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GUANGZHOU: Guangzhou is a chaotic export capital in southern China that for years has been a magnet for migrant workers like Lin Mu. He arrived three years ago and began working as a motorcycle taxi driver, ferrying people to work or to go shopping.

Guangzhou, he figured, would bring him riches.

Instead, Guangzhou, one of China’s richest cities, is now essentially kicking him out.

Lin, 50, is one of the tens of thousands of motorcycle owners now considered threats to social stability. Motorcycles and motorized bicycles, primary modes of transport for migrants clawing up the economic ladder, are being banned in the name of reducing traffic and crime. Without his bike, Lin predicted he would have to move.

“It might be because Guangzhou is richer now,” Lin said, offering an explanation for the ban and then laughing at his own words. “There are no more poor people, so there is no room for motorcycles! Everyone has millions and millions!”

The Communist Party is trying to focus the expectations of the Chinese people on a better, if distant, future where everyone is more affluent and China is a true modern nation. Yet cities like Guangzhou and nearby Shenzhen that have already begun to taste real prosperity are learning that new wealth can bring new problems and not always solve old ones.

The motorcycle ban is a case in point. Guangzhou is getting richer

and, for a moment this month, even appeared to have become the first mainland Chinese city with a per capita income of $10,000. But as incomes have steadily risen in Guangzhou, so have crime, traffic and inequality. The same affluence that has attracted migrants like Lin to the city also has brought an influx of criminals, particularly since 2000. Motorcycle

gangs, thieves and muggers have sparked a crime wave.

“Crime will be a long-term problem in Guangzhou,” said Peng Peng, director of research management for the Guangzhou Academy of Social

Sciences. “As long as there is a vast gap between the rich and poor in the city, Guangzhou will suffer from crime.”

Inequality is unquestionably stark: Last week, Guangzhou had to lower its per capita income figure to $7,800 because the more glamorous $10,000 figure was calculated without including the city’s estimated three million-plus migrants. Still, problems like crime have largely diluted public sympathy. Last month, a high-ranking official in Guangzhou’s Communist Party blamed migrants for the city’s social problems and proposed a cap on the number of migrants allowed into the city in Guangdong Province.

The city has not instituted these restrictions, but the motorcycle ban is having the same affect. Thousands of motorcycle taxi riders left Guangzhou before the deadline on Monday, when the police were expected to tighten enforcement. Still others have turned over their motorcycles and motorized bicycles to government impound lots in

exchange for modest cash payments.

“A lot of people have left,” said one rider, Gong, 40, his eyes darting in search of customers as well as police officers as he and other riders idled along a major thoroughfare in the city’s Tianhe District. “We’re just biding our time until the final deadline on the

15th.”

Gong, who declined to give his full name, migrated to Guangzhou five years ago from Hunan Province, bringing his wife and child. He had earned about $250 a month on his motorcycle a healthy wage for a migrant but now he said he was not certain what he would do.

“Oh, here they come, here they come!” he said, suddenly racing off as two police officers approached on a motorbike. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.”

Crime has become a major problem in Guangzhou. Most major Chinese cities feel very safe by American standards, but Guangzhou now routinely reports more than 100,000 criminal offenses a year. Thefts, purse snatching, robberies and muggings have become common. One 2006 public opinion poll found that only 20 percent of residents felt safe. Hawkers at one pedestrian overpass in Tianhe District were selling switchblades and collapsible metal rods as self-defense weapons.

Last March, Zhang Guifang, a high- ranking Communist Party official in the city, signaled a tougher stance when he castigated police officers for their timidity and encouraged them to open fire against suspects when necessary. The police subsequently shot five mugging suspects.

April 20, 2007 — Rescuers blasted through a wall and were removing tons of debris yesterday to find two miners trapped under at least 45 feet of rock and mud at a surface coal mine in western Maryland. Parts of the wall collapsed onto operators of a mechanical shovel and bulldozer Tuesday at the Job No. 3 Mine in Garrett County, Maryland, owned by Tri-Star Mining Inc. There has been no contact with the miners, whose names have not been released, since the wall collapse, according to...