From The Guardian: Now that Mammon has replaced Mao, corruption is fuelling the rural inequality opened up by migration to the cities
The case of Lu Banglie, who was beaten up by a mob near Taishi in southern China – as reported in yesterday’s Guardian – is not unusual. There has been a rapidly growing number of conflicts between villagers and the authorities, often over the sale of agricultural land on the edge of a town or village to a developer. These conflicts are a graphic illustration of the tensions involved in China’s transformation. The essence of industrialisation is the shift from the countryside to the towns involving, in China’s case in particular, a huge migration to the urban centres. The cities and towns are growing apace and gobbling up the adjoining land in a ceaseless process of expansion.
