|
|
CHINA: Back to the Land
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING , Mar 6, 2006 (IPS) - The Chinese Communist Party is preparing to unveil a new five-year development blueprint which, under the slogan of building a ‘new socialist countryside', will mark a shift away from urban to rural
spending for the first time in 15 years.
Much of the focus of the new blueprint - to be approved during the ongoing annual legislative session of the National People's Congress- is on raising living standards for the country's 800 million peasants whose incomes have stagnated despite years of breakneck economic growth.
In the years through 2010, Beijing leaders hope to stimulate rural
consumption and reduce the economy's dependence on exports and high spending on urban infrastructure.
To increase spending in China's impoverished countryside is a policy of "epoch-making significance", Premier Wen Jiabao said in his national address at the opening meeting of the congress on Sunday.
"We must bolster our determination to reorient the government's priority in infrastructure investment to the countryside. This is a major policy change," Wen told the roughly 3,000 delegates attending the annual legislative session at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Chinese peasants, who helped bring the Communists to power in 1949, enjoyed a dramatic lift in living standards after the 1979 rural reforms, which saw the people's communes abolished and lift over 200 million out of poverty.
But after the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, which swept nearly 100 Chinese cities, the government has followed policies aimed at raising urban incomes and placating the grievances of China's urban dwellers.
Annual incomes in rural areas average about 2,400 Chinese yuan, or 300 US dollars, compared with urban incomes averaging about 8,000 yuan. However, the actual difference in wealth between the country's vast hinterland and cities is much bigger.
Based on a detailed study, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that the average urban income is a whopping seven times that of rural areas, if benefits like superior education and medical care available to urban dwellers are included.
The widening gap between rural and urban dwellers continues to fuel unrest with record numbers of rural protests. According to the public security ministry, there were 87,000 public disturbances in 2005, a 6 percent increase from 2004.
The most widespread and violent public protests have resulted from illegal
seizures of farmland for property development and other construction
projects, despite the central government's demand that local officials end
abuses.
More than 40 million farmers have been displaced from their land and the
number is increasing by more than 2 million a year. Landless farmers are now among the poorest people in the country and their desperate plight has sparked violent outbursts with sometimes tragic results.
In December, several hundred peasants of Dongzhou village in Guangdong
Province, who were protesting against the local government's land seizures for a power-plant project, were dispersed with fire from automatic weapons. The clash resulted in at least 30 casualties, some of them fatal.
And on Jan. 14, several people were wounded and a teenage girl was beaten to death in clashes between villagers and the police in a land dispute in Panlong village, also in Guangdong province.
"We need to see clearly that there are many hardships and problems in
economic and social life," Premier Wen said in his government work report on Sunday. "Some deeply seated conflicts that have accumulated over a long time have yet to be fundamentally resolved, and new problems have come up that cannot be ignored," he said..
"The widening gap between the cities and the countryside is no longer just a problem of the peasants and the countryside," says Prof. Xu Yong, a
rural expert with Huazhong Shifan University. "We have succeeded in the
initial industrialisation of the country and now every industry, and every
city should partake in the building of new countryside."
Prof. Xu is among the 200 party cadres and rural experts who
took part in a February meeting at the Central Party School where communist leaders announced that development of a "new socialist countryside" is the "foremost task" facing China in the next five years.
The programme calls for more spending on agricultural techniques, rural
infrastructure and social services for the country's rural residents.
To implement the new plan, Premier Wen said in his address that the
government has earmarked 42.3 billion dollars in rural spending this
year- an increase of 14.2 percent over 2005.
The government has recently unveiled several additional policies aimed at
boosting rural incomes. It has already abolished centuries-old rural taxes
and also committed to subsidising farmers who grow grain.
The elimination of agricultural taxes is expected to plunge local
governments further in debt. Many county level administrations have debts, which are not included in the overall government debt statistics. Beijing has also promised to channel central government funds into the coffers of local administrations.
Reflecting a heightened sense of urgency to relieve the burden of rural
families, Premier Wen said that a pilot project cancelling tuition fees on
compulsory education in the China's impoverished western and central
provinces would be extended to the whole country from next year.
Rural health care and rural education are two of the biggest causes of
local government deficits. In his speech, Wen promised institutional reforms at lower levels of the bureaucracy in order to improve rural governance.
Critics say the real test of the government's commitment to helping the rural poor lies in Beijing's willingness to go a step further and allow privatisation of farmland.
At present, farmers can only lease land for 25 to 30 years and can easily
become victims of abuse by local officials when their plots are confiscated
for industrial or development projects. (END)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
