Gao Yang, a literary and history worker from Baoding, Hebei province, has been traveling around Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei for four years since April 2017, investigating the forced demolition of villages by authorities after Xi Jinping took office.
Gao Yang investigates the cause of forced demolition in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region
Reporter: Mr. Gao Yang, would you please first introduce your research field?
Gao Yang: Before the massive demolition, I paid much attention to the traditional residence of Youyan, which is a traditional building with characteristics. Before they were demolished, traditional dwellings were faced with a lot of destruction. Since about 1990s, there were fewer and fewer of these traditional dwellings, and almost no one built traditional styles. There are fewer and fewer houses left, and no one wants to live in them. So I started going to a lot of places in 2015, taking pictures of the houses before they were destroyed and keeping them.
A demolished toy factory in Rongcheng, Hebei province. Toy manufacturing is the mainstay of the local industry. (Provided by Gaoyang)
Reporter: When did you begin to pay attention to the forced demolition of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region?
Gao Yang: The Chinese government announced the establishment of the Xiongan New Area on April Fool’s Day in 2017. From then on, I knew they were going to force a massive demolition. Since I am from Baoding and the Xiongan New Area is very close to my home, I usually go there by electric bike or bicycle. For convenience, I mainly take some photos at the site of construction and demolition. Sometimes, I can meet some local people and have a chat with them about the local situation. Their main demolition started in 2019, when I went to Zhangjiakou, because they also demolished many villages for the Winter Olympics. Since June this year, all villages along the river have been relocated and demolished. Next to our house is the Baigou River, where I went to see about 10 villages to be relocated.
A demolition sign posted by the local government in Nanwen Village, Rongcheng City, Hebei Province, October 2019. (Provided by Gaoyang)
Reporter: During the investigation, did you encounter any trouble?
Gao Yang: Sometimes the local villagers don’t know what I do. When I take a picture, they stop me and ask me some questions. Once I was in a village where the river had been moved, and when I went to take a photo, I was stopped by the local people. They might be from the local village, but I saw several strong young men standing beside me. They might not be local people, and they seemed to stop the investigation of demolition. They took us to the village council, made me say what I was doing, asked a lot of questions, and finally let me go.
Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei rural areas of the overall demolition
An elderly man faces his demolished home in Zhangshi village in Rongcheng, Hebei province. (Provided by Gaoyang)
Reporter: According to your survey, how many villages have been demolished in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region?
Gaoyang: Xiongan New Area, Daxing International Airport, and Hehe Village are the places where most villages have been demolished. According to statistics, by the end of this year, 25 villages had been demolished in Rongcheng and Xu Counties on the other side of the Xiongan New Area. On this side of the river, that is, on the side of the Baigou River, there are 10 villages being demolished, many of which have not yet been demolished. In Daxing airport, they demolished it earlier. They started demolishing it in 2015, and now the airport has been basically completed. A lot of [villages] near [the airport], they said because of noise, pollution, commercial development and so on, they tore down a lot of villages and they continue to tear them down. In the areas of Daxing and Langfang, The number of villages demolished according to my statistics is 61, and there are about 50 more villages planned to be demolished. In the Xiongan New Area, they have already demolished more than 20, and there may be no more villages left in the next few years. According to the statistics, more than 160 (villages) have been demolished (in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region). (Demolition) started mainly in 2015, after Xi Jinping took office, and several major projects: Xiongan New Area, Daxing Airport. Because of Xi Jinping’s personality, he began to feel that China is now very strong, and his China dream began to be realized.
In March 2020, the toy market in Baigou, Hebei went bankrupt. As the toy workshops in Rongcheng were demolished, shops in the Toy market in Baigou were also closed down. (Provided by Gaoyang)
Reporter: What are the living conditions of the people who were forcibly demolished?
Gao Yang: The local people used to be farmers. Some of them even have small workshops. For example, in Rongcheng, a lot of people make stuffed toys, so the local people here are generally quite rich. But after the new district was established, they were forced to move out because of land expropriation. Just let them move. How will they survive? Then again, the compensation is unreasonable. No matter your original house spent how much money to build, no matter how big the yard, how big the area, generally every family is divided by the person, every family will also get hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can’t choose the place you want to move to. You can choose a shabby place or a shabby house for you, and you have to spend money to buy it. Finally, you have to spend money to decorate a bare house. In the end, compensation payments are useless, and many people are now unemployed with no income at all.
Traditional houses are painted with demolition slogans by the government in Beihezhao Village, Rongcheng city, Hebei Province. (Provided by Gaoyang)
Reporter: What means do they use to carry out demolition?
Gao Yang: At the beginning, the poorer people in the village signed the agreement. Then they took all the people away by swindling them, and there were not many left in the village. The rest of them knew what was going on. And they have dealt with them by force and violence. The locals had little resistance. For example, in the suburb of Qingyuan in Baoding in late June, local villagers had to use rocks, wine bottles and the like that they could find locally to beat those who came to demolishing them, the police, the SPECIAL police and so on. Then they arrested a lot of people, a lot of people were injured. The garrison in Baoding was very large, and there was a very famous thirty-eighth Army. In the southeast of Baoding city, there is an air force airfield. They have a lot of helicopters coming from there, terrorizing the villagers, flying around the village making noise. It flew very low and made a loud noise on purpose.
The ruins of Liuzhuang village in Beigou, Hebei province, after it was demolished. (Provided by Gaoyang)
A way out of the problem
Reporter: What do you think is the way out to solve the problem of forced demolition?
Map of “Lost Villages in Yandi” drawn by Gao Yang. (Provided by Gaoyang)
Gao Yang: I can only hope that the CCP itself is doomed because it is disliked by the whole world. At that time, it would be more likely to create a new order, a new state, with a different political system from the previous one. This new system, if want to avoid forced demolition structure must be from the bottom up, not previously the sort of central authority, the supreme ruler to arrange below, one layer control down to the bottom of the civilians, but from each family of a community, from the community of the local government, from local government of a country’s regime. In other words, it is an autonomous system. Only by implementing local autonomy and giving the rights of land to local people in each region, rather than being controlled by the state, can this kind of forced demolition really be avoided. Under this new political system, I hope that people from all parts of mainland China will be able to decide their own destinies on the basis of common geography, common local feelings and common peripheral interests. This is the case, for example, in my hometown of Youyan.
The map legend of “Lost Villages in Yandi” made by Gao Yang. (Provided by Gaoyang)
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