land fever and bankruptcy social problems in hanoi’s urbanizing peri urban communities

550 “Land Fever” and “Bankruptcy”: Social Problems in Hanoi’s Urbanizing Peri-urban Communities Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh* Abstract: Drawn upon field research in two peri-urban villages of

550

“Land Fever” and “Bankruptcy”: Social Problems

in Hanoi’s Urbanizing Peri-urban Communities

Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh*

Abstract: Drawn upon field research in two peri-urban villages of Hanoi in 2014 and short

re-visits recently, the research examines the widespread of gambling and other social issues in Hanoi‟s urbanizing peri-urban communities which happened concurrently with the phenomenon of “land fever,” and at the time local villagers received compensation from land appropriation The article aims to understand the impact of urbanization on these communities and the interface between urbanization and the increase of social problems It argues that gambling, drug use, and other social problems have been existing in Vietnamese rural communities long before; however, when urbanization came, some people have higher chances to engage in these activities Those are villagers who want to transform quickly into entrepreneurs or bosses by joining the “black credit” market and gambling Together with middle-aged and old farmers who greatly relied on agricultural production and face difficulties in transforming their occupation, they formed the group of losers in the urbanization process

Keywords: Urbanization; Social problem; Peri-urban Communities

Received 6 th January 2019; Revised 26 th April 2019; Accepted 15 th May 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33100/jossh5.5.NguyenThiThanhBinh

1 Introduction



Vietnam recently experienced rapid

industrialization and modernization ever

since the Renovation (Đổi mới) which began

officially in 1986 Urbanization has been

ongoing and is considered to be a process

that directly serves that aim In 1950, just

over 10 percent of Vietnam‟s total

population lived in urban areas By 2009,

this proportion had increased to 30 percent,

which accounts for over 26 million people

According to the master plan of the

Vietnamese government, by 2020, 45

percent of the population could be urban

dwellers



Institute of Anthropology, Vietnam Academy of Social

Sciences; email: nguyenttbinh@yahoo.com

Following the government‟s agenda to develop the urban system1, Hanoi city continuously expanded its administrative boundary, from four urban and five rural districts in 1995 to nine urban and 18 rural districts in 2008 (Nguyen Van Suu 2014, p

1

Decision No 10/1998/QD-TTg of Vietnam‟s Prime Minister on January 23, 1998, approving the master plan orientation on Vietnam urban development through 2020 [Quyết định 10/1998/QĐ-TTg ngày 23 tháng 1 năm 1998 phê duyệt định hướng quy hoạch tổng thể phát triển đô thị Việt Nam đến năm 2020]; and Decision No 445/QD-TTg

of Vietnam‟ s Prime Minister on April 07, 2009, approving the adjusting of master plan orientation on Vietnam urban development through 2025 and vision to

2050 [Quyết định số 445/QĐ-TTg ngày 07 tháng 4 năm

2009 của Thủ tướng Chính phủ về việc phê duyệt điều chỉnh định hướng Quy hoạch tổng thể phát triển hệ thống

đô thị Việt Nam đến năm 2025 và tầm nhìn đến năm 2050]

80-81) In 2008, the city of Hanoi alone was

expanded by more than 2000 km2 and nearly

3 million people This was a kind of

urbanization by administrative integration at

the greatest pace in the history of the city

(Tran Thi Hong Yen 2013) The

urbanization rate is estimated for the same

period in terms of conversion of about

11,000 hectares of mainly annual cropland

into industrial and urban land, encompassing

nearly 2,000 projects It was feared that an

estimated 150,000 farmers would lose their

regular work In practice, from 2000 to

2004, Hanoi converted 5,496 hectares of

land for 957 projects, and this had critical

consequences for the living and working

conditions of 138,291 households, among

them 41,000 classified as agricultural

households (Hong Minh 2005) In that

context, rural communities, especially

peri-urban villages, have been facing both

opportunities and challenges to develop and

better their circumstances

Peri-urban urbanization is a global

phenomenon which has been the subject of

scholarly attention, especially in Asian

nations (Leaf 2002, 2011; McGee 2008;

McGee and Robinson 1995; Drummond

1998) Researches on urbanization in

Vietnam have highlighted a set of problems

that have become manifest as the

urbanization process extends into the

peri-urban landscape e.g land degradation,

chaotic land-use practices, growing income

inequalities, or dispossessed farmers unable

to find jobs in the urban economy (Tran Duc

Vien, Nguyen Vinh Quang and Nguyen Van

Dung 2005; Nguyen Van Suu 2014; Tran

Thi Hong Yen 2013; Labbé 2014; Nguyen

Duy Thang 2004; Vu Hong Phong 2006)

When examining the impact of urbanization

on these peri-urban communities, some

researches and media have mentioned social

problems, which have arisen after urbanization but have yet to be explored and discussed

Drawn upon a four-month fieldwork at two peri-urban villages of Hanoi in 2014 and short re-visits recently, this article aims

to investigate the widespread of social problems in Hanoi‟s urbanizing peri-urban communities which happened concurrently with the phenomenon of “land fever,” and at the time local villagers received compensation from land appropriation The paper seeks to understand the impact of urbanization on these communities and the interface between urbanization and the increase of social problems It argues that gambling, drug use, and other social issues have been existing in Vietnamese rural communities long before; however, when urbanization comes, some people have higher chances to engage in these activities Those are villagers who want to transform quickly into entrepreneurs or bosses by joining the “black credit” market and gambling Together with middle-aged and old farmers who greatly relied on agricultural production and face difficulties

in transforming their occupation, they formed the group of marginalized people in the urbanization process

2 Research Method

The material of this article was drawn from field research conducted in two peri-urban villages of Hanoi With an overall aim

to understand the impact of urbanization on these villages, the study was carried out using both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies

For the quantitative component, a

household questionnaire survey was

designed to explore socioeconomic

situations of households, the land

ownership, and current situation of land

transfer in each household, as well as

livelihood transformation of each of its

inhabitants, income & expenditure, and

living standard of each household Our

sample was answered by 200 households in

each village

In this paper, the qualitative survey

results are not presented much and are used

only to understand the social context of the

two villages, the villagers‟ point of view on

urbanization, as well as to provide an

overview on the question of land transfer,

debts, and unemployment among

households

For the qualitative method, this research

applied semi-structured interviews We

conducted 60 individual interviews in the

village Half of those were identified from

the questionnaires The remainder was

selected to ensure representations of people

of different age, gender, educational

background, occupation, marital status, and

economic status The interview included

completely open questions on the

informant's personal information, their

family socioeconomic situation,

occupational transformation, and living

standards More importantly, people were

free to share their own opinions, feelings,

and thoughts on urbanization and its impact

on their lives and their communities Life

history interview methodology was used to

understand the experience and emotions in a

transitional society

3 Urbanization at the Two Studied Villages

The two villages, Lụa and Tơ2, were chosen as case studies for this research Located in the west of Hanoi, Lụa village is about 16 km from the center of the city Prior to 2006, Lụa village basically belonged to one of the lowest administrative units (a commune) of Hoai Duc district, Ha Tay province3 As an ancient village4 in the

Ha Dong silk-producing area, rice cultivation and silk weaving were the two main livelihoods of villagers since the old days After the August revolution of 1945, traditional weaving disappeared After the Renovation, some families restored weaving and dying on a large scale They bought machines and materials from southern Vietnam and established workshops in the village to produce and dye cloth

Immediately after the decollectivization

of the local agriculture in the late 1980s, Lụa people diversified their economic activities, aided by the close geographical position to Hanoi Prior to 2009, approximately seventy percent of over 2,000 households in the village were agricultural households, which

2

These are pseudonyms to protect the informants I called Lụa village given that this village used to be a famous silk weaving village before the 1945 Revolution Tơ village was called by a Dutch anthropologist who did fieldwork

in that village in 1992 and published the book “Facing the

future, Reviving the past: A study of social change in a Northern Vietnamese Village” (Kleinen 1999) I would

like to maintain that pseudonym to help readers easily examine changes in this village after 20 years Except the village‟s names, real names of districts are still used

3

Since 2008, Ha Tay province was merged into Hanoi city after a period of 14 years being a province of its own

4 According to oral sources from local people, the village belonged to the system of “seven La villages, three Mo villages” which are considered ancient villages, formed in the Hung king period In reality, the earliest historical document kept in one of Lụa village‟s pagoda was written

in the 16th century

also engaged in petty trade, hired labor, food

processing or small service industries

Thirty percent of households were

non-agricultural households The majority of

these were traders and entrepreneurs who no

longer cultivated rice and were also ranked

as wealthy people in the village The other

seventy percent of households, by

intensifying their cash crops, peachtree

flowers and petty trade, had a relatively

stable livelihood Compared to other

surrounding villages, Lụa village was

considered one of the well-off villages in the

region and one that had the internal

capability to develop

Under the urban growth policy in the

region, on 1st March 2006, the commune to

which Lụa village belonged was assigned to

Ha Dong town (Ha Tay province) It was no

longer part of Hoai Duc district In June

2009, soon after Ha Tay merged with Hanoi

city, Lụa village became an urban

administrative unit belonging to Ha Dong

district Given its convenient location, the

urbanization of Ha Dong district took place

rapidly: between 2005 and 2010 new roads

and housing projects were implemented

quickly Two major roads (the extensions of

Le Van Luong and Le Trong Tan) were

opened and cut cross Lụa village in 2006

and 2007

In early 2008, most Lụa villagers were

appalled when more than 300 ha of

agricultural land (more than ninety percent

of the total agricultural land of the whole

village) was taken for 13 projects In

response to this sudden change, the majority

of the villagers (especially the agrarian

residents) disagreed with the compensation

policy In March 2008, a protest was formed

against the land appropriation and lasted for

over one year Only towards the end of

2009, under the pressures from the city

government and tactics by property developers, did most villagers accept the compensation and cease protesting (Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh 2017) Since then, the village‟s landscape and the lives of Lụa people have changed dramatically In addition to the improvement of infrastructure surrounding the village, within the village, the roads were upgraded with concrete A system of clean water supply and the wastewater system were installed Some public buildings were renovated Many new two- or three-storied houses were built alongside new roads Ten hamlets of the village have been changed into ten urban residential groups, still bearing their old names All of these changes made the village appear more spacious than before and quite different from other rural villages

in the delta However, since then, most of the 14,000 inhabitants living in approximately 3,400 households in the village must face both opportunities and challenges in their livelihood transformation

Tơ village is adjacent to Lụa village Basically, since the 1945 Revolution, Tơ has been a village of a commune that belongs to Hoai Duc district, Ha Tay province (since

2008 it has merged into Hanoi city) Despite belonging to the area of Ha Dong for the production of natural silk, since the old days, Tơ village has been a small agricultural village in the region (for its history see among others Kleinen 1999) The village is about 18

km from the center of the city, but there has been no direct road access to the village From

Ha Dong town, visitors have to pass by Lụa village or follow the Day River dike to get to the village This is the reason Tơ village has experienced slower urbanization than Lụa and other villages in the area However, according

to the city plan, City Belt No 4 (đường vành

đai 4) partially following the railroad will be

built in the near future and will cut the village

in two The extended Le Trong Tan road will

also be built, which will connect this village

with Ha Dong town

The population of Tơ village today

consists of over 600 households and 2,300

inhabitants with a total agricultural area of

over 65 hectares, of which more than 37 ha

are rice fields (đất đồng), and the remainder

is riverside land (đất bãi) (28 ha) The area

for housing and gardens is approximately 20

ha As in the past, the economic activities of

the village consisted mainly of agriculture,

employing fifty-eight percent of the

inhabitants Most households in the village

combine agriculture, livestock rearing with

construction work, hired work, petty trade,

and services About twenty percent of the

labor force is employed in the village

bureaucracy and state sector In 2013, the

average annual income per person in the

village was about 22 million VND As most

villagers are farmers, petty traders, and hired

workers, the social-economic gap in Tơ

village is not as great as in Lụa village

About fifteen percent of households in the

village are categorized as rich These people

have high income from their gardens or

salaries from their non-agricultural jobs

Very few of them are traders or small

business owners Besides the 13 households

classified as poor in 2013, most of the

households in the village are considered

medium-income households

Although Tơ village has not yet been

integrated into the urban area or its

agricultural land appropriated during the last

five years, the urbanization process of the

city has still impacted it High-rise

apartment buildings now surround the village Since 2008, under the impact of the

“land fever” in the region, many households

in the village have sold their cultivated and residential land to investors or buyers from outside to build new two- or three-storied houses As a result, the village‟s appearance has a mixture of both old and new style houses In 2010, the commune had decided

to use 2,9 ha of the cultivated land of 43 households in the village to build a new cultural house, sports stadium, and kindergarten (an action to prepare for urbanization) In the 2020 master plan of the local government, most of the rice-cultivated land of this village will be appropriated for various mega projects, and the village will become an urban administrative unit of the city

Concerning the impact of urbanization upon local people‟ s lives, as Lụa villagers already benefited from the investment of the city after urbanization while Tơ villagers had not, Lụa people felt they had more advantages from urbanization than Tơ people Since the district of Hoai Duc became a part of the greater city of Hanoi again, most Tơ villagers report that the city invests more compared to when the village belonged to Ha Tay province, especially in rural transportation and sanitation, but at an unequal and sometimes slow rate They expect more fundamental changes regarding their infrastructure in the future Some people complain about the negative consequences of the rapid urbanization such

as more social problems, and the presence of newcomers who were not part of the village

or who had nothing in common with the village in any respect

Table 1: The percentage of local people’s opinions on the advantage/disadvantage after urbanization

villages

Lụa village Tơ village

Both advantage and

disadvantage

Source: survey result in 2014

When asked how they perceived the urbanization, one-fourth of respondents in the two villages explained that they think urbanization is good, one-fourth consider that urbanization is not good, but nearly half regretted the development which had brought both positive and negative results

Table 2: Opinions of local people on recent urban expansion and development in their communities

Opinions on recent

urban expansion and

development in their

communities

villages

Lụa village Tơ village

Both good and not good 55.7% 45.% 50.3%

Source: survey result in 2014

In general, about 50 percent of people in

the survey thought that the recent

urbanization in their villages is both good

and bad The remainder was divided into

two groups While those numbers gave us a

broad overview of people‟s ideas, the

qualitative result shows that in reality, local

people‟s thinking on the impact of

urbanization is more complicated than that

“Urbanization brings more advantages in

transportation We felt happy as the national

road came through the village, but the

household economy is still the same” (Mr Dzung, 55 years old in Lụa village)

“Life looks more urban (sầm uất) but not sustainable (không bền vững) I prefer life

before When we were farmers, after harvests, we did petty trade for extra income Now we do not have rice land, so life is harder” (Mrs Nhan, Lụa village)

“Urbanization is only good for those who know how to take advantage of it They are people who already had capital before or land middle men during land fever These

people could buy more land and market

stalls for themselves, thanks to urbanization

Most villagers could only build a new

house Only old people have some savings

Young couples who are paying for their

children‟s education suffer the most

challenges” (Mr Quang, 40 years old in Lụa

village)

“If there was no urbanization, how would

the village look spacious like today? If

people only did agriculture, how could they

build new multi-storied homes? After land

appropriation, those who are dynamic and

work hard will still become better off, while

the others will be left behind” (Mr Oanh 58

years old in Lụa village)

For the majority of Tơ villagers, they

also express their concerns about the loss of

land in the near future, fearing an unstable

income outside their agrarian jobs If they

lose land, they need to be provided with

jobs In general, mobile and dynamic

farmers are quite optimistic about the impact

of urbanization as well as their future while

villagers who used to confine themselves to

agriculture and within the village area think

more about the negative impacts of

urbanization and are concerned about their

future

4 Urbanization and Social Problems

Urbanization has strongly impacted the

land value in peri-urban communities of

Vietnam recently Research on peri-urban

villages of Hanoi like Co Nhue and Phu

Dien which had been experiencing the

urbanization process in the early 2000s

show that after a decade, at that time, the

land value of that village increased one

hundredfold (Nghiem Lien Huong 2007:

209; Nguyen Van Suu 2014: 131) As Lụa

and Tơ villages are not so close to the center

of Hanoi as compared to the villages mentioned above, the increase in land value

is not as great Nevertheless, after a decade, the value has increased by about 30 times Before 2000, households in these two communities rarely sold their agricultural or residential land, except if someone was in debt At that time, land buyers were often co-villagers who needed to expand their residential land for their children or had some savings to buy land for speculations However, since 2000, with the expansion of the city, the phenomenon where outsiders – first through their relationship with someone

in the village and later through middle men – bought land in the village to live and work

in the surrounding areas, or to speculate, became more popular

In the early 2000s, the first Tơ family sold 100 m2 of residential land to a teacher outside the village for the price of 2 million VND/m2 In 2005, the price went up to 3 million VND/m2 and then 5 million VND/m2 in 2007 From 2009 to 2011, there was a real “land fever” given the expansion

of the city to this area and Lụa, and some surrounding villages were also included in urban administration Real estate from

outside the village (các nhà đầu tư bất động

sản) borrowed money from the bank to buy

land and push the land value to the highest price5 The land value of Tơ village rose up

to about 30 million VND while this number was even higher in Lụa village at around 40 million VND6 The price of agricultural land

was around 200 to 250 million VND per sao

(equal to 1000 m2) Some households in these two villages could even sell their rice

fields for 800 or 900 million VND per sao,

in the event their paddy field was located near a main road, or according to the master plan a main road would be built close to the

paddy field in the future Only since 2012,

given the “frozen real estate market” across

the whole country and the economic

recession, land transactions and land value

in this area decreased to the point where, by

2014, the land value had declined by almost

two-thirds Very few customers came to buy

land Over a period of two months recently,

there have been some transactions, but the

price has just increased a little People

expected the market to warm up again in

2016

From 2000 to 2008, there were only

some households in the two villages who

sold their agricultural and residential land to

obtain money for building houses, paying a debt or paying for big expenditures like treatment for a serious illness, wedding ceremonies or large investments on children‟s education However, during the

“land fever,” beside households selling their service land, many households, especially people in Tơ village, sold their residential land to get money for building houses and paying off debts The main reason was that compared to Lụa and other surrounding village, Tơ villagers own larger areas of residential land

Table 3: Residential land area of the two villages

Lụa village Tơ village

Source: survey result in 2014

5Besides the 306 Tơ households who sold

their service land, 50 households sold parts

of residential land of their own About 14

percent of households in the village had sold

the residential land People partitioned

between 50-100 m2 from their residential

land for sale Among these, about ten

families sold land to pay their debts, and the

5 There is even a digital magazine Tạp chí Đầu tư bất

động sản devoted to investment options, see

http://cafeland.vn/

6 It depends on the location of each piece of land The

land located by a main road or big lane was more

expensive than land by a small lane Besides the historical

record of land, the landscape of the area is also important

However, the above price is almost the highest value at

that time of the two villages

remainder sold land to build new houses This is also the number of households in the village, which have a male member in debt

as a result of gambling It became known that a few men gambled with the land so that

in the end, they had to build houses on agricultural land to live 24.5 percent of Tơ households in the survey had sold their agricultural land, both paddy rice land, and riverside land

In the case of Lụa village, 8.9 percent of households in the survey sold their residential land to build new houses and pay debts However, the number of households that sold their agricultural land, especially cultivated land close to the village‟s houses

and not taken by projects, was about 13

percent As Hoang Hanh and Trung Kien

hamlets have a larger area of residential land

in Lụa village, most households that sold

residential land are in these two hamlets

The problem of “land fever” and

“bankruptcy” was also more concentrated in

these two hamlets The question is how

these two things related to each other

During the French colonial period,

subsistence farmers were not able to meet

their ends, which resulted in desperate

attempts to make money as debt tenants, or

as temporary laborers Many tried their luck

by gambling or selling their houses to pay

their debts (Vu Quoc Thuc 1973) After

1954, the government of the Democratic

Republic of Vietnam (DRV) banned

gambling and other illegal/negative

practices (Malarney 2002) Nevertheless,

since the 1986 Renovation, together with the

economic improvement and life circle and

communal ritual revival, gambling has had a

chance to make a strong comeback Since

the late 1980s to early 2000s, many people

in Lụa and Tơ village, mostly young and

middle-aged men, grouped during weddings,

funerals, village festivals or new year

occasions to gamble During those years,

people often gambled with playing cards (tá

lả), or by playing a game in which coins are

shaken in a bowl (xóc đĩa) or illegal lottery

(lô, đề) However, most players only played

during rituals or on New Year If they lost,

they just dared to sell something like rice or

pigs to pay a debt, or they might put their

watches, valuable jackets or motorbike in

pledge Only some male villagers played

more frequently and have become a type of

“professional gambler” (cờ bạc chuyên

nghiệp) Each small commune like Tơ

village or each hamlet in a big community

like Lụa village always has some of those

gamblers These gamblers later often

entangled young people in the village to gamble when there was “land fever.”

All informants in the two villages affirm that when people had money, they gambled more and with larger amounts of money This fits well with the phenomenon of craft villages in the Red River Delta where many villagers play gambling with big amount of money as they could earn or have more available credit capital from their craft business (Do Ngoc Yen 2015) Instead of spending a lot of time playing cards with small amounts of money like before, recently, people bet more on illegal lotteries, football matches, cockfighting, and played the game where coins are shaken in a bowl with large bets being placed From betting

on soccer games between villagers, people also connected with betting centers in Hanoi and even abroad Interview results show that about 30 percent of households of Tơ village had at least one family member involved in gambling at different levels during the “land fever.” In Lụa village, the total number was about 10 percent, but the percentage varied depending on each hamlet Hamlets like Quang Minh, Hoang Van Thu, Hoa Binh had only about 2 percent, while other hamlets like Thong Nhat, Hoang Hanh, Vinh Quang, Doan Ket had 10 or more percent Some people might just place a small amount on a bet in the daily lottery while other dared to bet large amounts of money on football or coin shaking In the past, most gamblers were middle-aged men who were married During the “land fever,” the number of young people gambling increased This had occurred in other peri-urban villages of Hanoi which experienced the urbanization earlier and was reflected by journalists (Nha Oanh 2015; Quang Khanh 2016; Kinh tế và Đô thị 2015; …)

One Lụa villager explained: “Concerning

gambling, 90 percent of men know how to

play The thing is how they restrain

themselves When children saw that their

parents have money, they knew the parent

would not let them go to jail, so they dared

to play Some people entangled young

people with the hope of winning some

money so they also can play They looked

for families who had quite a lot of

residential land or several portions of

service land and those families with young

sons, especially the only son” (Mr Oanh, 58

years old)

It is possible to say that most of the

gamblers were men in their 30s and 40s

During this new movement, some of them

decided to become bankers/owners of illegal

lotteries (chủ đề), in which they had to

invest more capital, and the risk became

even greater These bankers allowed the

players to place their bet on credit The

players, later on, had to pay both the original

money together with interest In this way,

the bankers could both make money and

gamble themselves At that time, these small

lenders and bankers of illegal lotteries often

combined their money service with acting as

middlemen between land buyers and

villagers who wanted to sell their land All

these factors allowed them to enjoy some

years of transformation into a kind of

owner/boss

“At that time, there were many new

emerging owners in the village There were

bankers of illegal lotteries and land

middlemen They were smartly dressed in

shining shoes, drove new motorbikes, or

even cars around the village and the

surrounding region Whenever they returned

home, they often turned on the karaoke

loudly and sang” (Mr Phuong, a

45-year-old man in Tơ village)

Given the gambling movement, there was also a kind of service to lend money for gambling The small lenders might have savings of their own or borrow from the bank with a monthly interest of 1.3 percent and then lend to the gamblers with the monthly interest of 15 percent As small lenders and borrowers were often co-villagers and even relatives of each other, the amount of money was less than 50 million VND (per borrower) So, people just signed a kind of handwritten contract with each other In the case of relatives, they did not need any paperwork Later on, there were about ten big lenders in Lụa village who loaned money to villagers in Tơ and other surrounding villages These ten families registered as pawnshops They lent money under the form of car for hired service Lenders had to show household registrations and identity cards to rent a car from the shop Afterward, they completed another form to show that the lender pawned that car to the pawnshop (in reality the car for hire service and the pawnshop were the same or related to each other) With this service, the borrowers also had to pay 15 percent daily interest However, the owner often took interest in advance On the due date for payment, if the borrowers could not pay the debt, the borrowers came to the borrowers‟ families to ask for money

“After selling land, the children knew that the family has money, so they went to gamble They went to play without any money, playing by pawning the debt After that, the lenders came to ask for the debt The owners sent gangsters to the house They forewarned both lenders and their families Sometimes, they even threw shrimp paste into their house” (Mrs Phu, 68 years old, in Tơ village)

Police reports in Lụa village showed that

in some cases, the lenders used firearms to