Page 90 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

76 X. TONG

Although junk market operators rented land from local villagers, its use
for waste markets and workshops was formally illegal. According to the
Chinese Land Administration Law, rural land cannot be developed for
activities other than agriculture without previous expropriation by the
Municipal government and a change in its function to urban status. Again,
in 2011, demolition came to Dongxiaokou. However, this time the scav-
engers attracted support from a local NGO, which raises public awareness
of their marginal and unequal status pointing out that while they provided
low cost recycling services to the city they could hardly get a place of their
own for living. Partly due to their efforts, some of the junk markets were
temporarily reserved and the local government promised to provide
another place to accommodate those migrant workers.

Social Restructuring
The spatial shifts of waste villages in the Beijing metropolitan area were
accompanied by a social restructuring within the floating scavenger pop-
ulation, which Tang and Feng (2000) have described in detail. Their study
focuses on the social relations and mobility of migrant scavengers in Bajia
after their migration from their rural hometowns during the 1980s and
1990s. They highlight the way that the transition from a planned to a
market economy created a disjunction between rural and urban societies,
and an occupational stratification between urban and rural workers, which
eventually resulted in discrimination against rural migrant workers without
technical skills or business capital who were often relegated to the rank of
‘underclass’ citizens. Faced with this situation, they argue, migrant workers
took to rag picking as a way of working in Beijing without social or eco-
nomic resources. However, as Tang and Feng (2000) also point out, a
significant stratification also appeared among scavengers rooted in a
hangover from the administrative structure of the former central planned
recycling system, which was in place before the market transition of the
1980s.
Established in 1965, Beijing had a three-level collection and recycling
scheme. The whole system was under the control of only one state-owned
enterprise. This used to manage sites and stations according to economies
of scale. Recyclable products were collected from households and firms
through different channels, thanks to an advanced multi-site network based
in both streets and local communities. Collected waste was then shipped to