The Urban - Rural Divide...

[griz326]

Thank you for your perspective, jim_julian. I presume you are Jim's better half?

 

Your perspective is the same as mine. Having seen a good bit of the world as a merchant seaman, most of my US shipmates could not perceive that a different way of life (in any country) did not necessarily mean an impoverished, unhappy way of life.

 

Perhaps such arrogance is a noteworthy characteristic of American culture?

[jim_julian]

Thank you for your perspective, jim_julian. I presume you are Jim's better half?

 

Your perspective is the same as mine. Having seen a good bit of the world as a merchant seaman, most of my US shipmates could not perceive that a different way of life (in any country) did not necessarily mean an impoverished, unhappy way of life.

 

Perhaps such arrogance is a noteworthy characteristic of American culture? B)

All I can do is report my personal experience ... Lao Po's extended family is about half city half farm. On the "high" end are Army officers, (one of whom drives a Mercedes), police officers, and one ex-restaurant owner who married me and moved to the US. On the "low" end are two family farms with multiple folks living and working them. In the middle are hotel employees, drivers, building trades, and factory workers.

 

They all seem to be pretty happy despite major differences in what we would call living standard. They all help each other out and at the big family gatherings there appears to be no friction between the haves and have nots.

 

I don't want to minimize the differences in Chinese economic classes but in my small sample it seems to have less of an effect than a westerner might imagine. One of the mitigating factors is the strength of the Chinese extended family. But I really only know one family well so I probably don't know what I'm talking about ...

 

Nooooooooooo ... I am the Lao Gong, aka Jim

[rogerluli]

Thank you for your perspective, jim_julian. I presume you are Jim's better half?

 

Your perspective is the same as mine. Having seen a good bit of the world as a merchant seaman, most of my US shipmates could not perceive that a different way of life (in any country) did not necessarily mean an impoverished, unhappy way of life.

 

Perhaps such arrogance is a noteworthy characteristic of American culture? B)

All I can do is report my personal experience ... Lao Po's extended family is about half city half farm. On the "high" end are Army officers, (one of whom drives a Mercedes), police officers, and one ex-restaurant owner who married me and moved to the US. On the "low" end are two family farms with multiple folks living and working them. In the middle are hotel employees, drivers, building trades, and factory workers.

 

They all seem to be pretty happy despite major differences in what we would call living standard. They all help each other out and at the big family gatherings there appears to be no friction between the haves and have nots.

 

I don't want to minimize the differences in Chinese economic classes but in my small sample it seems to have less of an effect than a westerner might imagine. One of the mitigating factors is the strength of the Chinese extended family. But I really only know one family well so I probably don't know what I'm talking about ...

 

Nooooooooooo ... I am the Lao Gong, aka Jim

 

Next thing you'll be telling us you're in charge Jim... B)

[LeeFisher3]

Thank you for your perspective, jim_julian. I presume you are Jim's better half?

 

Your perspective is the same as mine. Having seen a good bit of the world as a merchant seaman, most of my US shipmates could not perceive that a different way of life (in any country) did not necessarily mean an impoverished, unhappy way of life.

 

Perhaps such arrogance is a noteworthy characteristic of American culture? B)

All I can do is report my personal experience ... Lao Po's extended family is about half city half farm. On the "high" end are Army officers, (one of whom drives a Mercedes), police officers, and one ex-restaurant owner who married me and moved to the US. On the "low" end are two family farms with multiple folks living and working them. In the middle are hotel employees, drivers, building trades, and factory workers.

 

They all seem to be pretty happy despite major differences in what we would call living standard. They all help each other out and at the big family gatherings there appears to be no friction between the haves and have nots.

 

I don't want to minimize the differences in Chinese economic classes but in my small sample it seems to have less of an effect than a westerner might imagine. One of the mitigating factors is the strength of the Chinese extended family. But I really only know one family well so I probably don't know what I'm talking about ...

 

Nooooooooooo ... I am the Lao Gong, aka Jim

 

Next thing you'll be telling us you're in charge Jim...

If he is wise he will ask his wifes permission first.

 

Please dear, all the other guys get to say their the boss in their home.

[jim_julian]

Next thing you'll be telling us you're in charge Jim...

 

Yes! I am in charge of all the big decisions in our lives. Lao Po told me so.

 

We are also very lucky .... so far every time we have had to make a decision it has been a small one ... so I need not be bothered.

 

[shaffej7070]

Next thing you'll be telling us you're in charge Jim...

 

Yes! I am in charge of all the big decisions in our lives. Lao Po told me so.

 

We are also very lucky .... so far every time we have had to make a decision it has been a small one ... so I need not be bothered.

 

 

 

Ah, a humble Lao Gong indeed!

[SirLancelot]

Perhaps the most unsettling negative trend in China is the widening gap between the growing middle class of the cities and the stagnating fortunes of the rural population. Estimated at 700 million this is no small problem. From corrupt local officials who illegally appropriate rural land and sell it to developers, to the out of balance sex ratio that is most keenly felt in the countryside, the country in China is getting the short end of the bamboo stick... .Rural people do not even own their property while city people do. The best and the brightest in rural China often leave for the cities to make their fortune, leaving behind the old and the less capable.

 

We watch Hunan news almost every night and we have seen a lot of programs devoted to this problem. They have filmed swaps of city and country students and teachers and then followed each as they go about their very different lives. Schools in the countryside are often ramshackle affairs with few book or other resources while in the cities students are dressed in neat uniforms in well equipped, modern, bright, classrooms One rural teacher broke down and cried when telling city teachers how poor his school was...

 

The following artcle is from The Economist...

 

 

 

BASKING in its 2008 Olympic glow, no longer shy at counting itself among the world's greats and blessed with a still booming economy, China looks the coming power. And so it is, up to a point. Yet as the Communist Party's bigwigs assemble behind closed doors in Beijing for their five-yearly congress, it is China's frailties, not its strengths, that preoccupy them.

 

Not for the first time, Hu Jintao, the party's boss and China's president, rightly picks out two big problems: the widening gap between China's mostly urban rich and its mostly rural poor, and the party's lack of ¡°internal democracy¡±¡ªcomrade-speak for accountability and the courage to question and debate. In other words, neither China's Communist Party nor its village dwellers are keeping up as the rest of China changes fast. None of the 1.3 billion ordinary Chinese gets a vote in the party's secretive conclaves. But among more than 700m left-behind peasants, frustrations are building.

 

As in any fast-developing economy, for all its successes China's breakneck growth masks a multitude of problems, from rampant corruption and devastating pollution to a frail banking system and the lack of independent courts to uphold the rule of law. Meanwhile, three decades of ¡°get rich quick¡± advice from party central have left the country divided between a richer coast and still impoverished interior, between upwardly mobile city dwellers and stagnating rural communities. These days, the income disparity between China's richest few and poorest many (peasants, migrant workers, pensioners) would make many a modern capitalist blush.

 

 

 

From communism to carpet-baggers

Mr Hu has tried to accommodate some demands for change. Most recently, a law was passed that for the first time enshrines private property rights¡ªa huge ideological leap for a party with its origins a long march back in Mao's communes. But like much else in China, these new rights will benefit mostly city-dwellers; a growing urban middle class will now be able to buy and sell their homes or businesses. In the countryside, where peasants are able only to lease their land, not own it (and not even use it as collateral for loans), the new law will do nothing to rectify the landgrabs orchestrated by venal local officials, who turf people off the land so as to do lucrative deals with carpet-bagging developers.

 

In this and other ways, the reforms that Deng Xiaoping first launched in China's countryside 30 years ago have now left its peasants in the ditch. But village dwellers have not only seen their city compatriots get richer quicker; increasingly, their own concerns have also been neglected. Since 1989, when disgruntled workers joined student democracy protesters and it all ended in bloodshed on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, a ruling party fearful of any further challenge to its power has paid better heed to the grievances of China's urban masses. Urbanites have won greater freedom to spend their rising incomes as they wish, while much ballyhooed experiments in greater village democracy have gone nowhere. With access to the internet and mobile phones, China's middle classes can organise themselves to oppose, say, the siting of an unwanted chemicals factory and thus draw government attention. Despite many thousands of village protests each year against corrupt officials, poor medical services and bad schools, China's peasants¡ªmore dispersed, less organised and therefore more easily ignored or suppressed¡ªcan usually do little but seethe.

 

Mr Hu bemoans China's widening inequalities, but has so far done little to bridge them. In fact there is much that could improve the peasants' lot. Growth at any cost has led to a tax system that unduly favours the wealthy regions that generate their income through industry. Central government could adjust that. It could help further by shouldering a much bigger share of the costs of basic health care and education in the rural areas. Of the five tiers of government, a couple could be stripped away and not be missed. Indeed, thinning the ranks of idle cadres with their fingers in the coffers would ease the financial burden on China's hard-pressed villagers.

 

 

 

Shooting for trouble

Are such reforms too extensive and costly for a still developing country such as China? No longer. Four years ago, China put its first man in space (only the third country to do so, after Russia and America), at what true cost the government will not say. Now it is aiming for the moon, at a cost of many more billions: its first (unmanned) moon-shot is expected to take place soon. Like the Olympics, China's space programme is an expensive publicity stunt, designed to encourage nationalist fervour in a population¡ªand a party¡ªlong since bored with the maxims of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

 

Another way in which Mr Hu and his comrades could help the peasants would be to divert some of the double-digit annual increases in defence spending to help the estimated 40% of China's villages that have no access to running water. The trouble is that China's military build-up has become the measure of the party's commitment to another nationalist cause that it has stoked in an effort to bolster its tattered credentials: the eventual recovery, by persuasive hook or military crook, of the island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own.

 

So far the combination of this appeal to nationalism and the pursuit of economic growth at almost any price has helped the party maintain its grip. But just as China's periodic shrill threats to Taiwan threaten the stability of the wider region, so the plight and growing anger of China's peasantry are a harbinger of potential trouble ahead at home.

 

It is trouble that China's Communist Party is increasingly ill-prepared to deal with. For all Mr Hu's rhetoric about greater internal democracy, the party is too fearful for its own survival to open itself up to a genuine clash of ideas. Although a few brave voices have called for that there has been no open debate in the run-up to the congress about how to address any of China's pressing rural problems. To add to their burdens, China's peasants are saddled with a ruling party that is too worried about its own survival to spend more than a little lip-service on theirs.

 

The West just wants progress at such breakneck speeds.

 

Many things about this editorial I find ironic.

 

First off, of all the modern Chinese leaders, Hu has done the most to improve the West and interior of China, and not just lip service. Jiang ZM and Rong focused all their attention to Shanghai and the coastal regions.

 

The other great irony I see in comments like these is the assumption--or inference--that somehow the great 700 million peasantry is a static and monolithic group with the same goal. What the editorial fails to honestly and frankly disclose or consider is that the 700 million Chinese peasantry is like everyone else--be they corrupt commie cadre leaders or the burgeoning Chinese middle class--and that is to say that the Chinese peasantry will do exactly the same as the other classes once they obtain enough money for themselves and reach the middle class or even upper class. They are no better or worse with regards to ethics and corruption.

 

With respect to Jeikun, I think griz326 is pretty dead on. We have the same kind of economic problems in the US, albeit everyone--including the poor class--start from a better base in the US, but the problems are pretty much the same.

 

Do the poor, under-educated, blacks of America have the same opportunities as the upper class New England WASPs? Does the US offer universal health care to all its citizens? Or are there 45 million uninsured people here who can get access to reasonable health care?

 

The editorial talks about China's 45 billion budget on its military. Well, the US is asking for more than 600 billion on its defense budget. Can't our colleges, hospitals, infrastructure, etc etc etc use some of the billions going to the Pentagon?

 

I will concede that China needs a much stronger independent judiciary. I will concede that China needs a much stronger focus and execution of the rule of law. I will concede that China needs to implement rules and policies which are fundamentally fair to all, not just the richer coastal regions or urban city dwellers. And of course I'll concede that China needs to democratize and open itself up for more internal criticism and debates. Lastly, I'm am an ardent advocate of a strong and independent press. More than anything else, I concede China desperately needs a very FREE press. But for all its problems, I'm still willing to wager that the vast majority of Chinese people are quite proud of the system they have now. It could even be that they've been brainwashed to be content because the state controls the media, but they are pretty content. Even if you want to argue that 200 or 300 million are not happy and want change, than that still leaves 1-1.1 billion who are content. The US and the West loves to focus on the minority faction who are the dissenters and who want change but very rarely acknowledge the super majority who are actually pretty content with how things have progressed in the past 25 years and are continuing to progress in China.

 

Without the strong and tight control of the Chinese government, you end up with a disaster like Russia. If it wasn't for the crazy high oil prices, Russia wouldn't be half what it is now and that's not saying much.

[rogerluli]

People in the country are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore...

 

Locals in the village of Xiantang have occupied their village hall for the past 14 weeks to protest what they say is official graft.

 

Xiantang, China

On the face of it, the giant red banner strung across the entrance to the village hall here, urging support for Beijing's campaign against official corruption, seems unexceptional.

 

In fact, it is the rallying point for what may be the longest sustained act of defiance against Communist Party authorities in recent Chinese history. It is also emblematic of the enormous difficulties that the Chinese government faces in retaining legitimacy in ordinary people's eyes.

 

The slogan is not the work of the mayor of this quiet southern village of around 3,500 souls, nor any of his aides. Rather, it was daubed by angry residents who have been occupying the village hall for more than three months in protest against local leaders who they say have stolen millions of dollars in public funds.

 

The occupiers are not armed insurrectionists. They are mostly old people who complain that the village committee, led by the local secretary of the Communist Party, took over the land they had farmed, leased or sold it to developers, and kept the money for themselves.

 

"It was our land. It was sold, but we did not get any money," says Lai Niu, who ekes out a living selling chicken. "Government officials and businessmen work together and ignore us villagers."

 

That is a common complaint in the Chinese countryside, and protests against land grabs by local officials erupt on a regular basis. The Ministry of Public Security reported 17,900 "mass incidents" in the first nine months of 2006. They are almost always snuffed out within a day or so. Corruption is a top priority for the central government, President Hu Jintao reiterated during the 17th Party Congress this week.

 

Xiantang's angry villagers took control of the village council's opulent five-story offices on July 1, after officials had refused to open their accounting books. They have been there ever since, mounting a 24-hour guard over a pile of cardboard cartons they believe contain the accounts that will prove their allegations.

 

They threaten to stay there until regional authorities send auditors to check the books, and their demands have also taken on a political tone. "We want to elect a good village leader" to replace the current head of the council and Communist Party Secretary Lai Zhenchang, who was appointed by the government, says one of the protesters, Lai Jiawen.

 

Meanwhile, villagers take turns sleeping on thin mattresses laid out on chairs in the village hall canteen, cooking tureen-fuls of communal food on fires they light in the building's grand entranceway, and milling around the marble-floored foyer amid banners and posters they have put up along with an old portrait of Mao Zedong.

 

"He fought and won for the whole country," explains one villager. "He gave us our land."

 

So far the police have made no move to evict the protesters, whose numbers vary from a few dozen to 200 or so, depending on the day. About 20 municipal employees continue to sit at their desks, trying to ignore the disorder around them.

 

The villagers' anger has been rising to the boiling point for a long time. Twenty-five years ago, when Xiantang was a remote village of fishponds, silkworm mulberry trees, and vegetable plots, the village council took over management of residents' land and gave each peasant family a share in the enterprise worth a monthly average of 60 yuan (now the equivalent of $8.00) per member.

 

"It was not a lot but we understood," said one villager who asked not to be identified. In the intervening decades, however, the giant city of Guangzhou, the capital of booming Guangdong Province, spread its suburbs to envelop the village. Land values have soared, and the village council has leased or sold most of Xiantang's land to factory and business owners, but the former peasants say they still receive the same compensation as they did 24 years ago.

 

"After so many years it is not fair and not normal," complains the villager.

 

The protesters want to know where the money ¨C as much as $1 million a year ¨C has gone, and they have their suspicions.

 

"All the officials here are getting rich," charges Lai Jiawen. "They have built beautiful homes and they all have cars. Four of them have three cars each."

 

Residents also suspect that village council members skimmed money from the contract to build the new village hall, an unusually lavish marble and glass edifice decorated with mock-crystal chandeliers that looks quite out of place in this low-rise village.

 

Widespread and rising allegations of corruption among Communist officials are a serious challenge to the party's rule, top leaders have warned. During the first five months of 2007, prosecutors investigated 12,622 corruption cases, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate. That was up 2.4 percent from the same period in 2006.

 

In his opening address to the 17th Party Congress in Beijing last Monday, President Hu was blunt.

 

"Resolutely punishing and effectively preventing corruption bears on the popular support for the Party and on its very survival," he warned. "We must resolutely stop unhealthy practices that hurt public interests, and take effective measures to deal with matters that cause strong public resentment."

 

Xiantang's residents, however, say that their efforts to draw official attention to their complaints have borne no fruit. They say they were turned away from the gates of the municipal offices in nearby Foshan city and of the Guangdong provincial government, and that a weeklong picket of the Longjian town government was broken up by police.

 

A spokeswoman for the district of Shunde, under whose rule Xiantang falls, identifying herself only as Ms. Zhang, says, "The government is trying its best to solve the problem, but it takes time to deal with it." Xiantang's party secretary and village council head Lai Zhenchang refused to answer questions.

 

It is unclear why the police have taken no steps yet to evict the protesters illegally occupying Xiantang's municipal offices. A municipal employee who gave his name only as Chen explains, "This is the decision of a higher-level department. I just do what my leaders tell me to do."

 

Officials may be concerned that a raid on the village hall, which protesters say they would resist, might only spread popular discontent. "The local government is paying a lot of attention to social stability," says Ms. Zhang.

 

Though the villagers say they are afraid of the consequences of their unusually direct action, they insist they had been left no choice. "This village hall is ours; we haven't broken the law," says Lai Niu. "We organized ourselves and we have complained, but now we don't know where to make our voices heard."

[griz326]

Westerners working to influence and change China is the same as Californians working to influence and change Montana.

 

The result is disaster.

[rogerluli]

I wonder sometimes Roger if you like anything about any country.

 

 

And this is the guy accusing OTHERS of BAITING...

 

What a comedian...

[Guest Rob & Jin]

Westerners working to influence and change China is the same as Californians working to influence and change Montana.

 

The result is disaster.

 

Well disaster or not is happening big time

[Guest knloregon]

Now that the 17th. Party Congress is complete, the political picture is clearer. Hu, who by Chinese standards, has always been a social reformer at heart has successfully placed two new younger members on the powerful standing committee (Xi Jinping, and Li Keqiang) Both are also known as efficient rulers at the provincial level, as well as having concerns for social welfare.

 

The western press has for several years now, harped on the growing disparity between the rural and the urban. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that on average urban households make 3 times what rural households make. But as we all know, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality of life. For instance, does keeping a condo in downtown New York cost as much as a nice spread in say, White House TN? I would venture to say there is probably a 3 to 1 ratio right there in the good ol' US of A.

 

(In China compare the condo in any of a number of big eastern cities, but for an NY comparison, say Beijing or Shanghai to nearly any rural town or city.)

 

From the standpoint of comparitive economics, (rural and urban) the bigger issue is this: Is life improving in rural China? Do the farmers have more now than they did 5 years ago? And the answer is---of course! ---its just that things are getting even better much faster in the big cities, creating the widening gap. Particularly in the rural west, MUCH better infrastructure, and getting better all the time.

 

The socially disruptive issues are those that Roger earmarked---openly corrupt land deals, and environmental disasters that leave the land unfarmable. Big problems to be sure.

 

I disagree with several things in the original Economist article. China Moble IS bringing high tech communication (at an affordable price) to even the most remote rural areas, and most rural Chinese have color tv, or easy access to it.

[DMikeS4321]

Now that the 17th. Party Congress is complete, the political picture is clearer. Hu, who by Chinese standards, has always been a social reformer at heart has successfully placed two new younger members on the powerful standing committee (Xi Jinping, and Li Keqiang) Both are also known as efficient rulers at the provincial level, as well as having concerns for social welfare.

 

The western press has for several years now, harped on the growing disparity between the rural and the urban. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that on average urban households make 3 times what rural households make. But as we all know, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality of life. For instance, does keeping a condo in downtown New York cost as much as a nice spread in say, White House TN? I would venture to say there is probably a 3 to 1 ratio right there in the good ol' US of A.

 

(In China compare the condo in any of a number of big eastern cities, but for an NY comparison, say Beijing or Shanghai to nearly any rural town or city.)

 

From the standpoint of comparitive economics, (rural and urban) the bigger issue is this: Is life improving in rural China? Do the farmers have more now than they did 5 years ago? And the answer is---of course! ---its just that things are getting even better much faster in the big cities, creating the widening gap. Particularly in the rural west, MUCH better infrastructure, and getting better all the time.

 

The socially disruptive issues are those that Roger earmarked---openly corrupt land deals, and environmental disasters that leave the land unfarmable. Big problems to be sure.

 

I disagree with several things in the original Economist article. China Moble IS bringing high tech communication (at an affordable price) to even the most remote rural areas, and most rural Chinese have color tv, or easy access to it.

 

Nice post, Michael. Don't be such a stranger...

[Tony_onrock]

Sooner or later it will explode. As you guys are debating, I am in Sichuan province, trying to get land, more land. Because the public bidding process is pushing land price up so high, most developers are finding it harder and harder to get land and develop it with a decent profit. What is the solution? Getting land from peasants. Our partner is getting 7000 mu of land (each mu is about 6600 sq. meters and each sq. meter is about 9 square foot) at a fraction of what it will cost at public auction. The reason: getting it from the farmer.

Had lunch with some officials here in Chengdu, heavy drinking. The aim: land! Without land developers can not survive, without land the peasants will have to leave their homes to venture into the city to work.

Not sure if the urbanization is a good thing or bad one, but the villiage leader, an old commie from Mao's time grabbed some good land and we need to pay him a 150 million premium (compared to what his family paid). It is fking ugly, but then we partner up with developers who partner up with the party and government.