These are some excerpts that I translated from the original article in Chinese.
人物周刊：现在有一个现象，就是在城郊结合部农村集体所有制的土地上，建起了很多村民建的房，一租30年，相当于商品房。许多城里人因为买不起城里的房子，会向那边流动，把外来务工者可以租住的农民房的价格又抬高了。
秦晖：对，这个是国际上贫民住房的一个非常重要的问题。实际上政府也没有驱赶穷人，但是贫民区住的人多，价格抬高，穷人住不起就都走掉了。这是市场经济带来的问题，我觉得还是要靠国家福利来解决。
NFZK: Recently there’s been a phenomenon of city people moving outwards towards the countryside, living in homes that were intended for migrant workers and peasants, raising the prices of real estate there.
Qin Hui: Yes, this is a very important international issue. It’s not that the governments are trying to drive out the poor, but when there are increasing numbers of people living in these areas, prices climb and poor people can no longer afford to live there. This is a problem that arises in a market economy, and I believe that only a social welfare system can address it.
人物周刊：您发出声音的主要对象是谁？是政府，还是大的利益集团比如房产商们？
秦晖：我的意见本质上就是约束政府权力，要政府承担责任，必须给这些进城的人解决住房。如果有能力就给他们盖廉租房，暂时没有能力至少不能撵他们走。
NFZK: Your opinions and analysis–for whose ears are they meant? Is it the government or special interest groups such as real estate developers?
Qin Hui: My opinions boil down to checks and balances on the power of the government, I want them to take the responsibility and solve the issue of housing for the urban poor and migrant workers. If they have the wherewithal, build some cheap housing, and if not, at least don’t try to drive them away.
人物周刊：作为一个城里人，您不害怕城市变得乱糟糟吗？
秦晖：当然害怕。但我们不能以这个为理由剥夺农民的权利。乱糟糟的状况，当然是要解决的，而且世界各国的贫民社区发展史已经表明，这方面有了很大进步，哈莱姆的治安就比以前好很多，它就在哥伦比亚大学旁边，八九十年代去哥大的中国学者住哈莱姆的大有人在，所以我不同意温铁军的一句话，“中国学者一到国外就都是周旋于上流社会，从来没有人去关心贫民窟。”另外他转了一圈发现贫民窟比较恐怖，所以得出的结论和南非白人政权是一样的：必须不准穷人在城里住……新农村建设如果按这个思路搞就和南非一样啊，南非搞的黑人家园就是这种制度：黑人可以在城里打工，但不要在城里安家，打工到三十几岁就该回去了。
NFZK: As a city dweller, are you afraid that the cities are going to become dangerous or experience a breakdown in social order:
Qin Hui: Of course I have those fears. But I don’t believe this is a good reason to deprive other people of their rights. This lack of order is of course something that we have to work on, and the history of slums in other countries indicates that progress can be made; consider Harlem, which is much better than before and is right next to Columbia University. The Chinese scholars that went to Columbia in the 1980s and 90s often set foot in Harlem, so I don’t agree with that Wen Tiejun said about “as soon as Chinese scholars go abroad, they only mingle with the upper crust and never care about what happens in the slums.” On the other hand, he went out to the slums and thought they were scary, and so reached a conclusion similar to that of the South African apartheid government: we can’t let poor people live in the cities…the new construction and development in the village, if it goes down that track, will end up being just like South Africa of that era, when you had Bantustans: the blacks could enter the city to work, but not live there, and after working until their 30s were told to go back to their homes.
人物周刊：这里要打个问号，他们真的好起来了吗？原来在村里一年挣几百块，进了城打工一个月就有500块，“比在老家强多了”。其实很多人在城里谋生，心里是有创伤的，但他怀着希望，要往上游走，因为整个大环境都把这个价值判断塞给他：城里一定是比农村好的。
秦晖：对，你的问号我很赞同。但这里有两个层次的问题：第一，我们所谓的好与不好以什么人的感受为依据？只能以他的感受为依据。只要这个人是健康的、没丧失理智的，那么他就是具有判断力的，这个健康不是指文化上的，若说由于文化素质差而不懂什么是好，这样讲就太不人道了，等于剥夺了穷人的选择权。
第二个层次是，他做出某种价值判断实际上隐含有某种被迫的成分，但是这种成分他没有说出来。比如有人说他进城了，尽管生活很糟糕，一大堆人挤大通铺，妻子儿女留在老家，没有家庭生活，但还是觉得好，起码比原来在农村受苦要好——他实际上有一个预期，虽然这个预期可能是虚幻的，是达不到的。
这时候有两个选择：一是因为认定他的预期是达不到的，就干脆取消他的预期，把他赶走；二是我们来分析为什么他的预期达不到。
一种可能是预期太高：他要当总统、要当大富翁，这是做不到的；另一种可能是在城里不存在公平竞争，哪怕蓝领行业的公平竞争都没有，很多行业他们是不被准入的，那就不能说他这个预期是不合理的；第三种连预期都谈不上，而是本来完全可以做到的、顺其自然的事情，由于人为的阻隔，无法实现。
比如，有些人在城里处在类似打黑工的状态，只能住工棚，没有正常的家庭生活，但他觉得挣点钱寄回家去盖房子也是好的——其实很多进城打工的人没有在城里常住的预期，他们所谓的希望就是35岁以前住工棚，35岁以后回家——如果我们想给他们指出某种希望，不是恰恰要维护他们有在贫民窟生活的权利吗？
NFZK: I think we have to raise a question here–are they really better off in the city? Before, in the villages, it would take them an entire year to earn a few hundred yuan, and now in the cities they can make 500 in a month, which is “much better than at home.” However, in some sense coming to the cities to work is quite damaging, because they come here with hopes of upward mobility, because the entire environment is feeding them these values: cities are naturally better than the countryside.
Qin Hui: Right, I agree with that. But this questions has two levels. Firstly, upon what basis do you judge what is good and bad? We can only rely on their subjective feelings. If a person is healthy and mentally stable, we can assume that they still have the ability to make such judgments, and by healthy I don’t mean educated or cultured, because if we are going to say that they don’t really understand things because they aren’t educated, well, that would just be too unfair and would be tantamount to depriving them of their right to choose.
On another level, if these value judgments are somehow based on things beyond their control, they do not always tell you so. For example, these workers come into the city, and even though their lives are difficult, with everyone crammed together, sleeping on the floor, their wives and children at home and therefore no semblance of family life, they still think it’s good, because at least it’s better than what they would have to endure at home–they actually have expectations, even though these expectations can be somewhat illusory and therefore cannot be reached.
At this point, they are confronted with two choices: one, because they are unable to meet their own expectations, they just forgo these expectations and the other is that we attempt to analyze why their expectations were not met.
One possibility is that their expectations were too high: they want to become president, they want to become rich, these are just impossible. The other possibility is that they are faced with unfair competition, because even some blue collar jobs aren’t level playing fields, in fact they are practically barred from various professions, in which case you cannot say that their expectations are not rational. The third possibility is that there was nothing inherently wrong with the level of their expectations, but because of human obstacles they are somehow unable to realize their goals.
For example, some of the people that come to the cities are working “underground”, so they can only stay in makeshift homes, and don’t have normal family lives, but they feel that remitting money home to build a house is something good–in fact, many of the migrant workers don’t harbor hopes of long-term residence in the city, they just think that before they are 35, they can live in those makeshift dorms and after they turn 35, go home–and if we really want to give them something to hope for, don’t we have to begin by safeguarding their rights in these slums?
人物周刊：户籍也好，违章建筑也好，这一道道的门槛其实是阻碍农村人向城市流动，虽然现在有几亿大军在流动。
秦晖：对啊，实质是剥夺贫民的权利。比如，违章建筑的概念实际上是非常任意的，如果非常明确地规定什么建筑是违章，什么是不违章，而且严格执行，那很可能把城里人也给赶走了。但城里人你是不可能把他赶走的，因为他有城市户口，哪怕他住在狗窝里也不能赶他走，所以这个制度就有了很大的弹性。可是，把外来务工者赶走的理由往往是私设摊点、私搭乱建，并不是说他没有城市户口。
NFZK: Whether it’s the hukou system or the illegal housing issue, these end up just being obstacles thrown up to prevent greater influx of migrant workers into the city, even though there are already hundreds of millions of these people on the move.
Qin Hui: Exactly, these are just ways of depriving poor people of their rights. For example, the illegal housing concept is somewhat arbitrary, if they had an unambiguous definition of what is legal and what is not, and upheld the letter of the law, they might end up kicking out a bunch of urban dwellers. But you can’t kick out the urban dwellers, because they have a city hukou, and even if they live in a dog house you wouldn’t be able to expel them from the city, and so you can see this system’s flexibility. However, one of the main reasons for expelling migrants are the private markets and stalls they set up, or the haphazard houses being thrown up, not because they don’t have a city hukou.
秦晖：前几年讨论民族主义的时候，有人说西方的民主很虚伪，比如看起来对黑人多好，其实白人心里还是很歧视黑人的。已故的何家栋先生就写了一篇文章，提出伪善和伪恶的概念。他说，对，其实西方很多白人心里是看不起黑人的，但行为上他们必须对黑人非常尊重，说这是虚伪也可以，但这种虚伪是一大进步；“文革” 时，很多人其实是很同情“牛鬼蛇神”的，心里并不认为他们是坏人，但必须表现出一种对他们的歧视甚至仇恨，上去踢两脚打两拳，否则就可能受到责难和迫害，这就很糟糕了。
我认为一个社会应该有伪善机制，因为人性总是不尽善的。荀子很早就说过“人性本恶，善者为也”，善都是装出来的，你可以说他是提出了伪善的概念，但如果社会有一种机制，让好人能做好事，坏人至少不做坏事，或被迫做一些好事，那当然是有积极意义的。应该避免一种机制，使人表现得比他心里想的更坏。
Qin Hui: A few years ago, some people were discussing democracy and saying that western democracies were in fact hypocritical, for example because it seems that they treat black people well but in fact white people still, in their hearts, look down on black people. As a consequence, people like He Jiadong wrote an essay about hypocritical values of good and bad, and said that even though many white people still look down on white people, they still had to treat black people with respect, and you can call that hypocritical if you want, but such hypocrisy is still a sign of progress: during the Cultural Revolution, many people believed in the “ox spirits and snake gods”, didn’t think they were bad people, but had to publicly express a form of hatred or discrimination towards them by kicking and punching them, for otherwise they would receive condemnation themselves, which is really terrible.
I believe that society ought to have a mechanism for producing or encouraging such “hypocritical” goodness, because human nature is not perfectly good. Xun Tze said that people are by nature evil, but can learn to act good, so you could say that he was the first to propose this concept of hypocritical good, but if society had a mechanism for such a thing, to let good people do good things and let bad people not do too much damage, or be forced to do some good things, this would still be a positive thing. What we should avoid is a system where there are more evil actions in actuality than exists in the heart.