From AP, via seattle pi.com (link):
Communist leaders have launched China’s most ambitious initiative in decades, promising billions of dollars in social spending and farm aid to help the 800 million people in its neglected countryside catch up with its booming cities.
The blueprint unveiled at this week’s parliament meeting echoes President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, and is aimed at easing tensions over the growing gap between China’s rich and poor.
But Beijing faces daunting challenges making it work in the countryside, where their control over local leaders is limited, abuses are common and anger at corruption and land seizures is rising.
