December2004

Crisis in China’s Countryside*
by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao

China is a major agricultural country, with 900 million farmers out of a total population of 1.3 billion. However, for a long time most urban residents have been ignorant about the living conditions of farmers in the countryside. People vaguely remember that the great reform movement that shocked the whole world started in the countryside in the late 1970s. After the countryside adopted the family-responsibility system, there were years and years of great harvests. Soon the demand for grain was satiated, and many “10,000 yuan households” appeared.

All of a sudden, it seemed like Chinese farmers had become very wealthy. However, soon after that urban reform took off, and we heard little about agriculture, the countryside and farmers. Yet it didn’t take long for us to notice that more and more farmers were giving up the land they used to treasure like their own lives, and leaving the villages and lifestyles they were familiar with. They fought their ways into the cities, where they suffered loneliness, humiliation and discrimination. The wave of “migrant workers” formed by millions of Chinese farmers became one of the remarkable phenomena of the 20th century’s final decade.

Over the past few years of work as journalists, we had many opportunities to go to the countryside and made friends with a lot of farmers who told us about their villages. We discovered that the idealized portraits of the countryside in our minds were nothing but illusions. In other words, they were the imaginings of city dwellers who are used to the comfortable urban lifestyle. In reality, life in the countryside is nothing like that. The farmers don’t have a leisurely or carefree existence, they live with constant pressures and fatigue.

Once we passed by a village on the Huaibei Plain in Anhui Province on our way to report about pollution on the Huai River. What we found there was shocking: Many farmers’ families were utterly destitute and had nothing in their houses but bare walls. One family had only five yuan ($0.60) from selling vegetables to spend on Chinese New Year. The poverty-stricken life was even worse than the first few years after the communist liberation.

A farmer worked out his costs with his fingers—he said that after deducting expenses for seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, machine planting and harvesting, and all the taxes and fees, they would work for nothing if the wheat production was less than 900 jin (450 kilograms) per Chinese acre. It is rare in Huaibei villages to have such a harvest; it’s already considered very good if they get 800 jin, and in most cases they get 600 jin….

Farmers worked all year long to earn an average annual income of 700 yuan ($85). Many farmers lived in mud clay houses that were dark, damp, small and shabby. Some even had tree bark roofs because they couldn’t afford tiles. Because of poverty, once someone fell ill, he either endured it if it was minor disease, or else just waited to die. There were 620 households in the whole village, of whom 514, or 82.9%, were below the poverty line…. Even though the village was very poor, the leaders were prone to boasting and exaggeration about their performance, and as a result the government struck it off the list of impoverished villages. So the villagers were burdened with exorbitant taxes and levies.…

Taxes as Numerous As Hairs on a Cow

The variety of taxes and levies is shocking. According to government statistics, there are 93 kinds of fees and fund-raising levies related to farmers, formulated by 24 national ministries, committees, offices and bureaus at the central government level. Local governments levy 296 other kinds of fees. Besides all those, there are an incalculable number of so-called “relevant charges.”

In our investigation we discovered that many of these charges are essentially made up by the village leaders as they please. Some you feel are absurd; others sound like black humor, like jokes, but there is no way the farmer can pay one penny less….

Since China promulgated an Environmental Protection Law, some local authorities started to treat the cooking smoke from farmers’ houses as “environment pollution,” and charged farmers “fines for emitting polluting substances.” Those farmers who wouldn’t stay silent and complained to village leaders provoked an “attitude fine.” A slogan popularized in the Cultural Revolution has been revived: “It is not how big a problem is, it is the attitude that matters.” Thus how big a fine was imposed on a farmer depended on his “attitude.”

Some village leaders didn’t even give any reason and just stuck out their hands and asked for money. Whoever dared say no, or even raised their eyebrows a bit, was beaten until they gave in….

Everyone knows that birth control has become a national policy, it is an untouchable “third rail.” But some village leaders “developed” this policy into unspeakable local policies. It has become an “imperial sword,” a new way for them to collect money….

The Justice Department in Lixin County announced the astonishing results of a special case. Between December 1998 and May 1999, Lin Ming, Yuan Zhidong and Li Peng, leaders of Sunmiao Village, bought themselves cars and hired thugs in the name of establishing a school. They then had more than 200 innocent farmers in 22 villages arrested illegally and tortured them to extort money based on charges such as “exceeding the birth quota,” “giving birth without approval,” “obstructing public affairs,” or without any accusation.

The three jail rooms they built illegally had no lights and the windows were sealed closed, so they were dark and horrifying. It stank to high heaven because detainees had no toilet to use and had to go in the rooms. They brought their own blankets and slept on the ground next to the feces and maggots.

Diao Xiying, Wang Qing, and a Ms. Xiao were detained for more than a month on the charge that “the daughter-in-law missed her medical examination.” Li Ying went to the county hospital for an operation because of a difficult labor and was arrested because “she did not give birth at the scheduled time.” Qiu Jimei was arrested because “she got pregnant right after marriage”.…

In Lixin County, a county on the poverty line, many farmers had to take on debts in order to pay the “fines”; some had to pawn their houses and belongings and became penniless.

Although Lin Ming, Yuan Zhidong and Li Peng committed all kinds of crimes, including perjury, corruption, embezzlement of public funds and helping their leaders to embezzle public funds, they were sentenced to only one to three years’ imprisonment by the local authorities. Such light punishment disappointed people in Sunmiao Village. Furthermore, those crimes were committed under the noses of village Party leaders and government leaders for so long and were so flagrant that people were boiling with resentment, but there was not one leader held accountable in the end.

This essay is excerpted from a Chinese book entitled An Investigation of China’s Farmers, which exposes the extent of official corruption in the countryside. After selling out its initial press run of 150,000 in January 2004, the book was banned by propaganda authorities. However, it continues to sell millions of copies in pirate editions widely available within China and is driving debate on the hardships of the rural poor. It has also remained in the public eye because one of the officials mentioned is suing the authors for libel. In October the book won Germany’s prestigious Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. The translation is by Xiaohui Restall.