Migrant 'Villages' Within a City Ignite Debate.

BEIJING -- The community is walled and gated, an enclosure of rows of crowded low-rise homes and shops, where people live under the gaze of surveillance cameras and apart from the city. The police patrol around the clock, and security guards stop unfamiliar faces to check identification papers. In the morning, only one gate is open, through which parents head off to work and children go to school. At night, the gate is locked, preventing street loiterers from trespassing. The area, Shoubaozhuang, is not one of the affluent, gated residential compounds springing up around Beijing, but a poor village of rural migrants toiling at low-paying jobs. It was chosen, along with 15 other areas in the Daxing district of Beijing, to be walled off to outsiders, in what officials say is an experimental effort to curb crime. The authorities say the experiment has been a success -- the Communist Party-run People's Daily said the crime rate in the walled villages in Daxing district dropped by 73 percent from April to July this year -- and the ''walled village'' concept is being quickly expanded to other districts outside Beijing's center that are populated by migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]