpling vendors allegedly filled their pork buns not with pork, but cardboard; or the Hot Pot restaurants that served lamb meat skewers that turned out to be made of rat). 

One of the most high profile cases of 'agricultural malpractice' has been in milk formula for infants. China's domestic producers---which have a monopoly on production and distribution---have been found to put melamine, a poisonous flame retardant, in their infant formula. Hundreds of thousands of babies were harmed. Many panic-stricken mothers stopped feeding their babies, while a huge industry has developed to fill the new demand for safe, foreign-made milk formula: smugglers have imported thousands if not millions of foreign produced milk packets from Hong Kong, which has no trade barriers with outside producers, and smuggled them into mainland China for resale. On my exit from Hong Kong airport, a sign at the check-in distinctly forbade the packing of more than two cans of formula per person. Out of desperation, smuggling of these safer products continues.

Many foreigners have cited uncertain food quality as a primary reason for why they would not live in China for longer. For the hundreds of millions of other residents of China who have no other choice, food quality presents a potentially fatal---and at present insurmountable--problem. The dilemma appears to be providing enough food on the one hand, or providing decent quality food on the other.

This is perhaps one of the worst consequences of China's rush to urbanize that the country must do far, far more to regulate. Though the loss of farmland to suburban subdivision in the United States caused similar problems, it has only been a vigilant, independent media and very active activists that have been able to curb the system's most extreme excesses. (See Food Inc and Fast Food Nation for accessible accounts of this). 

At present, these are two things that China lacks. As China foes from a net food importer to a net producer (and potential exporter), let's hope to god that this system has some better oversight.