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

VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 “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 6th January 2019; Revised 26th April 2019; Accepted 15th May 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33100/jossh5.5.NguyenThiThanhBinh 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 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 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 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 năm 2009 Thủ tướng Chính phủ việc phê duyệt điều chỉnh định hướng Quy hoạch tổng thể phát triển hệ thống đô thị Việt Nam đến năm 2025 tầm nhìn đến năm 2050]  Institute of Anthropology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences; email: nguyenttbinh@yahoo.com 550 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 80-81) In 2008, the city of Hanoi alone was expanded by more than 2000 km2 and nearly 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 periurban 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 periurban 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 551 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 Research Method The material of this article was drawn from field research conducted in two periurban 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 552 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 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 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 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 Since 2008, Ha Tay province was merged into Hanoi city after a period of 14 years being a province of its own 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 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 also engaged in petty trade, hired labor, food processing or small service industries Thirty percent of households were nonagricultural 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 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 553 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 (đường vành 554 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 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 are rice fields (đất đồng), and the remainder is riverside land (đất bãi) (28 ha) The area for housing and gardens is approximately 20 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 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 ricecultivated 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 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 555 Table 1: The percentage of local people’s opinions on the advantage/disadvantage after urbanization Village Tơ village Lụa village Total percentage of both villages Disadvantage 9.0% 36.8% 23.8% Advantage 77.6% 21.1% 47.6% Both advantage and disadvantage 13.4% 42.1% 28.6% 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 Village Lụa village Tơ village Total percentage of both villages Good 18.2% 32.7% 25.9% Not good 26.1% 21.8% 23.8% 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 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 556 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 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 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 million VND/m2 In 2005, the price went up to million VND/m2 and then 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 (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 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 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 557 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 From 2000 to 2008, there were only some households in the two villages who sold their agricultural and residential land to Table 3: Residential land area of the two villages Land area Name of the village Lụa village Tơ village = 231 30.7% 51.0% Source: survey result in 2014 Besides 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 There is even a digital magazine Tạp chí Đầu tư bất động sản devoted to investment options, see http://cafeland.vn/ 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 558 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 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 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 periurban villages of Hanoi which experienced the urbanization earlier and was reflected by journalists (Nha Oanh 2015; Quang Khanh 2016; Kinh tế Đô thị 2015; …) Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 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-yearold man in Tơ village) 559 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 covillagers 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 560 Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 demand the money back Many parents or wives of borrowers had to pay the gambling debt by selling land In some cases, if the borrowers could not pay, they had to leave the village and hide elsewhere far away During the “land fever” period, in both Tơ and Lụa village, everyday villagers gossiped about whose children incurred debt and how much As a result, about 60 people in Lụa village and over ten young people in Tơ village went into bankruptcy in this way They often had a debt of about billion VND (about 50,000 USD) If the “land fever” lasted longer, the list of debtors would also be longer However, many families have not yet found a solution or sold the land to pay the debt for their children due to the depressed real estate market since 2012 The lenders must accept the fact that their debtors could not sell the land They also had problems, as they could not recoup their investment while most of their capital borrowed was from the bank Many small and big lenders also went into bankruptcy Some of them were in debt to the tune of several billion VND and had left the village to hide somewhere Some by the end also sold their land to pay the debt After the “land fever”, the gambling problem decreased: “Now people have no money, so they not play for large amounts Those men who are addicted to gambling still play without doing any job They just sit around the whole day to play cards to kill time Some people, especially the laborers, still bet on illegal lotteries every day” (Hung, a 33 years old man in Lụa village) Together with gambling, some young men in the two villages also engaged in drug use Before the urbanization, there were very few drug addicts in these communities So far, there are about ten drug users in Tơ village and over 20 in Lụa village Most of them are between 30 and 35 years old Four people in Lụa village have AIDS In the eyes of many local people, these gamblers and drug addicts are people with no direction (chệch hướng) in the urbanization process They have become people who only want to consume but not want to work They have failed to transform themselves into bosses but no longer want to be farmers or laborers Together with the unemployed, they have formed a group of men who just hang around teashops or private houses to chat or gamble, a popular phenomenon in urbanized communities (Nguyen Van Suu 2009: 26) Conclusion The idea of this research is rooted in a phenomenon in Hanoi peri-urban villages in the late 2000s and early 2010s when the land price rose to the highest price in the history and several villagers, especially young and middle-aged men, declared bankruptcy Journalists and media often reflect on negative practices such as gambling and drug addiction as a consequence of urbanization (Dinh Quang 2008, Nguyen Trung Thanh 2011) This research proves that social problems had existed long before in Vietnamese villages in general and in peri-urban communities in particular When people have money from land compensation and land selling, they gambled more and with larger amounts of money Some local villagers considered gambling as a way to transform their lives and their identities As “land fever” went hand in hand with the fast urban expansion, more villagers were swept away in the storm Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh / VNU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 550-562 of “black credit” and gambling Given that land became a financial source, people dared to bet on credit or borrow money with high interest to gamble By the end, the bankers, money lenders, and the players went into bankruptcy Many people had to sell their land to pay the debt These are the biggest losers in the process of urbanization The research result also shows that the number of people engaged in gambling and social problems is different among villages and even among the hamlets of a village When urbanization comes, young people in poor and agricultural villages/hamlets are easy to be associated with social problems than villagers who could transform from agriculture to trade and services long before and during urbanization It showed that each community has its response to the urban transition, depending upon its local tradition and history In this case, the tradition of hardworking, entrepreneurial and dynamic people is not only important for those in the urbanizing communities to respond to the urban transition but also to avoid the impact of the increasingly social evils during the urbanization process One of the main reasons for the appearance and increase of social problems is unemployment Before urbanization, Vietnamese farmers already faced the problem of lacking jobs The recent expansion of Hanoi city by administration strongly affected the social lives of many peri-urban farmers through land appropriation It had a negative impact on about half of the villagers who greatly relied on agricultural production for their livelihood While those villagers had to cope with challenges in transforming their livelihood, the local government and private investors did not keep their promises to create jobs for local people after taking 561 away their agricultural land (Nguyen Van Suu 2014; Tran Thi Hong Yen 2013; Vu Hong Phong 2006) As a result, many have to return to agriculture, doing informal work, or become unemployed Thus, together with the changes in land appropriation and socioeconomic development policies in peri-urban communities, the government should attempt to meet the highest aspirations of local people and create more jobs as compensation for the lost land Having more jobs is a permanent solution to reduce social problems not only for the peri-urban communities but for all other urban and rural communities Acknowledgment: This article is drawn from my research project on urbanization and sustainable development in peri-urban communities in Vietnam‟s Northern Delta, funded by IFS (2012-2014) I would like to express my gratitude to the foundation for financially supporting my research References 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