Looming social crises: China at a cross road

Introduction

China has since 1992 sustained a dizzying growth rate, hovering above or near 8%, a performance all the more impressive, when viewed against the troubled world economy in the second half of the 90s. Cities and towns are bustling with commercial and construction activities. Indeed, in cities in today’s China, especially in Shanghai and Beijing and any number of tourist and commercial centers, you cannot but be impressed by the newly built high risers . Despite its spectacular growth rate, – or perhaps because of it – toward the end of 1990′s China has again, as had happened previously, towards the end of 80s, found itself beset by looming social instabilities: the Falungong movement, the breakdown of health care system and social safety net, deepening of crises in rural China, increasing unemployment and mushrooming of labor protests across the land. About two years ago, The Communist Party central committee, published a report, prepared by a top party research group, describing mounting public anger over inequality, corruption and official aloofness; it paints a picture of seething unrest and describes militant protests, sometimes involving tens of thousands of people, including an incident in which a peasant protester cut off a tax collector’s ear. The publishing of this report then caught outside observers by surprise. Why did it break with the tradition of always suppressing unfavorable information? For any one who follows China closely, especially with the benefit of hindsight, the reason is very simple. The signs of social malaise and looming crises were simply too widespread and too conspicuous to be effectively covered up. To continue to ignore it would only serve to exacerbate the wide spread resentment against official aloofness. Ever since the taboo of discussing dark sides of reforms was thus breached by party leadership itself, the rural and labor problems and other urgent social problems are increasingly being discussed in China both within and outside of the party with a sense of urgency and frankness never seen before. People began to ask such questions: what went wrong with the reforms and opening-up process? Why fast economic growth has not brought about greater security and stability? How to avert the out – break of major social upheavals? Why repeated government effort to address increasingly serious social problems in China has invariably failed? Where is China headed? Such questions relating to looming social crises have not only compelled the attention of scholars and think tank people within and outside China, but increasingly been mooted in public discourse in China. An article, by three scholars, Hu Angang, Wang Shaoguang and Ding Yuanzhu, entitled, Sounding the Alarm: the social instability behind the economic prosperity, published in the influential journal, Strategy and Management, April, 2002, has attracted a good deal of attention both in China and abroad .It states categorically that China is now ‘again entering a period of social instabilities.’ It warns of possible out-break of the kind of crises and turmoil that engulfed China in 1989 or Indonesia more recently.It gives detailed info about key causes of looming social instabilities: massive labor unrest, deepening crises in rural China, polarization of wealth and widespread corruption which represent the major fault-lines in China’s social milieu. But commentators differ as to how imminent is the danger of a major explosion and what might trigger it. Many believe the Party can probably manage as long as the fast economic growth can be maintained. Some on the other hand, believe the single pursuit of fast economic growth at the expense of social justice, and in particular at the expense of the working class, is itself a key part of the problem and not the solution. Some point to the entry into the WTO as the factor that might trigger a major earthquake. Most people believe that in any case if China’s economy falters, before China completes its more than two decade of reforms, including political reforms, then crises will most certainly break out. In this paper, I will focus mainly on the deepening of crises in rural China. I will argue that the rural areas in China’s inland on the whole is facing not merely serious crises down the road, but, rather, real crises have existed and become ever deeper on multiple fronts for quite some time. Moreover, while briefly touching on questions relating to responses and options of the party/state machinery, I will try to focus on people’s responses to existing or looming crises, in terms of social movements, and the implications the crises and movements have for the emerging left forces in China.

Rural Reforms in the Eighties and the Onset of Crises

China started full-fledged rural reform in early 80s by dismantling the communes and replacing it with the household responsibility system. Land was divided and entrusted to each individual household’s care. Before, the land is collectively owned and farmed by rural communities, organized and governed in the form of a three ?tiered commune system. A commune, which governed the geographic and administrative equivalent of today’s Xiang, (township), is composed of a number of brigades, an administrative and geographic equivalent of today’s villageA brigade was divided into a number of production teams, each of which collectively farmed the land assigned to it. To minimize resistance and bolster support for this radical reform, the central authorities had ordered a substantial increase of the purchase price the state paid to peasants for their grain and other agricultural products. Initially, the reform seemed to have yielded the desired results: greater motivation and higher production and income. By 1985, reform had run out of steam; production stagnated. Rural China has since embarked on a prolonged decline that repeated government efforts have failed to reverse.

By the end of 1980′s signs of looming crises in Chinese villages already appeared, clear for any one who would care to look. In July 1989, one month after the Tian’anman uprising culminated in bloodbath on June 4, I visited villages in Guizhou and interviewed many villagers. I was struck on the one hand by the general discontent and resentment directed at the government; on the other hand by words of respect and praise for Mao Zedong who died more than a decade ago, readily expressed by total strangers I met on the trip. They complained about exorbitant prices for fertilizers and other agricultural implements, soaring crime-rate, corruption and aloofness of local officialdom. The officials had hardly any contact with villagers, except when they came to either ‘take money or take life’ meaning to collect tax or to enforce abortion. The relationship between the people and the agents of the state assumed a truly antagonistic nature. I was told by villagers that overwhelming majority of peasants supported the students uprising in Beijing.

The people’s disenchantment and anger was not hard to understand. In this new system, the state, to many peasants, is like a landlord, with each household, under contract, paying a yearly tax to the state for the land it rent from the state. But the state acted like a very bad landlord, as it made very little investments in health, education, and maintenance and development of rural infrastructure. Most of the basic public services were in disarray or totally broke down. Crime rate soared, because no police presence was made available at the village level; Irrigation was left in disrepairs. The rudimentary Health care system was dismantled. Many school-age children, especially girls were out of school, because the parents could not afford it. In theory China’s compulsory elementary education was free. In actual practice, while there was officially no tuition, the parents were required to pay for miscellaneous charges and for relatively expensive books. In the few village schools I visited, the girl-students ratio was dismally low. I was told in some classes there was no girl at all. On the other hand, one teacher told me, there use to be roughly equal number of boys and girls in her classes during the Cultural Revolution period. (I recorded my impressions from this trip in an article published in a Chinese language journal, the Asian American Times in November 1989).

Rural crises in the 90s

In the past few years, a good number of illuminating books and research papers on the dire situation of rural China have appeared. Most notable among them are works by scholars Cao Jingqing and Yu Jianrong and a former township party secretary Li Changping, They convincingly trace the trajectory of the decent in the 90s of China’s rural inland into crises on multiple fronts, and offered a close-up look at its dire situation today, high-lighted by the following facts:

• The local government has expanded rapidly in 1990s and consequently tax has been on the rise year after year in order to meet the expanding pay roll.
• Since 1993, rural China has been hit by widespread fiscal Crises. County and township government had problems paying those on its payroll, including officials and teachers
• Tax burden has kept increasing in the 90s and has reached an unbearable level. A peasant, regardless whether he works the land or not, has to pay assorted assessments, as these assessments are levied on every person – even people over eighty years old or newborn babies are not exempted.
• Farming can no longer generate enough after tax income to meet the most basic needs. In recent years, in large parts of rural China, most of the peasants actually lost money farming the land.
• More and more of the agricultural land has been abandoned, as able-bodied people left for the cities.
• Majority of township now are reeling under-heavy debt load, often with exorbitant interest rate
• Since 1993, peasants protest movement has spread, and grown more militant, increasingly resulting in violence.
• Central authorities had issued a lot of policy instructions and ordered various measures, aimed at reducing peasants tax burden and avert further outburst of violent protests, but all to no avail. They are either ignored or poorly designed or inadequately funded.
• There is an egregious lack of accountability and transparency in respect of the conduct of state/party machinery at local-county and township-level. The officials act with little budgetary and fiscal discipline. The accounting system is a mess, falsification and forgery rampant.

Li Changping told the truth to the Premier

For the past few years, a growing body of opinions has breached long-standing apathy to call attention to the suffering and pains of peasants and offer advice and warnings to the ruling elite of the state/party apparatus. Among these new breed of peasant advocates, the most well known is Li Changping. His rise to national fame began when he wrote a letter to premier Zhu Rongji in March 2000, a few months after he assumed the post of party secretary of Qipan Xiang (township). In this extraordinary letter, after introducing himself, he began his passionate plea for help by telling the premier, “I am writing this letter to you with tears in my eyes. All I want to say to you with this letter is this: the life of the peasants is extremely hard, the rural communities extremely poverty-stricken and the state of agriculture extremely precarious!” He proceeded to offer a heart-wrenching account of the dismal realities in his part of rural China and proposed bold reform measures. His letter got what he was looking for: nodding approval from Zhu Rongji. His reform effort started with big fanfare, receiving wide local media coverage and loud endorsement from top county and provincial leaders. The story was also reported in late August by Southern Weekend, a very influential mass-circulation weekly journal in China. Three weeks later, on September 16, he suddenly resigned from his post of party secretary, and moved to Shenzhen, the booming southern coastal city bordering Hong Kong, to work in the private sector. He was named by Southern Weekend’s readers ‘Man of the Year 2000′ acquiring more votes than famous athletes and other celebrities. He authored a best selling book, I told Premier Zhu Rongji the Truth (Guangming Daily Press, Beijing, 2002). He is now in Beijing, working as an editor of the rural edition of China Reform Magazine. Part of his book, I told Premier Zhu Rongji the Truth, is devoted to an engrossing account of his failed reform effort, explaining why he decided to write a letter to the Premier, how the local officialdom hated him as a boat-rocking upstart while officially professing admiration and support for his initiative, and colluded to finally make things so difficult for him that he had to pack and leave, knowing that he had no chance standing alone against the collective hostility.

The real importance of the book is its political and social messages. Li did not coin the term, three-nong wenti, the triple-rural questions, i.e. the questions of rural people, communities and economy (nongmin, nongcun and nongye are usually translated as peasants, villages and agriculture), but his letter and book, more than any other factor, has helped brought the pressing problems in these three areas to the fore-front of public discourse and consciousness.

It is a powerful book in which passionate advocacy is backed up by such hard facts and figures: 80 percent of the peasants losing money farming the land; land and fish pond abandoned in his township projected to reach 65 percent of total agriculture land and fishery waters; 90% of township governments in that region having a budget deficit, and resorting to borrowing money, often at exorbitant monthly interest rates of no less than15%, with much of the loans made to the government from local officials and business people.

In particular the book offers an insider’s testimony to the banality of evil. The expansion and corruption of local government is both a symptom and a main cause of China’s rural malaise, which, like a malignant tumor, cannot be reformed or shrunk by mild palliatives. He asserts that the newly appointed leadership as a rule would abuse its power by increasing the number of salaried staff, with the funds ultimately coming from the peasants. The roll of cadres keeps expanding. In 1986, there were fewer than 15 administrative cadres in Qipan Township, now there are more than 300. He likens the local official to ‘locusts’ that feed off the villagers. He asks the premier in his letter, ‘How can the peasants cope with this increasing load year after year?’

He testifies in his letter that local governments routinely ignored central government’s orders; they refused to pay the price set by central authorities for purchase of peasants’ grain; they imposed taxes on peasants against declared policies; they routinely resort to lies and falsehoods to impress their superiors and cover up their misdeeds. He presents to Premier Zhu Rongji an eloquent indictment of the culture of lies and falsehoods that permeate various levels of state/party apparatus: “At any mention of an exemplary model, it would be documented and promoted, with no attempt at establishing the veracity of the reports. The lower-ranked cadres have become very skillful in producing reports favored by the leadership. Everywhere, there is talk about increasing harvests and an excellent overall situation, which totally drowns out the truth. If one should tell of unpleasant realities, he would invariably be labeled as politically immature and unreliable”

According to Mr. Li, a Party Secretary in a township in today’s China, no matter how motivated he is initially to maintain his integrity, would eventually be swept by the corruption tide. “Because the interests of the cadres have developed to the point where it is impossible to reconcile them with the interests of the common people, [as] only the cadres have a say with regards to the promotion or demotion of the Party Secretary, and the higher-level leadership has the decision-making authority,” while the common people has no say what so ever. “So it follows that every Party Secretary, in order to protect and enhance his own power, will uphold the interests of other cadres as well as those of higher-level leadership, and sacrifice the interests of the masses.”

It is clear from the picture he drew in the book that in Qipan Township there are two classes of people who stand in antagonistic relationship to each other: On one side are peasants who work the land, and on the other side are those who are on government pay roll, their family members and business people who are well connected with the cadres. It is the latter group of people who reap benefit by increasing the peasants?tax burdens, by maintaining the nexus of business and political power and by making loans to local governments at exorbitant interest rates.

Any fair-minded person who has read this book would find it hard not to come to the conclusion that today’s rural China is gripped with serious crises on multiple fronts.

Peasants’ Direct Actions

In response to the looming crises, peasants began to take things into their own hand. The peasants’ actions in different parts of China have frequently taken the forms of prolonged mass struggles demanding reduction of tax burden, some times in the form of violent tax revolts. Some of them were large and protracted enough to break through China’s strict censorship of internal news and attracted attention form oversea media. The following information, obtained by a cursory search of English-language media reports posted on the internet, while far from complete, clearly demonstrates the extent and militancy of the peasants movements and the threat it poses to existing political and social order.

• The earliest such mass struggles came to light in 1993 when widespread rural unrest broke out in several provinces. In Sichuan, Henan, Anhui and eight other provinces, large numbers of impoverished peasants staged angry protests against local levies and officials’ abuse of power. The protests of largest scale took place in Renshou County, Sichuan province, which involved as many as 10,000 people and paralyzed parts of the county for several days. In one of the more violent clashes, authorities fired warning shots into the sky and tear gas into the crowd. Furious farmers pushed the police cars into a ditch and set them ablaze.
• In 1997, once again hundreds of thousands of peasants staged protest and demonstrations, and filed petitions in over 50 counties in Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces.
• In August 2000 in Yutang village of Jiangxi province things turned violent when local authorities began harassing farmers who wanted to distribute a pamphlet explaining the policies by the central government designed to reduce the tax burden of the farmers. The pamphlet even had Premier Zhu Rongji’s face on its cover and contained Beijing’s instructions on reducing our taxes. The revolt by farmers armed with sticks and clubs quickly enveloped towns and villages over 10 days starting.Officials told reporters rampaging farmers attacked government buildings, rushed into the offices and smashed up the furniture, and looted homes of the rich.
• In early 2001, a number of riots are known to have erupted again in the heartland of rice-and wheat-growing villages: twice in Jiangxi province, and several times in Hunan and Sichuan. Security forces killed two farmers and wounded 20 others during a clash April 15, 2001 again in the Jiangxi village of Yutang, where violent clashes happened the year before.

In such struggles, leaders have emerged. The state-run press has coined a new term for them: farmers’ Heroes some were jailed, others tolerated but under watch by authorities, because of their popularity and abilities to mobilize masses. The struggle in Xie’an townships in Renshou County, led by a charismatic leader, Zhang De’an, had successfully forced the government to forgo the assessment levied for building a segment of state-high way and to admit things had gone awry. Several people were arrested and sentenced to jail terms, but the authorities found it not in their interest to put Zhang in Jail. Jiang Dawei, a protest leader whose account of violent clashes led by him with authorities is published on the China Study Group website, was elected by popular vote to be the chief of his village for successive terms. Still others, wanted by law, have remained at large from authorities for years, like Zhao Shulan, a kindergarten teacher and Wu Tianxiang, a former model worker, (as reported by Washington Post, May 8, 2001). An important feature about the nationwide peasants protest movement against harsh taxation is the fact that in many of the more militant protests, some of the leading activists are not peasants. They are better educated, more knowledgeable about central government’s policies and intentions or laws and regulations. Many of them have mass movement experience as a former rebel in the Cultural Revolution. Those who wish to have a deeper look of peasant movements should refer to the works by Mr. Yu Jianrong, a researcher with Rural Development Institute of China’s Academy of Social Sciences. English translation of excerpts of his excellent paper entitled The Political Crisis of Rural China: Manifestations, Origin and Policy Prescriptions, is made available for the first time by the China Study Group on its website www.chinastudygroup.org

Responses from state/party leadership

We will now turn from the direct action response by peasants themselves to other kinds of responses to China’s rural crises. Since the completion of the dismantling of the commune system in 1984, the peasants had been pretty much left to fend for themselves, at the village level, with no viable political structure and public authority set up to replace the brigade and work teams. The political crises in 1989 came as a jolt to the ruling elite in the communist party. They concluded that the presence and leadership of state and party at village level must be strengthened as an urgent matter of national security; prolonged neglect of the countryside was dangerous; it was no longer acceptable to let the peasants fend for themselves. This policy and attitude change compelled by the 89 crisis has not only failed to arrest the decline of rural China and contain the growing resentment of peasants, but, rather, made matters worse by ushering in the process of inexorable expansion of local bureaucracy in 1990s. The pace of decline and disintegration of rural communities accelerated since 1992 along as Deng’s south tour led to a program of rapid liberalization and further intensification of capitalist relations. The overall policy line since followed by the party has assumed an entrenched class nature that would doom to failure whatever policy remedies designed to address critical rural problems. China’s general line for economic development is in the direction of promoting urban modernization at the expense of sustainable rural development, to create favorable conditions for Capital at the expense of Labor, and in particular, migrant labor from rural areas. The conflicts between classes and interest groups have drastically sharpened in the 90s; and the peasants disconnected and disorganized by the dismantling of communes, who, as K. Marx observed about the French peasants over 150 years ago, do not have political or productive links sufficient for them to act as a united force in the class struggle, are bound to become increasingly marginalized. For the past few years, Zhu Rongji repeatedly stressed the urgency and seriousness of such major rural problems as rural poverty, mounting tax burden, and official misconduct, and vowed to resolve them with maximum effort. But all the policy remedies prescribed by him failed. The latest well-publicized tax reform, so far the most determined attempt by Mr.Zhu, also failed because the 20 billion yuan yearly subsidy promised by central government to local governments fell far short of the amount needed by local government to offset the loss of tax revenue. Yu Jianrong’s paper on rural political crisis and Li Changping’s book have both offered cogent analyses of the repeatedly failed efforts of China’s central government.

Program of Action advocated by Li Changping

Other responses have come from emerging advocates of peasant cause like Cao Jingqing and, most notably, Mr. Li Changping. They have very solid understanding of rural crises and the flawed approach of central government’s responses. Both advocate 1. massive investment and subsidy to be provided by central government to promote rural development and reduce drastically the financial burden of peasants and bolster rural purchase power; 2. radical downsizing of township state/party bureaucracy; 3. bold political reforms to strengthen democracy based on direct election at township level and recall/impeachment mechanism at the county level. Media coverage of his story and his impassioned writings has made Li Changping a national celebrity and allowed him to emerge in relative short period of time as the leading advocate for peasants’ cause in China Today. Li has offered in his book specific proposals in the form of an 11-step program that reads like a populist election platform. He is aware that the radical democratic reforms and downsizing of the predatory local state will not be a cakewalk. He declares “[the down - sizing] certainly will be a revolution, a revolution that can not be avoided; [It] is a struggle between the people who defend their [legitimate] rights and powers and those who deny them such rights and powers.” He is convinced “This struggle [around democratic reforms] will soon take place”; this struggle is necessary for resolving the serious problems faced by rural China and “There is no time to wait.” He and his colleagues at China Reform call for freedom for peasants to move to city to seek employment and equal rights to be accorded to peasants who have migrated from country-side to work in cities.

They are actively visiting rural townships and college campuses to advocate their views. Their activities increasingly points to a social movement with a populist program, albeit as yet without a populist leader. This is perhaps the first officially tolerated advocacy based on a rights-based approach ever advanced under the communist rule. More importantly their call for equal right for peasants may find truly wide resonance not only among migrant workers but also among the intellectuals, as it relates to a most conspicuous form of discrimination. About one hundred millions workers, close to half of China’s labor force, are migrant workers from rural areas. They have been subjected to one of the most massive discrimination the world has ever seen , relative to treatment of workers who are native city residents. Their basic rights to maximum working hours per day/ week, safe workplace conditions, minimum wage, equal work/equal pay as specified by Chinese laws have been systematically violated.They do the most strenuous, hazardous, and dirtiest work shunned by city folks. They are paid less than the minimum wage, routinely work 11 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, often for sub-contractors without employment contract, who often withheld their wages for months or even longer, or refuse to offer them compensation for work-related injuries. Most of them are denied legal recourse, partly because it cost money to hire a lawyer, partly because most of these workers do not have a legal resident status. These are essentially illegal aliens or second-class citizens in their own country. They are not entitled to the social services available to the ‘residents.’Their stories and suffering have by now been well publicized, thanks to moving reports in such journals as Southern Weekend.

Responses from the Left

What Cao Jingqing advocates, in addition to views he share with Li Changping represents a perspective slightly to the left of Li Changping. He stresses the importance of re-establishing links between the de-collectivized peasants whose social and economic links under the commune system have been severed by the household responsibility system. To this end, he advocates a new co-operative movement.And he calls upon concerned intellectuals to create social pressure on the state/party leadership in support of this movement. Others more to the left of Cao are openly critical of Li’s position. They fault Mr. Li for placing too much hope on intervention from top leaders. They point to direct actions by peasants as an alternative. Some point to the Nanjie Village, which was re-collectivized after problems with the responsibility system emerged, as the model for rural development in China; they critiqued the rural reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in the beginning of eighties, and, in particular, the dismantling of the commune system as fundamentally flawed. The most significant response from the left to China’s rural crises is offered by Mr. Yu Jianrong, who argues convincingly in his paper on the political crises in rural China the following points:

• The much talked about rural crises are manifestations of a political crisis.
• The key to resolving the political crises is the empowerment of peasants by way of the forming of peasants associations and social movements.
• Concerned intellectuals have begun to ‘speak for’ peasants, but the crux of the matter is the ability of peasants to speak for themselves.
• But solidarity and support from concerned intellectuals are crucial for promoting social and political climate conducive to the forming of associations and organizations by peasants and development of social movements. Concerned intellectuals should go to rural areas not just to study and investigate, but also to help peasants form all kinds of associations.
• The association-forming process must be genuinely owned by peasants themselves and not directed and controlled by the state/party apparatus

In particular, he eloquently argues that without social movements and genuine peasant associations to mediate between the state and the peasantry, and to push for bold political reforms, the state/party leadership will not be able to resolve the political crises that have gripped rural China. In his paper Interestingly, lately Li Changping has also begun to emphasize the importance of peasants’ rights to form associations.

Concluding Remarks

China now stands at a crossroad. Increasing number of people both within and outside of the Party are convinced that stand-still is not an alternative, and that China must make a decision as to which road to take, not least because they fear that major crises will break out if no urgent actions are taken to address the long festering problems on different fronts. An examination of the origin and nature of the existing and looming crises along the major fault-lines of China’s political and social milieu would suggest that the party at present is clearly facing two opposing alternatives: a substantial move to the left or a push further to the right. The post-Mao transition to capitalism, which, launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, has since been carried out in the name of ‘reforms and opening-up China? is now undeniably in serious trouble. Deng returned to power in 1979, with a vision for China’s future, i.e. a rich, modernized country, with cities embellished by skyscrapers rivaling New York and Paris. He was convinced that only market economy could allow individuals or nations to ‘get rich’ in terms of accumulation of commodities and financial wealth; that Socialism would never match capitalism in level of consumption and prosperity. To realize his vision, he conceived a strategy for fast economic growth, which counted heavily on access to foreign markets, technology and capital. The one foreign country that has the biggest market, the most advanced technology, and the greatest potential as source of capital is the United States. Hence to maintain friendly relations with US became and remains an over-riding strategic goal. Another strategic objective is to bolster export and attract foreign investment by keeping the wage level artificially low, which means the need for prolonged stagnation and depression of rural economy and, thus, an inexaustible supply of rural surplus labor, in the form of a huge army of staggering size of migrant workers, without their own political organizations or rpresentatives, are forced to work at much lower wage levels and in more inhumane working conditions. This vision and strategy has since guided China’s development for more than two decades. It has, by some measure, succeeded in the realization of Deng’s vision of Chinese cities resembling New York or London. In its very logic also lies the root causes of real or looming crises along the main fault-lines: gaps between rich and poor and between rural and urban China, conspicuous consumption and rampant corruption, rural crises, labor discontents, and rise of nationalism and wide-spread disapproval of the ruling elite’s subservience to US hegemonic interests. One logical response is vigorous state intervention, a Chinese vision of New Deal, to reduce the income gaps, and, more importantly, to empower workers and peasants so that they can better defend their own interests in the class struggle, as rightly suggested by Yu Jianrong, and a shift to a more independent economic policy and foreign policy as a response to globalization and US hegemony. Another response in an opposite direction is to push for further liberalization of rural economy, by scrapping the household responsibility system, privatization of land, allowing peasants greater freedom to migrate to cities, accompanied by out-right fascist measures to crack down on dissent and mass protest.

So which way will China be headed? I am convinced there is no critical mass yet within the party for it to move either decisively to the left or significantly to the right. Hu Jingtao and Wen Jiabao, successors to Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, in one of their first public statements after assuming their posts of general secretary and premier respectively, have promised to give highest priority to the critical situation of rural China. They might try to reduce peasants tax burden by down-sizing the township government, offer free text books to rural children who can not afford them; They will probably try to address some of the most egregious aspects of discrimination against migrant workers from countryside. But without real empowerment through peasant associations and social movements, as Yu correctly argues, peasants will still be left powerless to defend their own interests. To let more and more peasants flood into cities to look for job is by no means a solution. It is a symptom of deep-rooted social malaise that has afflicted numerous impoverished developing countries.

I believe they will only tinker at the edges without addressing the fundamental flaws of the so-called socialism with Chinese characteristics. Unless social movements develop or major crises break out to compel bold moves, efforts by the new leadership headed by Hu and Wen is not likely to produce anything more than marginal effect on China’s rural crises as well the looming instabilities on multiple fronts. On the other hand, in all likelihood the ruling elite of the state/party apparatus, will continue to allow some space for expressions of grassroots civil activism, even dissenting views or some form of group activities, as long as they are not openly hostile to state/party leadership. There is a real chance that social movements with active participation by students or other intellectuals will emerge. The intractable rural crises, as well as looming crises on other fronts are calling for urgent actions, and forces within and outside of the Party are groping for change. It is against this backdrop that bold ideas for resolving rural crises are being put forward and considered by way of public discourse and intra-party discussions.

China is not known for a tradition of civil activism, at least not since 1949 when a super active revolutionary party began to take charge of every aspect of social life. Now the party has ceased to be revolutionary, and it no longer even professes any progressive pretensions, but it has generally clung to the habit of viewing any form of labor activism or social advocacy as a looming threat to the authority of the party. But in recent years, Li, Cao, Yu and others have come out to openly advocate the cause of peasants; Their books and view-points are allowed to be published; their passionate voices coming across loud and clear to a national audience, their messages well received; and their brand of activism has so far been tolerated. This is indeed a remarkable change from just a few years ago, when advocacy of peasant rights could not have been tolerated except in the margin of the society. Other indications, such as the recent release of the Aids advocate Wan Yahai, the release of Zhou Xiubao, the out ?spoken Maoist critic within communist party, and the tolerance of anti-war petition drive launched by a group of leftists, all suggest that the political climate has perceptibly changed in a way that portends more grass roots activism.

While the left should continue its effort to bring out the true nature and root causes of the deepening rural crises, it should also strive to promote realistic, progressive action programs to address them. Moreover, it should strive to play an active role supporting and promoting activities that help empower the peasants. The left forces must participate actively in social movements in order to grow into a real force for change. Otherwise it will remain marginalized as a loose – perhaps quite large – collection of individuals who proffer interpretation, critique, and advice on the sideline, which are either largely ignored or rendered irrelevant or obsolete by rapidly unfolding events. Deng Xiaoping’s theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is based on the following two proposition: 1) the socialist vision advocated by Mao Zedong and others is fundamentally flawed; 2) only capitalist road market system would lead Chinese people to the promised land. He pointed to the deprivation in socialist China as compared to the prosperity of capitalist US as proof, and most Chinese people believed him. In the process of capitalist develoment in China for the past two decades, increasing number of Chinese people, including most peasants and workers, through first hand experience with capitalism, have realized that it is Deng Xiaoping’s vision of capitalist China that is fundamentally flawed. But they feel powerless to change. It takes robust social movements to demonstrate that Moa’s vision of another world is indeed possible.