"Eggshell refugees" emerge in China under the slogan of comprehensive poverty alleviation

Reporter : Li Yun / Editor : Zhu Xinrui / https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2020/12/05/a103002994.html / Translation, editing : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA

Image : "Eggshell refugees" emerge in China under the slogan of comprehensive poverty alleviation

Young tenants have become "eggshell refugees" and are facing the dilemma of being homeless in the cold winter. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Xi Jinping reiterated that at the same time as the “major victory” of comprehensive poverty alleviation, the "eggshell apartment" (or danke apartment) of the high-end white-collar apartment brand exploded, involving millions of workers and landlords. Young tenants instantly became "eggshell refugees", facing the plight of homelessness in the cold winter, and some even committed suicide by jumping off the building.

According to reports from mainland media, a tenant in Guangzhou committed suicide by jumping from an 18-story building in the early morning of December 3 after being forced to clear his house by the landlord.

The tenant’s roommate said that they lived in a room divided into 4 broken rooms. Their landlord posted a notice on the door last week, saying that they had not received the rent for the eggshells and asked them to move out. The deadline was only two days.

Roommates said that many of them had paid one year's rent. The tenants who jumped off the building had just graduated and did not work. They paid one year's rent in the form of loans. Originally, they said that they would go back to their hometown to work and pay back the money.

The roommate said that the incident occurred at about 3 am on the 3rd. He found that the room inside had been smoking, so he called the police. Residents in the community said that there were blood stains downstairs at the incident, but they had been washed.

Regarding this tragic incident, many netizens said, “I was unemployed as soon as I graduated, borrowed to rent a house, and was driven out again, desperate!” “This is a person who has not found a job after graduation and paid the rent in advance but suffered capital poisoning. "

Danke Apartment

According to mainland Chinese media, the "Danke Apartment", which was established less than five years ago, is the leading enterprise in long-term rental apartments in mainland China. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on January 17. Before its listing, Eggshell Apartments used a "high-in, low-out" approach to obtain housing from landlords at high prices and rent them to tenants at preferential prices to expand its scale.

On the other hand, the company is highly dependent on "cash loans" as the largest source of cash flow. Obtain at least one year's advance payment from tenants through the "rental loan" model, accounting for 80% of the total rental income of Danke Apartment. But the rent paid to the landlord is monthly.

Since 2020, China's economy has slowed down and the leasing market has also been sluggish. Eggshell Apartments have reported news of broken capital chains, runaways, and bankruptcies.

After the egg shell exploded with thunder, countless questions lay before people. Not only has a tens of billions of funds gap exposed, but millions of young tenants and landlords are also caught in a "broken" eggshell. The rents of tenants, landlords, and employees' wages are all left untouched.

Image : Young tenants have become "eggshell refugees" and are facing the dilemma of being homeless in the cold winter. (Composite picture)

Countless tenants face the dilemma of being homeless

Recently, eggshell apartments in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan and other places have failed to pay the landlord’s rent on time due to the disconnection of funds. Tenants have been cut off from water, electricity, network, and the landlord forcibly changes the locks to drive away the tenants, leading to chaos.

The young tenants living in eggshell apartments are basically migrant workers who have left their hometowns. Now they have become "eggshell refugees" and have no home in the cold winter.

Ms. Zhang of Liaoning, who works in Beijing, said that she has been in Beijing for more than 5 years and has been renting a house in Eggshell Apartment. The contract was just renewed in August of this year, and the rent for a year totaled more than 32,000 yuan. However, the landlord did not receive the rent because the rent paid by Eggshell to the landlord was monthly, which resulted in the tenant paying the money but no place to live. The landlord did not receive the rent and had to take the house away.

Ms. Zhang said that the landlord had a very tough attitude and asked her to move out immediately, and the water, electricity, internet and locks were cut off. She said that the headquarters of Danke Apartment gathers a large number of people to defend their rights every day, including tenants, suppliers, cleaning and maintenance personnel, and there have been many physical conflicts on site.

Renters frequently make extreme behaviour

On 23 November 2020, a 26-year-old woman was preparing to jump off the building on the roof of Eggshell headquarters. This woman is a model of Bei Piao, and she borrowed funds from her friends to renew the lease of the eggshell apartment. The landlord asked her to move. She found the eggshell apartment to no avail, and was driven out of the house by the landlord. Fortunately, she was stopped by the police.

On 24 November, a video on the Internet showed that a girl from a tenant who looked gentle  was confronting the landlord with a knife in her hand. It turned out that the landlord asked her to move. The conflict between the two sides intensified, and the girl had nowhere but to think of this way.

Mr. Zhan, who works as a retailer in Shenzhen, was also ordered by the landlord. He said, "Now the landlord wants to rush us and move out before 6 December. There is no relief, and no one can be contacted. Eggshell customer service has been broken, WeBank is also broken, and Eggshell Butler cannot be contacted. There is no way to do it on the street, just don’t know what to do!"

At the age of 24, he replaced his social media profile picture with a yellow smiling face, and wrote "Who will save the workers" in the letter P. This is the second year he has lived in the eggshell apartment. He has a monthly rent loan of 2,100 RMB, and he has to pay until May next year according to the contract.

On the evening of December 2, WeBank announced an emergency plan. The announcement stated that it would provide a non-deductible and non-interest-bearing rescue plan for 160,000 eggshell tenants, and the repayment period was extended to the end of 2023. Mr. Zhan said, three years is an account, that is, procrastination. What about our deposit?

Many renters choose to report to the police, but the police can't solve them. The landlord does not agree to negotiate, and the police will not follow up after filing the case.

The Chinese Communist Party officially endorsed eggshell apartments

Zhang Lin, a Chinese economist, wrote in the Financial Times that the failure of the financial model represented by the eggshell apartment will first hurt young workers who are new to the workplace and have low savings. They are at the center of the trap.

Netizens picked out the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, the party media, the Global Times, and the World Wide Web that endorsed the eggshell apartments in 2019. They also awarded the 2019 "Annual Responsibility Practice Award" to Danke Apartment, and CCTV conducted a comprehensive report on it.

Radio Free Asia quoted scholars to analyze that in the past few years, there have been many financial P2P scams in China. As the political situation and surveillance have become more tense and victims are defending their rights, it is difficult to use the government as the main object of protest, especially those leading organizations to protest. People who are not affected will be suppressed by the stability maintenance department. The CCP’s logic in solving the problem is to arrest people.

A company that specializes in monitoring and analyzing Chinese online platforms found that after the eggshell incident broke out, the CCP officials first used social media platforms to delete posts that questioned why the CCP did not have regulations and so on. It also specifically addressed an issue about tenants that plan to commit suicide under pressure.

Tenant girls who claimed to be "vulnerable groups" with the screen name "Fairy Taste" shared two photos of suspected moving house in the cold wind on Weibo, and wrote, "Hey, can eggshells get away with it? There is no protection for vulnerable groups."

However, in May, "Xiao Guozi" criticized Fang Fang, the writer of Wuhan Diary, and even a post threatening to cut Fang Fang's tongue was turned out, attracting ridicule on the Internet.

Some netizens ridiculed: “The Communist Youth League teamed up with eggshells and buried the little pink powder they used alive.” Others expressed sympathy, “She is very pitiful, and her spirit lives in the eggshell. Now the eggshell is broken.”

While the broken eggshells caused many young renters to become refugees, on the other hand, the Chinese Communist Party media announced that all 832 impoverished counties across the country would be lifted out of poverty. Xi Jinping reiterated at the Politburo meeting on December 3 that nearly 100 million poor people have been lifted out of poverty, and they have achieved a major victory that impresses the world.

The mainland people ridiculed that what the authorities said was "literal poverty alleviation", and "manual zeroing" has long been a joke. Under the epidemic, more people have returned to poverty, and with financial refugees, the CCP’s poor population has grown even bigger.