Can all of India’s “shining” beat this? Beggars in China now beg through the internet, for sums as low as 10 yuan (Rs 60). It is routine for beggars in Beijing to get together to hire an apartment. Foreigners cower for cover as a mute beggar aims a stone at their car windshield. The reason for his wrath? Not the foreigners’ refusal to give him money, but their Chinese driver’s rebuke to him to stop pretending that he cannot speak. The next day, as two foreigners from the same group give him money, he flashes the “Thumbs Up” sign at them.

Unlike in India, beggars in China are not simply tolerated. Instead, in a country where the rights of millions of educated “migrant workers” are flouted everyday, beggars’ rights are a major topic of discussion.

Beggars are growing at a rate proportionate to the pace at which China adopts the “market economy”. Under Mao’s “planned economy”, everyone was covered with a security blanket, however thin that may have been. Now, there is little left of it. So if you are out of a job (as approximately 50 million Chinese are, according to official figures), too old or too young to work, with a family too poor to look after you, you become a beggar. Many beggars are educated. They kneel silently behind large posters displayed on footpaths, which tell passers-by their stories.

Vagrants’ republic

Beggars are a common sight in big Buddhist temples, Beijing, Shanghai and the newly-built coastal cities of Guangdong province in the South, where most foreign investment is concentrated. There have been proposals to ban them from certain areas where, complain citizens and foreigners, they are a “nuisance”.

In India, such proposals would be implemented without any discussion. Beggars would just be picked up and dumped on the city’s outskirts. This is known to happen in China, on the eve of international events. But these proposals have been made in normal times, as a matter of policy, and, in a country always berated for its lack of democracy, they have been opposed not by human rights activists, but by ordinary citizens. People have been vocal about “personal freedom and the right to survival”, about how beggars sacrifice their dignity to beg. The authorities have had to concede that begging is no crime.

Citizens have also provided solutions: crack down on the gangs who force children to beg, and direct adult beggars to the nearest shelter, where they can stay for 10 days and be sent home — only if they so desire.

Till last August, beggars had no such choice. Those without official identification papers were routinely sent to detention centres and then deported home.

No foreign food, please

In March 2003, a young artist was beaten to death at one such centre, leading to an outcry and the repeal of the 20-year-old anti-vagrancy law. Detention centres were changed into “shelters” for vagrants and beggars. But they have few takers. As the Beijing group discovered, it makes more sense to earn a living by begging than to be sent home after a 10-day all-expenses-paid holiday in the care of former jail wardens. After spending 80 yuan a month on rent, five yuan a day on transport and some more on food, most beggars had almost 500 yuan left to send to their villages every month. This is the average salary of most waitresses and shop assistants.

Like in India, beggars in China are not happy unless they are given at least a respectable 1 yuan. But what makes them really mad is when you give them non-Chinese food instead of money. McDonald’s junk may rival noodles as the urban Chinese’s favourite fast food, but a beggar, when offered a pack of McDonald’s French fries, backed away with an angry curse.

Protests about beggars’ rights notwithstanding, even as this goes to press, comes the news that begging and sleeping in the open are to be banned from April in a whole host of places in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. Only underage, seriously ill, or mentally challenged beggars will be taken to relief centres. The rest will be “punished”. Significantly, it was in Guangzhou that the artist’s death in a detention centre took place.