CHINA: Private Property Gets Boost, Rural Issues Take Centre Stage

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Mar 3 2004 (IPS) - A feature of communist utopia is set to be laid to rest at the upcoming annual session of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) or Parliament: China will constitutionally guarantee the right to hold private property.

This would mark the first time China is taking this step since the 1949 communist revolution declared as state-owned expropriated land and means of production. But however climactic this constitutional amendment is in China’s slow transformation from a planned to market-driven economy, the buzzword at this year’s session of parliament, when it opens on Mar. 5, will not be – private".

Rural issues are expected to dominate the workings of the parliament, giving this annual showcase of China’s legal and social progress a sober appearance fitting for the needy countryside.

As tributes for bringing capitalists into the Communist Party’s fold and breaking the ground for enshrining private property in the constitution have gone to former party chief Jiang Zemin, China’s new leadership has been eager to put its own hallmark on the agenda of the NPC.

Since assuming power, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have tried to create an image of leaders who are less aloof and more responsive to popular concerns. Pledges to lighten peasants’ burdens and address growing social disparities have become the new call of the day.

Nevertheless, the dominance of the rural agenda at this NPC session is more than just a political step aimed at consolidating power base for the new ruling team.

Growing problems in the countryside are threatening to hold back the buoyant Chinese economy and make sporadic bursts of social unrest more common and widespread.

Stagnating rural incomes have dampened peasants’ enthusiasm for farming, causing a five-year fall in grain harvests. Grain shortages have alarmed state planners. China harvested 430.6 million tonnes of grain in 2003, down 5.8 percent from 2002, and this is still short of the country’s demand.

With little growth in buying power compared to their more affluent urban cousins, peasants have failed to contribute to domestic consumption that Chinese economists see as essential in fuelling economic growth.

Average rural incomes last year grew by 4.3 percent, five percentage points lower than that of urban residents, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

As China’s 900 million peasants account for nearly 70 percent of the population, addressing grievances from the countryside has now become a matter of urgency.

ôThe large population of farmers means that if they fail to earn money, the whole country will not achieve prosperity," Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Office of Central Financial Work Leading Group, pointed out recently.

Beijing has responded by issuing a high-profile No1 Document of 2004, akin to five previous No.1 Documents, all signed by late party leader Deng Xiaoping between 1982 and 1986 and all focused on rural issues.

The 9,000-word document unveils the new leadership’s blueprint to transform the disadvantaged countryside into a new consumer engine for economic growth by boosting government spending, slashing rural taxes and training peasants for service and manufacturing jobs in the cities.

The crux of the document – a new rural budget of RMB 150 billion (18 billion dollars), some 30 billion RMB more than last year, would be tabled and voted during the March session of NPC. If passed, the amount spent on addressing rural grievances would be a ôhistorical high" for the communist government, according to Chen, who oversees central finances.

Part of the money would go to help local governments pay for education and public health û a fiscal boost that central leaders hope would dissuade localities from charging peasants random fees on everything from land and water use to animal quarantines.

A significant chunk of the budget would be used to develop secondary and tertiary industries in the countryside that would alleviate poverty and create employment opportunities for the millions of migrant labourers flocking to the cities.

By curtailing levies on grain (about one percent off the current 8.4 percent) and setting up special grain production bases, Beijing hopes to arrest the decline in harvests and achieve the target grain output of 455 million tonnes in 2004.

All other taxes for commercial crops, except for tobacco, will be abolished.

Fiscal incentives to boost rural economy would be matched with rigorous new measures to end social injustices affecting peasants and migrants.

Anti-corruption investigators have been instructed to switch from mainly probing big cases to addressing complaints over acquisition of farmland, wages withheld from migrant workers and unauthorised fess and charges.

ôFees collected by schools that are not legal, kickbacks pocketed by doctors, wages owed to migrant workers and not paidà corrupt deeds like these are now becoming the new focus of our anti-corruption drive," said a report by the state-owned Xinhua news agency in early February.

Under the new banner of taking rural interests and grain safety to heart, Beijing is also expected to intensify its crackdown on the illegal acquisition of land. China’s arable land has shrunk by an average of 667,000 hectares annually over the past seven years, as local governments have tried to cash in on a nationwide real estate and development boom.

A new hearing system on adopting land and resources û aimed at allowing peasants who have lost land to re-development to seek better compensation – has been put forward by the Ministry of Land and Resources.

The ministry has also proposed nationwide inspections into the hundreds of development zones and industrial parks across the country, as many of them are reported to have been launched without proper authorisation.

While the rural agenda at the NPC this year is certain to keep delegates busy, they would have less time to deliberate on it compared to previous years.

In line with other well-highlighted public gestures of frugality by top leaders, the government has decided to shorten the annual parliamentary session and save money. Unlike sessions in the past, which usually lasted 12 to 20 days, the current NPC session will last only 10 days û from Mar. 5 to Mar. 14.