China Digital Times

SECTION: The Great Divide

• “Mercy Killing” Mother Spared Jail

  

  State media have recently reported that Li Daohong of Jiangsu province has been spared jail for the killing of her 20-year-old mentally handicapped daughter. Court officials have deemed it a “mercy killing,” and have suspended her 3-year jail sentence. Reuters reports:

  Li Daohong, 47, told a Beijing court she had spent all her money over 20 years taking her daughter, Xiao Fei, who could not even go to the toilet by herself, across the country for treatment for “brain paralysis,” Xinhua news agency said.

  In despair, she took her Xiao Fei to a Beijing hotel where she fed her more than 200 sleeping pills and smothered her with towels and a quilt once she was asleep.

  

  A photo of Zhang Fei and her parents (Source: news.nen.com.cn)

  Xinhua also details the economic background and plight of the mother.

  The main income of the family is the wage of Li’s husband, who looks after bicycles in the town.

  “I’m afraid I will no longer be able to look after my daughter as I’m getting old,” Li, 47, cried when she was questioned on the court.

  [...] Li’s neighbors in her village sent a joint letter to the court, asking for mercy on the kind mother who could not afford a lawyer to defend herself.

  The case has been talked about since news came out on the killing, which occurred in January. Most netizens have come to the side of the mother. In a June Sohu posting, two questions were posed. First, “Should the mother who killed her daughter by smothering receive a light punishment?” 265 voted yes, 6 no. The second question, “Can one excuse the mother who killed her mentally-handicapped daughter by sleeping pills and smothering?” received 573 yes votes, 27 no votes.

  Netizens also responded in a separate June Sohu posting. The following are some comments, translated by CDT:

  One Li Daohong is a tragedy. By starting with our institution and our laws, we should prevent the occurrence of a second, or a third Li Daohong.

  Let me think … if I were a mother …
  She already tried her best here in the society we have today. This is her sorrow, and moreover, modern China’s sorrow.
  She’s innocent; she’s a victim. She has her own life too …
  Society, please forgive her. Everybody, please understand her. Law, please release her.

  This is a great, helpless, and selfless mother. She devoted all of her efforts in raising her daughter for 20 years. This was an incurable disease, and she had no other choice. She was afraid that after she died, her child wouldn’t have a caretaker; she was being unselfish.
  We have no right to criticize her — her regret and her helplessness makes that clear!

  » Read more
  • October 31, 2008 5:08 PM

• China Liberalizes Farmers’ Land Use Right to Boost Rural Development

  

  China on Sunday finally issued the full text of the land reform plan approved on October 12. Xinhua reports:

  The Communist Party of China (CPC) issued a landmark policy document on Sunday to allow farmers to “lease their contracted farmland or transfer their land use right” to boost the scale of operation for farm production and provide funds for them to start new businesses.

  The Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Advancement of Rural Reform and Development was approved by the CPC Central Committee on Oct. 12 at a plenary session.

  According to the full text of the document, markets for the lease of contracted farmland and transfer of farmland use rights shall be set up and improved to allow farmers to sub-contract, lease, exchange and swap their land use rights, or joined share-holding entities with their farmland.

  From International Herald Tribune:

  Economists say the reform could allow farms to better meet the demands of the evolving economy while maintaining the country’s self-sufficiency.

  The text did not say whether farmers must first obtain permission from their villages, but said such transactions of land-use rights must be voluntary and that farmers must receive adequate payment for their land.

  The purpose of the land use also may not be changed in the process, the document said.

  Such restrictions appear to address concerns regarding illegal land seizures to build factories, shopping malls and other projects that have caused anger and protests around the country, especially among farmers.

  Also see a story by Reuters and the Washington Post.

  » Read more
  • October 19, 2008 7:56 PM

• China Land Reform Disappears from Radar

  

  From Los Angeles Times:

  A funny thing happened on the way to the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee, where China’s Communist Party leaders were expected to finally enact a bold land reform program allowing farmers eventually to buy, sell or lease their fields.

  Coverage of reform issues had been stepped up in the official press. And President Hu Jintao made a high-profile trip to rural Anhui province, where state media said he told farmers that they would be able to transfer their land rights.

  Yet by the time the closed-door meeting wrapped up Sunday, the issue had all but disappeared from public view. It wasn’t even mentioned in the final communique from the 368-member decision-making body.

  The New York Times also reports on questions being raised about the new program:

  Scholars and analysts inside and outside of China are discussing this week why the leaders have remained silent on the issue. When the Communist Party’s annual four-day planning session began last Thursday, officials in attendance began reviewing a draft of a sweeping land reform policy that President Hu Jintao was believed to have been backing.

  Scholars and government advisers said the proposed policy centered around two major changes: allowing peasants to engage in the unrestricted trade, purchase and sale of land-use contracts, and extending those contracts to 70 years from 30 years. Senior leaders including Mr. Hu intended to push the policy changes through at the session, scholars and advisers said.

  But the communiqué issued on Sunday night did not mention that particular land reform policy. Instead, the party said broadly that it was adopting a rural reform policy that would double the per capita disposable income of farmers by the year 2020. Xinhua, the state news agency, said in general terms that the government planned to “set up a ‘strict and normative’ land management system in the countryside.”

  » Read more
  • October 15, 2008 11:57 AM

• China Announces Land Policy Aimed at Promoting Income Growth in Countryside

  

  The Chinese government is hoping to bridge the rural-urban income divide through a new economic reform plan. The New York Times reports:

  Chinese leaders said Sunday that they would adopt a rural growth policy aimed at vastly increasing the income of China’s hundreds of millions of farmers by the year 2020, setting in motion what could be the nation’s biggest economic reform in years.

  The new policy is intended to stimulate market-driven economic growth in the countryside and to narrow the enormous income disparity between rural and urban Chinese, one of the largest such gaps in the world. Its adoption is another significant step away from the system of communal farming and collectivization put in place under Mao.

  Scholars and government advisers said in interviews during the four-day session that the new policy would allow China’s more than 800 million peasants to engage in the unrestricted trade or sale of land-use contracts, good for decades, that are given to them by the government. Adopting such a system would be a significant move toward privatization.

  An earlier article has details of the discussion of the decision to approve of the economic reform package. More background on the history of China’s economic reforms under CCP rule can be found here.

  

  » Read more
  • October 13, 2008 11:45 AM

• China Vows Stable Growth in Face of Global Turmoil

  

  The four-day meeting of the Party’s Central Committee was aimed to thrash out policies in an effort to tackle economic instabilities. Reuters reports:

  “The most important thing is to handle our country’s own affairs well,” according to a communique issued after the meeting by the official Xinhua news agency.

  The government would “maintain economic stability, financial stability, and stability of the capital markets … continuing to encourage economic and social development that is both healthy and rapid,” the communique said.

  The meeting approved a raft of measures, including land reforms, intended to boost the incomes and farmers of China’s 750-million strong farming population.

  The Telegraph also reports:

  For hardliners among the 204 members of the party’s ruling Central Committee, the trauma western financial institutions are experiencing is proof both of the superiority of China’s economic policies and its political system.

  Two weeks ago, an editorial in the People’s Daily newspaper, the mouthpiece of the party, attacked western-style democracy, while lauding the Chinese one-party system and its tight control over the economy.

  “The advantages are increasingly evident. Western countries are mired in low growth and the United States severe financial crisis is a manifestation of the dead end of liberalism and the destruction of the myth of American institutions,” said the editorial.

  Xinhua reports that China sets the goal to “double income of rural residents in 12 years.”

  Also see a story on Javno, “China Approves Rural Reforms To Boost Economy.”

  Photo: Hexun

  » Read more
  • October 12, 2008 5:47 PM

• China Tests Micro-Insurance For Rural Poor

  

  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.

  » Read more
  • October 11, 2008 12:07 PM

• Volunteers Visit Homes of Poor Migrant Worker Children

  

  The blog chinaSMACK has published a translation of a Netease BBS discussion on a volunteer trip to migrant worker children:

  One of the families, lived in what looked like a storehouse. From the highway to a small road, through a field full of plastic greenhouses, we arrived at our destination. On the road, a man on a motorcycle followed our “Red Collar Movement” Chevrolet Aveo convoy to our destination. After parking, they chatted with us: “Where are you all coming from?” “Are you all from the same work unit?” “What are you coming her for?” “How much does this car cost?”.

  The post met mixed reactions on the Netease site, from the pragmatic:

  Shanghai is like this, and it can be imagined for other places.
  Housing for migrant workers is a major problem. Asking them to afford a house in the city these days is a fantasy.
  At present, the most important thing is to allow their children to study in the city for free, something the local government can do. Studying in the city will them more easily integrate into the city. Only when rural people can integrate into the city will it be possible to solve the peasant problem.

  …to the cynical:

  What use is it for you guys to go have a look? Get a television station to film a little, then write to some leader singing praises of him being loving, generous, benevolent to the people. Are not those people still in the same situation? Doing motherfucking useless things, wanting to go show yourselves as being strong and successful people. You guys have superiority complexes. I am too lazy to even despise you.

  » Read more
  • October 4, 2008 2:15 PM

• China Bends A Bit For Anti-poverty Project

  

  From Reuters:

  A pilot project with a difference is making a dent in rural poverty and, more significantly, giving villagers a voice in the development of a pocket of southern China bypassed by the country’s economic boom.

  What sets the scheme apart is that public funds to tackle poverty are being channelled through non-governmental organisations, a first in China.

  In a country where NGOs have long been regarded with suspicion, this is nothing short of a seismic shift, according to the Asian Development Bank, which is meeting their overheads with a modest grant.

  By sanctioning the project, Beijing is displaying the pragmatism that is a hallmark of its economic management.

  » Read more
  • August 4, 2008 5:04 AM

• Migrant Workers Forced to Cash in Pensions

  

  China Labor News Translations has translated the full text of “Migrant Workers Leaving Shenzen Queue All Night to Cash in Their Pensions” (Southern Metropolitan Daily, 15 January 2008).  In addition, CNLT has excerpted a number of other articles covering the pension woes of migrant laborers.  From the Southern Metropolitan Daily:

  With the approach of spring, every year there is a flood of migrant workers returning home.
  At the same time, a large number of them, before they return home, go to the social security
  department of Shenzhen to cash in their pension. Unlike those migrant workers who return
  home only to celebrate the New Year, these people won’t be coming back to the city.

  At about 11 pm on 7 January, there is a slight chill in the night air. A dozen or so young people
  form a queue in front of the door of the Buji Social Security Office. From now until the early
  hours of the morning there is a constant stream of people joining the line.

  ‘This is the second time I’ve queued up here’, Mr. Xiang tells this reporter. It’s 6 a.m., and his
  eyes are bloodshot. ‘They only issue 300 or so numbers a day, so we have to come in the early
  hours of the morning or queue up all night to cash in our pensions’. In recent days, large
  numbers of severance pay claimants have been showing up at the various social security offices
  in Shenzhen City. This reporter visited three such places in and around the Shenzhen Special
  Zone.

  China Labor Bulletin also carries some labor rights news from Shenzen on collective bargaining and an increase in the minimum wage.

  » Read more
  • July 14, 2008 3:43 PM

• China Earthquake Exposes a Widening Wealth Gap

  

  From the Wall Street Journal:

  With the death toll from China’s earthquake mounting, the disaster is throwing a harsh spotlight on the widening gap between the nation’s rich and poor.

  Soldiers and paramilitary police rushed to dig victims out from collapsed schools, homes and hospitals. As the grim work continues, it is increasingly clear that the quake inflicted its greatest destruction on rural areas and on the smaller towns and cities that have mushroomed from farm fields in recent years as part of China’s rapid urbanization.

  Such areas have far less stringent building-safety practices than China’s relatively wealthy big cities, construction experts say. As a result, some citizens were more vulnerable than others when disaster struck.

  » Read more
  • May 13, 2008 10:24 PM

• Tsinghua Professor: Big Chinese Cities Need Slums for Migrant Workers

  

  From Xinhua:

  A Chinese scholar from one of China’s most prestigious universities claimed slums should be allowed to exist in China’s big cities to provide shelters for the urban poor.

  “It is no shame for big cities to have such areas. On the contrary, Shenzhen and other cities should take initiatives to build cheap residential areas for low-income residents including migrant workers who want to stay in the cities where they work,” said Tsinghua University Professor Qin Hui.

  “By building those areas, big cities could show more consideration for low-income residents, and provide them with more welfare,” Qin said in his speech at a public forum on urbanization in Shenzhen over the weekend.

  Read also Rural migrant workers need housing by Zhang Ming’ai.

  » Read more
  • April 15, 2008 6:17 PM

• Brazil’s Lesson for China: Do Not Ignore Inequality

  

  Geoff Dyer writes on the Financial Times:

  In the late 1960s and 1970s, when Brazil was a dictatorship and the economy booming, social policy was neglected. “Grow the cake now, divide it up later”, became the mantra. For the past 20 years, China has sometimes adopted a similar approach.

  One of the less well-known features of China’s boom is the state’s withdrawal from providing health and education. Mao-era healthcare was far from perfect, but today most Chinese have no health insurance. In rural areas it is not hard to find a family bankrupted by medical bills. Schools are losing 1m children a year because parents cannot afford the fees. Given how often China is labelled a success and Latin America a failure, it is worth noting that in the past decade Brazil’s government has spent twice as much of its gross domestic product on health and education as communist China.

  » Read more
  • March 6, 2008 12:05 PM

• Losing the Countryside: A Restive Peasantry Calls on Beijing For Land Rights

  

  The Financial Times has followed up on the nascent land rights movement, and found the “loose association of journalists, academics, intellectuals and political activists” who coordinated the farmers’ actions:

  Not only were the protesters challenging the party directly, they were also organised at a national level by a sophisticated group of dissidents. The action was co-ordinated by a loose association of journalists, academics, intellectuals and political activists and its calls for privatisation of all rural land were a clear rejection of the current regime. In words that could have come from the mouth of Mao Zedong, one declaration asked: “Whose country is this? Who really benefits in the name of public interest? . . . Only when you protect the rights of the masses and help the masses to develop can you be called the government.”

  The authors of the declarations are mostly based in Beijing and have so far evaded capture. They operate in secrecy and have requested that no details be revealed of their identities in order to avoid immediate arrest. Some are career dissidents while others are solid members of the party establishment; for their safety the Financial Times has decided not to reveal any more about who they are. They say they are acting out of a conviction that many of the problems faced by China’s peasants stem from the current land ownership system.

  The story also includes a video interview with a farmer who had been detained for signing one of the declarations. Read more about the land rights movement via CDT.

  » Read more
  • February 20, 2008 10:59 PM

• My Heart Aches For The Vulnerable Ones

  

  Guangzhou-based writer and blogger Hengjun Yang (杨恒均) wrote the following post on his blog, translated by CDT’s Linjun Fan.

  » Read more
  • February 15, 2008 12:23 PM

• Rural Poor Struggle on in China

  

  The BBC reports from drought-plagues Ningxia, where residents are missing out on China’s economic growth:

  Two hours south-west of Beijing by plane is Ningxia, the autonomous region known for its a big local minority of Muslim people - called the Hui, they make up around 17 percent of the population.

  But Ningxia is also notable as an area where people are not sharing in China’s phenomenal growth. Poor anyway, the region has been further afflicted by two years of drought.

  » Read more
  • February 14, 2008 11:07 PM