China Digital Times (CDT) » Tag: rural China

Inequality in China: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Samuel Wade — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:23:15 +0000

The Economist looks at research into the extent to which China’s considerable inequality of outcomes is due to inequality of opportunity. One method of investigation involves comparisons between siblings, but in China, this approach faces an unusual limitation.

Not every parental influence can be observed, distinguished and measured …. So in a recent working paper, the two authors look at an alternative indicator: namely, the correlation between one brother’s income and another’s. This fraternal comparison is a good “omnibus” measure of the weight of family and community influence, according to Mr Eriksson. Two children brought up by the same people, under the same roof, in the same neighbourhood, will share many of the same circumstances of birth and background. If these things matter greatly in a society, they will govern the life chances of both brothers, resulting in a tight correlation in their incomes. If, on the other hand, family background matters little, the fraternal correlation will be low.
In a 2000 paper co-authored by Mr Eriksson, he and his colleagues found that the correlation was much higher in the US (0.43) than in the Nordic countries (0.14 to 0.26). In China, the correlation is higher still: 0.57. To put that in context, the authors argue that knowing what a person’s brother earns gives you a a better guide to a Chinese person’s income than economists are normally able to obtain from knowing how many years of schooling and work experience a person has under his belt.
There is, however, one big obstacle to calculating brother correlations in China. Thanks to the one-child policy, few young, urban Chinese have siblings. The author’s estimate of 0.57, therefore, applies only to rural China. In China’s cities, inequality of opportunity takes a rather different form: the second-born are denied the opportunity to exist.

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Post tags: inequality, one-child policy, rural China
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An Advocate for China’s Rural Poor

Paulina Hartono — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:24:55 +0000

In 2008, lawyer Liu Yao (刘尧) advocated for farmers whose land was being illegally requisitioned. A scuffle by the farmers at Lankou hydropower station, the site under construction on their property, landed Liu in jail. Tom Mitchell, South China correspondent for Financial Times, writes on Liu’s story:

Prison was hard for Liu Yao. The crusading Chinese lawyer spent 16 months behind bars at a county lock-up in Heyuan, a city in the southern Guangdong province, surviving mainly on a diet of instant noodles and preserved bean curd. His days were spent making plastic bags. His pens and law books were taken away, he says, and he was denied access to newspapers and his case file. When he was freed in April this year his dark hair, which had been shaved off, grew back white.
Liu, 47, was first detained by the authorities on December 19 2007, two days after he led farmers from Bainitang hamlet to the disputed construction site of the Lankou hydropower station, which was being built on their land. In the confrontation, wooden boards and other construction materials valued at Rmb50,615 (£4,500) were allegedly destroyed or stolen. The farmers’ lawyer was formally arrested a month later, accused of inciting unrest. In June 2008 a county court sentenced him to four years in prison.
[...] Liu says he will continue to appeal against the verdict. He complains that, as a convicted felon, he can no longer practise as a lawyer. “I’m unemployed now and can’t take cases,” he says. “It’s ridiculous. In trying to stop a crime I was branded a criminal. Sometimes the law is very malleable.”

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese lawyers, Guangdong, land reclamation, rural China
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Documentary: China from the Inside – Women of the Country

Sophia Cao — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:23:39 +0000

Documentary Film Series “China from the Inside” came up with a series of films with various topics about China. In this episode “Women of the Country,” the film explores women’s current living circumstances in rural China, carried by Youtube:

China’s women have always been under pressure: from men, from family, from work. Now more and more are under new pressure — from themselves — to take control of their lives; to get an education; to have a career; to marry for love. It’s a slow, difficult process, and it is changing China.
Mass migration from the countryside to the cities is increasing prosperity, but fracturing families. It also gives women new roles — whether running the farm back home, or as wage-earners in the city. Xiao Zhang has lived in Beijing for 14 years, cooking and cleaning. This episode follows her home to her village 600 miles away for Chinese New Year, where she is reunited with the children she hasn’t seen for a year. The cameras capture the visit of the local Birth Planning Officer to check on young wives, the plight of unwanted girl babies and abortion issues, and a village wedding which turns nasty.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

Part Six:

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Post tags: documentaries, rural China, women
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Slideshow: A Wedding in Rural Yunnan

Sophia Cao — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:30:01 +0000

Photographer and blogger “Flying Bird and Fish” posted a group of photos of a wedding in rural Yunnan. He says that generally Chinese parents don’t hesitate to spend most of their savings on their children’s weddings and they try their best to make the wedding nice and festive. However, the wedding style in rural area is still very different from those in cities. From blog.sina.com.cn:

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Post tags: photos, rural China, slideshows, weddings
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Slideshow: Road to School

Sophia Cao — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:26:51 +0000

A blogger “Flying Bird and Fish” posted a series of photos he took in a mountain area showing some rural children walking to school in a dangerous cliff road. He says that he was scared to see the scene. His hands were sweating and his legs were even trembling while taking photos of the children, via blog.sina.com.cn:

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: children, grassroots, photos, poverty, rural China, slideshows
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China Wheelie Promo Video

Sophia Cao — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:57:03 +0000

Vimeo.com carries a short video by Rob Luxton documents his journey in China. His video introduction is as below:

Rob Luxton’s adventure on a three wheeled recumbent tricycle will take him 25,000km all around China, passing through every province on the mainland. The expedition will also help raise awareness and money for two Charities. Sowers Action and Care For Children . Both dedicated to improving the lives of children in poor areas throughout China. Beginning near Hong Kong the journey is estimated to last two and half years taking him from busy cities to remote mountain villages, deserts to great plains, deep lush valleys to the the scary heights of the Tibetan plateau and finally into the jungles of the South, before returning to Hong Kong in August 2009.

China Wheelie Promo Video from rob luxton on Vimeo.

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Post tags: children, journey in China, rural China, sports, videos
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Documentary: The Life of Rural Chinese Children

Sophia Cao — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:28:35 +0000

This documentary tells about the life of left-behind children in rural China whose parents move to the cities in search of work. These children are taken care of by their grandparents, other relatives or by themselves. Some of them even have to take care of their younger brothers or sisters, via Youtube:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

See a slideshow of left-behind children in Qinnan, via fengniao.com:

See also CDT’s previous post As China Booms, Millions of Children Are Left Behind by Wall Street Journal and Slideshow: Migrants’ Children

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: children, left-behind children, migrant workers, rural China, videos
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China Tests Micro-Insurance For Rural Poor

Paulina Hartono — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:07:46 +0000

Wu Qi of Xinhua reports on the government’s latest efforts to introduce micro-insurance to rural China.

Dai Yongheng never imagined he would make history. But he did just that on Sept. 3, 2008. The middle-aged farmer from north China’s Shanxi Province procured a fixed-term life insurance for all five members of his family. He paid 150 yuan (21.90 U.S. dollars), becoming the first micro-insurance deal in rural China.
The insurance policy pays 75,000 yuan if something happens to Dai’s family in Dongpao Village, Qixian County, China Life Insurance, operator of the policy, said.
One day later, all 1,017 residents from Xishantou, Macha and Huaishu villages of neighboring Qixian County took out a group insurance policy for accidental injury. If anyone in the village gets hurt, there is a total of 50 million yuan to cover expenses. For example, every villager put 10 yuan into the pot. The insurance company guarantees each of them a 5,000 yuan payment. The total is higher because the villagers bought the policy together, the first group policy of its kind in the country.

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Post tags: insurance, micro-insurance, rural China
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