From The New York Times, via A Glimpse of the World: Every five days, a country market converges in a horn-honking, pig-squealing clamor on the old arching stone bridge that spans the river coursing through here. For as long as anyone can remember, the biggest crop in this valley has been the corn that grows […]
From The Southern Weekend, via Press Interpreter: Other than the movement of the shade in the courtyard, time in this village seems to have come to standstill and become entirely meaningless. Primitive mud houses and modern tile houses are crowded together by the dry river bed; at the entrance to the village old men squat […]
On The Washington Post, Peter Goodman wrote: Costs of Goods Rise, Standard of Living Falls. The China that Wang Huazhong glimpses on television is in the midst of an amazing transformation. In cities he has never visited, skyscrapers tower over highways choked with cars, and people jam glass-fronted malls buying up jewelry and luggage simply […]
From Xinhua: 800 million farmers are expected to be exempted from agriculture tax in 2005, said Finance Minister Jin Renqing Tuesday in his report to an on-going meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on the first five months’ national fiscal revenue and expenditure situation. “To date, China has lately exempted 19 […]
On the same issue of rural associations, China analyst David Cowhig introduced another China scholar’s work. Here is the email from David: Yu Jianrong of CASS also says that peasants organizing themselves to represent their own interests is the only way they will be able to solve their problems. Yu suggests that China should let […]
From The Central News Agency, via The Epoch Times: An odd regulation in Beichan village, Dazu county, Chongqing province, China, now requires emigrant women laborers to have a medical exam for “virginity verification” if they desire to receive compensation for land requisition. Five unmarried women are at their wits-end with this regulation now in place. […]
China analyst David Cowhig shared the following observation with CDT : Peasant unrest has grabbed more attention in China over the last few years. I have noticed a common useage — such and such a policy is a “tranquilizer pill for the peasants”. I have seen it applied to the higher grain prices over the […]
From Economist.com: In a country where 800m people, about 60% of the population, live in the countryside on an average income of less than a dollar a day, rural backwardness weighs heavily on the minds of China’s leaders as they dream of joining the ranks of the world’s leading economies. And in a country whose […]
From Ap, via Yahoo! News: China has more than enough grain reserves to cover its immediate needs, but farmers need more help if the country is to ensure future food supplies, officials said Sunday. The communist government has long viewed food self-sufficiency as a matter of national security and worries about feeding its population of […]
From People’s Daily Online: About 730 million Chinese farmers are expected to benefit from the agricultural tax exemption this year,as 26 of its 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have announced a termination of all agricultural taxes, said an official with the Ministry of Agriculture. Fan Xiaojian, vice agriculture minister of China, made the remarks […]
From China Elections & Governance, prepared by Manfred Elfstrom: A writer who dubs himself Xiang Tianxiao (“Laughing at Heaven”) has written a very personal account of grassroots democracy entitled A Township Cadre’s Journal of Appealing to the Government. The account, written, as the title suggests, in the form of a diary, revolves around elections held […]
From the People’s Daily Online: Chinese central authorities publicize on Monday a set of ideas set forth by the Communist Party of China (CPC) central Committee and the State Council, or the central government, on further strengthening the work in rural areas and raise overall agricultural production capacity. The ideas adopted by the CPC Central […]
From the Los Angeles Times: “Ge Quanxiao is no revolutionary. The 58-year-old farmer is an upstanding member of his community, a father of two. But if you push reasonable people too far, he warns, they’re forced to do desperate things. The government in Beijing is pushing a lot of reasonable people to the wall these […]
Jim Yardley just published this article on the New York Times: “For five months, Gao Lading and other angry farmers had occupied the walled compound of the Communist Party’s village office. They had pitched tents, eaten rice and sweet potatoes, and waited. It was a sit-in born of desperation. Officials from the nearby city of […]
From today’s New York Times: China’s growing material wealth has eluded the countryside, home to two-thirds of its population. But there is a bull market in sects and cults competing for souls. That has alarmed the authorities, who seem uncertain whether the spread of religion or its systematic repression does more to turn peasants against […]
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