BEIJING, 7 March 2006 — China’s ruling Communist Party aims to provide safe drinking water to 100 million people in rural areas over the next five years, as part of an ambitious plan to build “socialist new villages.”
If it meets the target, another 200 million people will still be drinking unsafe water, according to government estimates.
Such numbers reflect the mammoth task facing the government in trying to spread the benefits of rapid economic development beyond the glittering cities of the east and south.
After 25 years of reforms first promoted by former leader Deng Xiaoping, millions of affluent Chinese are living in comparative luxury in the large cities.
Deng used the very un-communist sounding slogans of “to get rich is glorious” and “some people must get rich first” as key principles for building “socialism with Chinese characterisitics.” He argued that giving free rein to Chinese entrepreneurs, many of whom had links to the party, and foreign multinationals would allow wealth to accumulate and gradually spread to the whole population.
Now the government is trying to address some of the problems that resulted from the uneasy alliance between the party and large Chinese and foreign businesses.
“Some nouveaux rich have the monopoly on certain resources by utilizing their relationships (with party and government officials),” Hu Biliang, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
“Unfair market competition has made certain people use illegal means to amass wealth while others become poorer,” Hu said.
Income and wealth gaps are highly visible even in the most developed cities, where migrant laborers in patched cotton push tricycles laden with furniture or recycled cardboard past expensively dressed business executives driving luxury cars.
In many small towns of central and western China, it is like going back to the cities of 25 years ago.
Poor education, sanitation, medical care, social security, transportation and infrastructure all add to the inequalities between rural and urban residents.
Yet the government has allowed limited democracy at grassroots level, including direct elections of village heads. In contrast, city mayors are still appointed by local party members, while China’s leaders have ruled out ever allowing multiparty democracy.
But groups of protesters in rural and urban areas have been allowed to vent anger over alleged corruption and injustices.
Police last year recorded 87,000 “mass incidents,” including riots and protests in rural areas, a rise of nearly 7 percent from 2004. Some of the most violent incidents were linked to land disputes in which farmers claimed they were cheated by corrupt local officials and developers.
“We face an arduous task in developing and maintaining stability,” state president and party leader Hu Jintao said after he presented the five-year plan to the party’s 25-member Politburo last month.
Since taking over three years ago from Deng’s successor, the now retired Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao has urged people to build a more “harmonious society” by using his “scientific concept of development.”
The latest ideological spin of “socialist new villages” is designed to underpin long-term policies to industrialize, urbanize and enrich the rural areas that remain home to about two-thirds of China’s 1.3 billion people.
China already has more than 600 designated cities and plans to develop hundreds more towns and villages into urban centers over the next 15 years.
Party members attending annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the party’s showcase Parliament, often point to the huge economic and social changes since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
Gone is the old China in which peasants in many areas were tied to land in areas controlled by bandits and warlords, and where armies of beggars roamed, the delegates say.
In his speech to the NPC, Premier Wen Jiabao hailed the abolition of agricultural taxes as a “change of epoch-making signigficance.”
“This year we will completely rescind the agricultural tax throughout the country, a tax that China has been collecting for 2,600 years,” Wen said.
“We will focus on implementing key projects to establish large production bases for grain, cotton and edible oil, industrialize production of superior quality grain varieties ... and develop education, culture and health in rural areas,” he said.
Government experts promote the new plan despite some of them admitting that a similar “go west” plan to encourage industrial development in poor central and western areas did little to bridge the regional wealth gaps in the previous five years.
“Developing rural secondary and tertiary industries is a way to reduce rural poverty,” said Xi Yinsheng, a researcher at the Agriculture Ministry.
State funding of infrastructure and relocation of poor families to new urban centers are other important measures for creating the “socialist new villages,” Xi said.
Free schooling for nine years and better technical education will also be promoted to produce modern farmers, Wen said in his speech.
“We need to create a new type of farmer who has a good basic education and understands both agricultural techniques and business operations,” he said.
