Yoko Kubota and Liyan Qi of The Wall Street Journal report that Fushun, where roughly a third of the population is 60 or above, offers a snapshot of China’s future. They write:
This rust-belt hub helped fuel China’s economic rise. Now, it offers a view of China’s future—in which eroding growth collides with a ballooning elderly population and a shortfall in babies.
Once vibrating with energy, Fushun is a city slowly going to sleep. Most of its coal mines and refineries have closed. Half its young people have left. Its pension coffers are heavily in the red, with roughly a third of its population 60 or above. […]
Fushun residents say that at the state-owned coal and mine companies, enforcement of the one-child policy was particularly strong. State-backed labor unions were tasked with forcing women to get an abortion if a pregnancy didn’t have authorities’ approval. Those who didn’t comply could lose their jobs, residents said.
Today, Liaoning still pays millions in compensation and allowances to those who abided by the one-child rules, including over 120,000 retirees whose only child died or became unable to work due to disability or women who suffered injuries in connection with abortions or other birth-control methods. […]
Fushun, too, is using a state-led blueprint to try to bring people back. In fact, between the city and Shenyang, Liaoning’s provincial capital, officials have built an entirely new city, Shenfu.
Rising over Shenfu is the “Ring of Life,” a monument about 50 stories tall calling to mind St. Louis’s Gateway Arch. Officials hoped it would be an iconic symbol of the new city to attract tech companies and other businesses. Local media has put the structure’s cost at more than $15 million.
On a recent weekday, the new Shenfu city mostly resembled a ghost town, with many buildings unfinished, while others appeared abandoned or barely populated. Office buildings were sparsely lit. Several two-story buildings were in a zone labeled “Health Station” and “Containment area”—terms describing a Covid-19 quarantine zone. […]
Li Yong, 49, a teacher and photographer, has been taking photos and videos of Fushun’s abandoned industrial sites, trying to capture sparks of life such as fumes rising from an old mine-waste landfill to shelters that keep evolving near desolate industrial sites and the shining amber he found buried amid the coal. […]
In November, Wu, the canteen owner, said he was planning to leave Fushun-—maybe for Harbin, a larger city further north, where he hopes for a better chance to make a living. He said he wants to open a new canteen, or study how to run a restaurant. He is still trying to figure it all out.
Read more here.
