Beijing’s population drops for first time since 2000 as migrants are driven out

Beijing’s population has dropped for the first time since 2000 as migrant workers are driven out amid a campaign to ease the strain on the sprawling, overcrowded capital city.

Its population fell by 22,000 people to 21.707 million last year, the first decline recorded in 17 years, the municipal statistics bureau said. Figures on the number of migrants living in the capital were not released, but the statistics bureau said megacities such as Beijing had become “less attractive” for them.

The municipal government has been trying to reduce “low-end” sectors since 2014 by pushing out unwanted factories, schools and wholesale markets, but these evictions ramped up at the end of last year following a fire in the south of the city that claimed 19 lives on November 18.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of domestic migrants were evicted from Beijing as a result.

The flow of workers into Beijing from other parts of China has slowed in recent years as they are made to feel unwelcome by the authorities. These migrants leave their families behind to work in jobs far from home to make more money, often doing the difficult, undesirable and low-paid jobs that others do not want to do. In 2016, the number of migrants in Beijing dropped for the first time in over a decade, by 150,000 people, while a similar number also left Shanghai in 2015.