Faced with shrinking exports and slowing growth, Beijing is nonetheless pushing ahead with a gigantic, historic plan to uproot 100 million farmers and turn their fields into urban dwellings within six years – by 2020 – to create a giant middle class and boost economic demand.
This model calls for mass creation of jobs, schools, factories, offices, shopping malls – in short, a brand new consumer population of poor, uneducated farmers.
As apartment blocks are erected on farmland, villagers turn – willingly or not – into urbanites. Some have dubbed the strategy “warehousing”, in reference to the vertical stacking of farmers to free up land for commercial use. Some pop-up cities are already inhabited, others are little more than blueprints.
Despite nearly four decades of economic reforms, this is not a change people are enduring quietly. Land disputes arising from urbanisation account for tens of thousands of protests each year. But, as I photograph individual farmers swept up by these abrupt changes and document an economic phenomenon that is shaping the world’s future superpower, the majority grudgingly see a bright side. Many families tell me they yearn to have their land seized in return for relatively luxurious apartments.
This week’s pictures focus on the new urban lifestyles being forged by people who, until very recently, made their livelihoods from the land.
Desktop users, click on image below to launch photo gallery
A former farmer plays with her granddaughter near a housing block just outside Beijing last year. The high-rises are home to farmers whose land was appropriated as part of China’s sweeping urbanisation drive. DESKTOP USERS MAY CLICK TO LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY
Estate agents, whose parents were once farmers, wait for clients near a new development built on former farmland on the outskirts of Beijing.
A couple, who were farmers until their land was taken by the government three years ago, return to where their village once stood, in Hebei province, last year. They will eventually receive an apartment in return for their land.
Former farmers, who now see animals as pets, take in their new environment in Beijing.
This 2014 picture shows a bar in a new housing estate in Changsha, Hunan province, that caters to ex-farmers whose villages were razed by the government.
Former farmers participate in a group exercise class in a park built over their farmland on the outskirts of Beijing.
Ms Li (seated) pictured in June 2014 in her newly furnished Changsha apartment, which was given to her by the government in return for seized farm land.
Having failed to find work in the city, displaced farmers sleep on the street in Chongqing, in 2013.
Justin Jin was born in 1974, in Hong Kong. He attended La Salle Primary School and College, in Kowloon, before leaving for the UK, where he graduated from Cambridge University. He worked as a Reuters correspondent before picking up a camera to pursue an international photography career. He is the recipient of a Magnum Foundation grant, a Picture of the Year International Award and a World Press Photo Masterclass scholarship, among other prizes, and now splits his time between Europe and Asia, calling Hong Kong his “true home". Visit www.justinjin.com.
