Don't Fence Me In: Overnight Lockdown in Beijing's Migrant Neighborhoods

This is not the kind of "gated community" that you want, people.  Read the whole thing.  I give you a blurb here:

The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.

Aside from being yet another example of the perils of living in a police state, all this seems ... weirdly familiar somehow.  Hmmmm.  Very ... 16th century Venice, y'know.

You may recall that we've talked on this blog before about the plight of China's millions of rural poor, whose lives are miserable in the hinterlands and also in the cities, where they flock for jobs and end up being second-class citizens in their own country.

Jonah Goldberg wants to know what Thomas Friedman thinks of all this.  Friedman, you will recall, is a Beijing-bootlicking idiot.  Shall I remind you of three people far more courageous than Friedman and his ilk?