Every five days, a country market converges in a horn-honking, pig-squealing clamor on the old arching stone bridge that spans the river coursing through here.

For as long as anyone can remember, the biggest crop in this valley has been the corn that grows tall and thick by the river’s edge. But in the last two years, a new crop, qinghao, or sweet wormwood, has been crowned king, driven by a desperate need in the tropical world for new malaria treatments.

The rugged valleys and steep gorges along the Apeng River, in central China, have long been a metaphor for idyllic remoteness. Even China’s dazzling economic takeoff had done little to change that, until the World Health Organization approved a malaria treatment using artemisinin, the active ingredient of the qinghao plant, in 2001.

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Other than the movement of the shade in the courtyard, time in this village seems to have come to standstill and become entirely meaningless.

Primitive mud houses and modern tile houses are crowded together by the dry river bed; at the entrance to the village old men squat together smoking cigarettes, while aimless young men sit on the steps of their homes. Xiao Zhai village is like an orphan abandoned in the deep recesses of a mountain, with only a narrow and beat up dirt road to show that it hasn’t completely lost touch with modern civilization.

When this reporter first arrived in Xiao Zhai village and began walking around, he noticed a young man with thick near-sighted glasses following his every move. This somewhat disheveled young man had a dirty face and stains on his clothes, but something about his expression distinguished him from everyone else in the village. As soon as the young man heard that the reporter had come to do interviews, he enthusiastically invited the reporter to his home, as if he had a lot on his mind he wanted to talk about.

–Translated by Peijin Chen

Original article not online.

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The China that Wang Huazhong glimpses on television is in the midst of an amazing transformation. In cities he has never visited, skyscrapers tower over highways choked with cars, and people jam glass-fronted malls buying up jewelry and luggage simply to pass the time.

Here in his village in the country’s northwest, Wang sees the same desiccated landscape that has changed little in his 46 years. A rutted dirt track winds through treeless mountains to the county seat 30 miles away, the outermost boundary of his experience. Watermelon plants emerge reluctantly from chalky soil, waiting for rain that may never come. A wood stove occupies his mud floor, painting his walls with soot.

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800 million farmers are expected to be exempted from agriculture tax in 2005, said Finance Minister Jin Renqing Tuesday in his report to an on-going meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on the first five months’ national fiscal revenue and expenditure situation.

“To date, China has lately exempted 19 provinces, including Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China, from agriculture tax, plus last year’s eight provinces, the country’s 27 provinces will no longer pay agriculture tax this year,” Jin said when reporting to the 16th session of the 10th NPC Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, which opened Sunday.

In China’s remaining four provinces that are still being charged of the agriculture tax, the tax will be revoked in 217 counties and cities, Jin said.

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Yu Jianrong of CASS also says that peasants organizing themselves to represent their own interests is the only way they will be able to solve their problems. Yu suggests that China should let the township level be self governing and make the county the lowest level of the PRC government system.

Yu’s article “Why I Propose Recreating the Rural Associations” is in Chinese.

(...)
Read the rest of David Cowhig: Yu Jianrong’s Writing on Rural Associations (555 words)

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An odd regulation in Beichan village, Dazu county, Chongqing province, China, now requires emigrant women laborers to have a medical exam for “virginity verification” if they desire to receive compensation for land requisition. Five unmarried women are at their wits-end with this regulation now in place.

As reported by Chongqing Evening News, Luo Wenhua, head of the second commune of Beichan village, held a meeting in early May among commune members to discuss the compensation plan for land requisition. In regards to the issue of unmarried women receiving compensation for land requisition, Luo demanded that Tan Shuying and four other unmarried women come back from their work outside town in order to have the “virginity verification” done. The medical results of the verification would determine whether they would get compensation.

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Peasant unrest has grabbed more attention in China over the last few years. I have noticed a common useage — such and such a policy is a “tranquilizer pill for the peasants”. I have seen it applied to the higher grain prices over the past year, to the policies pushed by Party and State Council Document No. 1 of 2004 and other policies. Google actually found 448 unique hits for “tranquilizer pill” and “peasants” when not adjacent and 126 hits when they are adjacent. Adjacent would be nongmin dingxinwan (entered in characters) meaning peasant tranquilizer pill, while nonadjacent would capture hits for adjacent plus other non-adjacent formulations such as nongmin chixia dingxinwan peasant eats a tranquilizer pill.

(...)
Read the rest of David Cowhig: Can Google measure PRC policymaker worries about uppity peasants? (65 words)

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In a country where 800m people, about 60% of the population, live in the countryside on an average income of less than a dollar a day, rural backwardness weighs heavily on the minds of China’s leaders as they dream of joining the ranks of the world’s leading economies. And in a country whose Communist Party came to power on the back of a peasant rebellion, distant memories of the vehemence of rural discontent arouse fears that unless something is done to make peasants happier, China will be plunged into turmoil. To assess China’s future, it is crucial to understand the countryside. But it is not easy.

Despite China’s increasing openness to prying foreign eyes, the dynamics of village life remain hidden away. Although the Chinese media report extensively on rural problems, foreign journalists require government approval to conduct interviews in the countryside (as indeed, in theory, they do for any off-base reporting in China). Foreign correspondents can often get away with conducting unauthorised interviews in the more cosmopolitan urban areas, but rural officials invoke the rules with far greater regularity, fearful that critical press reports could damage their careers. The presence in a village of any outsider asking sensitive questions can quickly arouse official attention and often results in detention, the confiscation of notes and other materials, and orders to leave the area immediately.

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China has more than enough grain reserves to cover its immediate needs, but farmers need more help if the country is to ensure future food supplies, officials said Sunday.

The communist government has long viewed food self-sufficiency as a matter of national security and worries about feeding its population of 1.3 billion people.

“Judging from current figures, I think that in the near future there won’t be any problem in the food supply,” Duan Yingbi, deputy director of the Chinese Cabinet’s Central Leading Group for Rural Work, told reporters during the annual meeting of China’s parliament, which has made boosting support for farmers a priority.

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About 730 million Chinese farmers are expected to benefit from the agricultural tax exemption this year,as 26 of its 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have announced a termination of all agricultural taxes, said an official with the Ministry of Agriculture.

Fan Xiaojian, vice agriculture minister of China, made the remarks at a working conference held Friday and Saturday in east China’s Shandong Province. He said that the exemption will release about 730 million farmers from taxes totaling more than 20 billion yuan (about 2.41 billion US dollars).

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