Seeds of fury in China

Seeds of fury in China

A feature article on rural discontent in China in the last issue of Time magazine is worth to read. It delineates the causes of violent protests in the Chinese countryside and the possibility of spreading the social unrest if the rage of farmers is not properly vented.

Incidents spurring the anger of peasants range from corruption to land seizures. Peasants, who were once the backbone of Communist Party, feel excluded from China's full-throttle economic growth. Farmers have no way, either legal or political, to voice their opinions on rural development associated with rocket-pace economic growth. Instead of reaping the fruit of economic growth, farmers are the only one who are left behind and bear the side effects of China's glorious growth: environmental degradation that has left hundreds of millions without clean air and water; farmland converted into factories often without proper compensation. The hands-off approach by Beijing has left county free to pursue the fast-track scheme of getting rich at the expense of the social needs that farmers deserve. The lack of funding for education and health care, just to name a few, is the seed of rural discontent.

The biggest problem in China is the obstruction of government decrees. Things formulated in Zhongnanhai sometimes don't even make it out of Zhongnanhai. Political scientists points out that unless there is a coherent institutions and frameworks for the central government to transmit its decisions and policies to local municipalities, China will face a hard time to harness its strong growth and may reach the bottle neck of the next stage of development.

Laxing restriction on the freedom of press and the inclusion of peasant representatives in major political groups may be a way out of the current plight. The scrutiny of the performance of municipal government by top-down approach from Beijing is certainly less effective than that should normally be done by mass media in Western countries. The free flow of information and instant nature of mass media allow the public and central government to keep an eye on the governance of local municipalities. Opening more channels to hear the voice from farmers and inclining policies in favor of the social needs of peasants are deemed necessary to quell the social unrest, which will probably the largest stumbling block barring China' transformation from a developing country to a developed country.