For 10-year-old student Xie Xiaoyuan, just getting to school is an ordeal. On a recent day, her frostbitten ears are testament to just how difficult the trip is.

“I get up at five o’clock,” she says, “then I comb my hair and start walking.”

Xie navigates a mountain path in China’s remote Shaanxi province in the dark, trudging through snowstorms and mudslides. Then she has to get a bus for about 10 miles. She hasn’t time to eat breakfast.

“For lunch, I spend 15 cents on two pieces of bread and a drink,” she says.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch — or so the economic theory goes. But that’s no longer the case for Xie and the 25,000 poverty-stricken children in China who now receive a free meal, thanks to the “Free Lunch for Children” charity campaign set up by a Chinese journalist.

Indirectly, his efforts have led to the government announcing it will provide nutritional support for 26 million of China’s poorest children every day.

While childhood obesity expands in China’s cities, China Daily reported last year on “chronically underfed” children in poor rural areas. One post at Ministry of Tofu showed a group of rural children on their long and perilous daily trudge to fetch water in drought-hit Sichuan, while another used images of empty chairs to vividly illustrate the lives of families split by economic migration.

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Post tags: food supply, nutrition, poverty, poverty alleviation, rural children, rural education, schools, Shaanxi
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Last year, there were officially 27 million rural poor in China. Wu Guobao, a senior researcher in rural poverty at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, said the new standard would raise that number to 100 million.

“The previous line was set too low to meet people’s basic needs for subsistence and development,” Wu told AFP.

As China battles high inflation, with all-important food prices recording double-digit growth, more and more low-income people are struggling to make ends meet.

This puts the poverty line closer to, but still shy of, the international standard set by the UN of $1.25 a day. The Wall Street Journal describes the controversy surrounding the definition of poverty in China:

China’s definition of poverty has long been controversial, in particular because the government has often used its record of poverty reduction as a defense against critics of its human-rights record. China argues that access to basic human necessities like food, water and shelter are the most fundamental human rights and should therefore take precedence over others.

By setting the poverty threshold low, some analysts have said, China’s leaders deliberately inflate their success in securing those rights for the nation’s poor.

[...]“Our country already has the world’s second-largest GDP, so I think we should be using the international standard for the poverty line,” commented one user of the popular Sina Weibo microblogging service writing under the handle Zizhu Choushui. “What is this 2,000-plus yuan figure based on?”

While an artificially low poverty line has indeed emphasized the CCP’s achievements in alleviating poverty, it has done little to address China’s enormous income gap. The Globe and Mail reports:

The ruling communist party has claimed part of its legitimacy on lifting people out of poverty, but while the country’s breathtaking development in last three decades has lifted millions out of extreme poverty, it has also created one of the world’s widest income gaps.

[...]The 2,300 yuan that the government deems the minimum needed to cover a year’s living costs in the countryside, would barely pay for one night in some hotels in Beijing and Shanghai.

The BBC quotes Hu Jintao forecasting to the future of China’s income gap:

Chinese President Hu Jintao has made tackling rural poverty a cornerstone of his leadership.

He has rolled out large-scale development projects across China’s poverty-stricken western provinces, in a bid to create what he calls a “harmonious society”.

On Tuesday, state media quoted him as saying that by 2020 no-one in China would need to worry about food and clothing.

“Their access to compulsory education, basic medical care and housing will also be ensured,” he said.

“The current trend of a widening rich-poor gap will be reversed.”

Many of Mr Hu’s plans have target dates set far in the future, which analysts say represent an attempt to build a legacy.

Visit NTD Television’s website for video coverage of this story. Also see previous CDT coverage of China’s Great Divide.

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Post tags: Hu Jintao, poverty, poverty alleviation, rural poor
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For VII Magazine, photographer Sim Chi Yin has posted a poignant series of portraits of residents (called the “rat tribe”) in their homes alongside a brief essay.

Read more about the “rat tribe,” and the “ant tribe,” the moniker given to a group of young college graduates scraping by to make a living on the outskirts of Beijing, via CDT.

See more of Sim Chi Yin’s photographs.

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Post tags: Ant Tribe, Beijing, migrant workers, poverty
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“Even though we are developing, it feels like urban areas are running while we are strolling,” says Zhou Liude, who oversees Ruiyuan and nearby schools.

For every one yuan of a rural resident’s income, a city-dweller enjoys 3.23 yuan in disposable income – and that may significantly understate the gap. Include the extra services and benefits enjoyed by urbanites, such as subsidised housing, and “many observers believe that the ratio would easily be in the range of four to five and is arguably among the highest in the world,” says professor Kam Wing Chan, an expert on migrants at the University of Washington.

“China’s incomes are increasingly polarised. This large income gap is definitely a contributor in the background to the more frequent and violent protests and unrest in the last few months.”

Even farmers who reach the cities as migrant workers are in effect second-class citizens, because China’s hukou – household registration – system classifies people as urban or rural and allocates rights to services accordingly. One Chinese academic has described the result as “counterfeit urbanisation”: cities full of people who cannot enjoy much of city life.

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Some statistics about China and India, drawn mainly from the World Bank and the United Nations, are relevant here. Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is 64.4 years. The infant mortality rate is fifty per thousand in India, compared with just seventeen in China; the mortality rate for children under five is sixty-six per thousand for Indians and nineteen for the Chinese; and the maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 live births in India and thirty-eight in China. The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China. China’s adult literacy rate is 94 percent, compared with India’s 74 percent according to the preliminary tables of the 2011 census.

Sen then goes on to discuss less direct consequences of economic growth and argues that in some of those areas India may already be ahead of China:

When we consider the impact of economic growth on people’s lives, comparisons favor China over India. However, there are many fields in which a comparison between China and India is not related to economic growth in any obvious way. Most Indians are strongly appreciative of the democratic structure of the country, including its many political parties, systematic free elections, uncensored media, free speech, and the independent standing of the judiciary, among other characteristics of a lively democracy. Those Indians who are critical of serious flaws in these arrangements (and I am certainly one of them) can also take account of what India has already achieved in sustaining democracy, in contrast to many other countries, including China.

Not only is access to the Internet and world opinion uncensored and unrestricted in India, a multitude of media present widely different points of view, often very critical of the government in office. India has a larger circulation of newspapers each day than any other country in the world. And the newspapers reflect contrasting political perspectives. Economic growth has helped—and this has certainly been a substantial gain—to expand the availability of radios and televisions across the country, including in rural areas, which very often are shared among many users. There are at least 360 independent television stations (and many are being established right now, judging from the licenses already issued) and their broadcasts reflect a remarkable variety of points of view. More than two hundred of these TV stations concentrate substantially or mainly on news, many of them around the clock. There is a sharp contrast here with the monolithic system of newscasting permitted by the state in China, with little variation of political perspectives on different channels.

Freedom of expression has its own value as a potentially important instrument for democratic politics, but also as something that people enjoy and treasure. Even the poorest parts of the population want to participate in social and political life, and in India they can do so. There is a contrast as well in the use of trial and punishment, including capital punishment. China often executes more people in a week than India has executed since independence in 1947. If our focus is on a comprehensive comparison of the quality of life in India and China, we have to look well beyond the traditional social indicators, and many of these comparisons are not to China’s advantage.

Read more articles comparing India and China in various aspects via CDT.

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Post tags: economic growth, India comparison, life expectancy, literacy, poverty, public health
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In the city above them, Louis Vuitton stores and Ferrari dealerships and soaring European-designed glass edifices mark China’s dizzying economic ascent. Wang and her family are among the legions of migrant workers who make up perhaps as much as a third of Beijing’s estimated 20 million people. In a city where the average rent for an apartment is now more than $450, there is no place for them to go, no space anywhere — except underground. The migrants began settling in the shelters in the late ’90s, when the government started leasing the tunnels to landlords. No one knows for sure how many people live in Beijing’s 5,500 shelters and other subterranean domiciles, but estimates go as high as a million. These are the janitors and waiters and salesclerks and laborers and delivery people who are the gears and pistons of the economic engine churning above. In Beijing they are known as “the mouse tribe,” which some find demeaning.

Down the hall from the Wangs’ apartment, a 44-year-old construction worker named Jiang Jinzhi squats in a room where two twin beds are pushed together. A co-worker lies smoking on one of the beds, as Jiang stirs a pot of potatoes on an electric plate. In the evenings, all manner of food smells waft down the corridors — stir-fried pork and tofu and greens. Despite the smells, the tunnels are tidy. The landlord pays cleaners who come daily, and there is a dingy shared washroom where residents can clean their belongings. For personal hygiene, Wang and her family go to a public bathhouse in the neighborhood.

Recently, city officials, citing a growing concern about the potential for deadly fires, have talked of clearing out the tunnels. Signs posted along the hallway walls tell people to be alert to possible gas poisoning and to be watchful of electric blankets and other fire hazards. “They come to inspect it all the time,” said the manager of this block of apartments, who gave only his surname, Wu. “If the government tells us to go, we have to go,” he added. “It’s not like he” — the landlord — “can afford to have an opinion.”

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Post tags: Beijing, migrant workers, poverty
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Thousands of air-raid basements have been turned into dosshouses for migrant workers and the so-called “ant tribe” of unemployed graduates. Municipal authorities say the clearout is for health and safety, but critics say it may be designed to move a poor inner-city population, which has previously been forced to relocate temporarily during events such as the Olympics.

Plans for a permanent shift have upset entrepreneurs who have rented out the spaces for decades. Hundreds of thickly-dressed hostel owners braved freezing winds to rally in Chaoyang Park and hand out leaflets, which criticised the authorities for the ruining their livelihoods and failing to pay adequate compensation.

“This is shocking and incomprehensible to everyone in our business,” said the petition in the name of Civil Air Defence Shelter Industry Workers. “It’s a mistake to tell everyone to leave at such short notice. We have invested a great deal of money and have strictly followed regulations.”

See also a report from Al Jazeera:

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Do we have reason to be proud?
China’s GDP has risen to second in the world, and there are hopes of becoming the world’s second largest financial-income economy. China has entered the era of high-speed rail, our operating mileage and rail speed the first in the world. “The World Expo in Shanghai was an enormous success. What we saw surpassed what we had imagined,” International Exhibition Chairman Lan Feng said in praise. “The Guangzhou Asian Games was one of the best sports competitions I’ve ever seen. Guangzhou has what it takes to bid for the Olympics,” Olympics Council of Asia Chairman Ahmad Fahad Al-Sabah said. Western experts predict time and again that China and New Asia will return to “the No. 1 status it always held, but lost in the 19th Century.”

Do we have reason to worry?
Per capita income is declining worldwide. Buying increasingly expensive eggs can crush monthly income into next to nothing. Great numbers swell toward the narrow bridge that is civil service, a fraction of these people making it across. The tax threshold unshakably holds its ground while real estate tax is restless to increase. There’s poison in the milk power. There’s fake rice. There are chemicals in our food products and duck sold as lamb. Pearl powder is made from shells and people are more difficult to predict. Taking care of business always requires connections. There is always talking behind the curtain when getting hired. Work units are always working overtime. The airline is always delayed. The capitol has become the “capitol of traffic jams.” Limits on vehicle travel have become commonplace. Traffic congestion has spread like a virus to second-and third-tier cities.

Do we have reason to be angry?
Forced demolition continues and is even taken as government achievement. Engineered undertakings are huge but appraised as low quality after an accident. After petitioning, petitioners are put in unsanctioned jails. After a disaster, the incident becomes negligible with an apology from the responsible party. Vicious competition between corporations means “tough decisions“* are being made for us. Concerned departments vigorously alter policy and we are caught off-guard. Students who receive scholarships will not be granted the award unless they donate blood without compensation. Migrant birds from Siberia are poached. A swan sells for $300, a wild goose for $120.

Do we have reason to be disheartened?
An industrious young man lacks the same chance for success as the child of the wealthy. A well-behaved young woman will make far less than someone who sleeps with power and wealth. The yearly per capita income of $181, China’s standard poverty line, is less than a meal, a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of wine for those with vested interests. After saying thank you, the old man on the corner who is helped up after falling says “Relax, this isn’t a scam.” The angry youth have smashed their compatriots’ wealth in protesting Japanese goods. City management has smashed the livelihood of street vendors through city beautification. Moral law resides in books. Role models are on TV. National dust is in the lungs. Love is in the housing deed. Beautiful animals are in the skillet. A sense of well-being is only in our dreams.

Do we have reason for despair?
The mentally ill and those with a grudge against society have stormed our elementary schools and kindergartens, killing our children. Earthquakes, plane crashes, floods and droughts are continuous. Mining disasters are so widespread we haven’t time to mourn or remember the names of the dead. Greedy officials are purged continuously as if flowing from an endless source. Erotic diaries expose why they are so busy and where the national treasury goes. Connections have become the go-ahead for profit. Profit has become the motto for connections. You want a new environment but discover each have their ailments. You want to change society. But who is society?

Do we have reason to be moved?
A myriad of micro-bloggers re-post missing persons notices. Millions upon millions spring into action and assist in disaster areas with no relation to themselves. A million volunteers at the World Expo and the Asian Games willingly took on work behind the scenes for the honor of their city. White chrysanthemums turned Shanghai’s Jiaozhou Road into a sea of flowers, 100,000 urban dwellers affirming new life for the deceased. Teachers in the countryside stand beside their students like sentries. The common people spontaneously stand up for what is right and rescue those in need. There is also an inexhaustible love in personal communication: a faint smile, a hug, kindly words, good morning and good night.

Do we have reason for hope?
None of us wants to be the last blade of grass beneath the crusher of the weak. We can be a brick of support for civil society. We have seen with our own eyes the collective power of society that rapidly stood an impoverished and weak country on its feet. We vaguely remember our ideals, not only to survive, but to realize ourselves, our radiant light, within society. By no means are the only emoticons we’ve clicked been anger and remorse. There are joy, praise and support. We may not have a resolute faith, but we have a fundamental belief: the vast majority of the people in this world are deserving of our kindness.

2011, I ask you, will there be more and more hope for this world?

© Don Weinland for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2011, Asian Games, forced demolition, poverty, World Expo
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The Ninth Annual China Corporate Leadership Meeting opened Dec. 4 in Beijing. This year’s theme was “New Commerce, New Consensus, New Motivation.” At the meeting, Wanda Commercial Properties Co., LTD. Chairman Wang Jianlin won the lifetime achievement award for the top 25 most influential corporate leaders.

Presenting the award:

Lenovo President and Chairman of the Board Liu Chuanzhi

Reasons for the award:

“Heaven granted me life, so I must live. Spread a thousand pieces of gold and it will come back.” (from a Li Bai poem)

If he had lived in antiquity, he would have been more willing to become a general. In reality, he’s the greatest symbol of commercial real estate, and an ascetic monk of philanthropy. Soon he will establish his own million-dollar charity fund. He is ever-responding to the call of his country, rescuing Chinese soccer. He is a man of the greater good, a man divorced from bad taste, a man of benefit to the people.

On the spot Q & A:

Liu Chuanzhi: I’m not sure if everyone knows that Jianlin’s father is a Red Army veteran. His mind is still healthy and clear today. When the Red Army was engaging in revolution at that time, they were to subvert the rich entirely. Now his son has become the richest of people. I would like to ask how you and your father talk at home. Does he detest you or like you? If he likes you, is it that he only likes his rich son? Does he detest all the rich or like all the rich?

Wang Jianlin: This isn’t the original question President Liu prepared for me. In the beginning, my parents didn’t think my prospects were so great. Why was this? Because, as a child, I was quite generous. The money that was given to me, I would give to others to use. They would scold me for this and so I would ask: You always say this isn’t right, but what will you do when you’re old? They said they would rely on the institution in old age.

Later, those comrades who were put into retirement during the opening and reform, the institution slowly disregarded them. Then I took care of them. The cadre retirement home they originally lived in was not very nice. At the same time, Dad was getting old. I prepared a better home for him, prepared a driver for him. Life was better. So later I asked my parents which is better: relying on the institution or relying on your son? They said it themselves: relying on their son was better. Now, making a little more money is better. Although their goal in the past was to undermine the rich, now they wholly feel having money is better than not having it.

Liu Chuanzhi: And this son is willing to donate his money to the poor, showing everyone better days. This son is really not bad.

Wang Jianlin: Donating money is usually like this. Once you have a lot of money, you should certainly donate some. Of course I do have some traditional ways of thinking. The more money, the harder it is to spend, and the harder you must think about how to spend it. So as the rich become greater in number, the majority of them become philanthropists. This includes Bill Gates. Their first few years were rough. They sold their product through bundled sales, and after making lots of money they came running to China to hoodwink us into philanthropy.

Below are a selection of related opinions from Sina microblog:

@ 三国周刊： When presenting Wang Jianlin with the award, Liu Chuanzhi asked: “your father was a Red Army veteran who subverted the rich. Now you’re one of China’s richest. How do you and your father talk at home? How does your father look at his rich son?” The audience applauded. Wang Jianlin was dumbfounded, holding the microphone. The first sentence to come out of his mouth was that this wasn’t the question President Liu had asked before.

@ 还是007: Spread this microblog. President Liu asked a good question! (12-5 11:42 p.m.)

@ jimzwli: Rob in the name of the revolution; share the spoils in the name of reform; forcefully demolish in the name of development; repress in the name of stability. (12-5 11:17 p.m.)

@ 推不倒: Father Wang says: all in all, the revolution was a success. (12-5 11:17 p.m.)

@ 森森剑客: Only the young generation subverts their elders. When does the father subvert the son? I think the old man would say: if it were not for us subverting all the rich, what opportunity would you have had to stick your neck out? (12-5 11:30 p.m.)

@ 子柬: Skyscrapers shoot up like forests, while the aspirations of the people are totally scattered. (12-5 11:55 p.m.)

@ fredzeng: Ha ha, so it’s always been that the legitimacy of governance is one of the questions they can’t get around. (12-6 12:03 a.m.)

@吴祚来: The wealthy of that era didn’t accept the Communist Party leadership. Now the rich have good relations with the leaders. So the rich were doomed back then. Now the rich are the blessed. (12-6 9:44 a.m.)

@ 闻一哥 The old man says: getting rid of the rich back then was only to become rich ourselves today. (12-6 10:19 a.m.)

@zhao89621: Good question. Everyone knows the answer. (12-6 10:21 a.m.)

@ 糖糖min: They subverted the rich of that time because they weren’t rich themselves.

@三哥戴表: Subverting others then was for his son’s today.

@冯小宇K: Today if the rich aren’t leaders, then they are those close to the leaders, and their spokespeople.

© Don Weinland for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: business, income gap, philanthropy, poverty, wealth
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Soaring real estate prices are driving China’s rich and poor further apart. So central planners are gambling on a complicated plan to build millions of low-cost housing units to bridge the gap. The government said it would break ground on 5.8 million units this year, with an additional 9.6 million dwellings to follow nationwide over the next two years.

In most cases, the government will guarantee developers a profit and donate the land, eliminating the biggest cost for builders. Projects will include cheap rentals and millions of new homes in areas deemed slums.

Applicants must prove that their income and assets qualify them as needy. Yang’s family, for example, could not earn more than $6,800 a year and hold more than $54,000 in assets. If they wanted to sell the property, they would have to wait five years and would be hit with a land fee if they sold at market value. They could avoid that penalty by selling to another low-income family at a reduced price.

The initiative is an important step for a government fearful of social instability and mindful there may be no bigger challenge than providing modern housing to more of China’s 1.3 billion citizens.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: housing, housing market, income gap, poverty
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