China’s infamous urban management agents, known as chengguan, have a new rural equivalent, the nongguan (“rural management”). Nongguan is the unofficial name for a new corps of agricultural law-enforcement officers, “Rural...
Surveillance in Chinese cities is ubiquitous, with highly visible security cameras trained on most every intersection, public space, and building, but over the past decade, it has been seeping into the countryside as well. In an...
At the Los Angeles Times, Michael Meyer, author of “In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland...
Local government seizure of farmland is a major cause of social unrest in the Chinese countryside,...
A farmer in Zhejiang Province has successfully converted a rooftop into a rice field....
In the New York Times, Ian Johnson has written a lengthy report about a model town built outside...
Reuters’ Adam Jourdan reports China’s latest food safety scandal: the alleged use of...
NPR’s Louisa Lim profiles singer Zuoxiao Zuzhou, who has been described as “China’s Leonard Cohen” by Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies, and as the most important musician in China by Ai Weiwei. On These...
The Wall Street Journal explores land ownership in China, and the economic and political factors which lead to farmers being pushed off their land and often into lives of poverty: The root of the problem is an economic system...
Esther Fung and Tom Orlik of The Wall Street Journal call attention to a legislative development that may signal the Chinese government’s intention to step up its crackdown on illegal land grabs: In a little-noticed move,...
At chinadialogue, Dave Goulson describes how heavy pesticide use has wiped out wild bees in the south west of China, leaving farmers to take over the job of pollination. Evidence from around the world points to falling and...
As the 2012 leadership transition looms, The Economist profiles a man tipped to come out ahead in 2022: Hu Chunhua, whose current position as Party secretary of Inner Mongolia parallels Hu (no relation) Jintao’s equivalent...
China’s latest water conservancy plan will include a system of progressive pricing to discourage excessive consumption. The country’s best known efforts to confront its deepening water crisis have been titanic...
Europe correspondent for Window on the South (南风窗) Xiong Peiyun shared his thoughts on land...
The recent uprising in Wukan, Guangdong focused attention on the plight of farmers whose land is confiscated by developers without proper compensation. With China’s rapid economic growth and little oversight over...
For Al Jazeera, Melissa Chan reports from a village where farmers had their land confiscated only weeks before the autumn harvest: Documents provided to Al Jazeera by township-level officials showed contracts the government...
The Associated Press reports that a group of farmers petitioning for land seizure compensation were arrested and physically restrained for days to deny them access to visiting US Vice President Joe Biden: The farmers, all women...
At Bloomberg, The Council on Foreign Relations’ Peter Orszag argues for higher water prices in China to encourage efficiency: In Oman, a Middle Eastern desert country where water is scarce, it is understood to be more...
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