China's Real Economy
Another excellent report from The Guardian's Jonathan Watts in Beijing. The last two paragraphs in particular really made me smile:
In the southern boom city of Shenzhen, thousands of armed police were deployed earlier this week to quash a protest by more than 3,000 prostitutes and karaoke hostesses who were left without jobs after a crackdown on massage parlours and discos.
A nightclub owner said: "It has paralysed the local economy."
So, basically, Shenzhen runs on hookers and KTV. No surprises there.
In seriousness, the article highlights the very real problems of China's rampant economic growth. It's clear that the People's Republic is no longer interested in the rural workers it was formed to champion, and that the RMB is king these days.
And this is simply not sustainable. China is not like Europe or America - the only place with the capacity to feed 1.3 billion people is China (perhaps with a bit of help from Brazil, granted). There's no Common Agricultural Policy here. So urbanisation can only go so far - I'm afraid that if China's urban populace and manufacturing workers want to eat, there will have to be millions of poor farmers toiling the land to feed them. It's that simple.
Ultimately it has to rely on itself, and it knows full well that when things go wrong everyone starves to death.
I actually kind of like Wen Jiabao, too. He has at least the warm, friendly persona that Hu Jintao lacks, and has said things off the cuff once or twice (even if he has had to retract them). The next quoted paragraph is very interesting indeed, and I suspect Wen may have had a hand in this information coming out:
Disputes over land have emerged alongside - often related - issues of pollution and corruption as the major causes of unrest. On Thursday, the ministry of public security said there were 87,000 protests, riots and other "mass incidents" last year, up 6.6% on 2004.
The PSB actually told us about the amount of protests. Even if it's inaccurate or a downright lie, which it may well be, that's still big progress indeed.
Article reprinted below, and see also Dave's analysis from the US. Photo taken from Le Monde, Kunming protests, January 2005.
Land seizures threaten social stability, warns China's leader
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has warned that the rampant seizure of farmland for development is threatening social stability amid a rising wave of violent protests in the countryside.
A day after the government released statistics showing an average of more than 230 demonstrations every day last year, the state media published a grim warning from the prime minister, who is struggling to curb the land-grabbing instincts of China's local governments.
"Some locales are unlawfully occupying farmers' land and not offering reasonable economic compensation and arrangements for livelihoods, and this is sparking mass incidents in the countryside," said Mr Wen. "We absolutely can't commit a historic error over land problems."
With urbanisation growing at an unprecedented rate, 6.7m hectares of agricultural land were converted into roads, factories and residential areas last year. This has created problems of food self-sufficiency and left millions of farmers homeless.
Each transfer of property brings huge gains to developers. According to Ye Jianping of Renmin University, a six-square-metre plot of farmland in Guangdong province is worth no more than 150,000 yuan (£10,000). But if it is reclassified as development land, it can be worth up to 3m yuan. "The rate of urbanisation is too fast," said Professor Ye. "A lot of rural land is becoming urban but the transfer of population has not kept up so there are more than 30 million farmers without land or jobs."
Because the land is owned by the state or village collective, farmers have only fixed-term usage rights and minimal legal protection. When land is seized it is often done without adequate compensation. As there is no independent court system, it is usually impossible to seek legal redress so farmers have little choice but to protest.
Disputes over land have emerged alongside - often related - issues of pollution and corruption as the major causes of unrest. On Thursday, the ministry of public security said there were 87,000 protests, riots and other "mass incidents" last year, up 6.6% on 2004.
But land is not the only contentious issue in a country where citizens appear increasingly emboldened to challenge the authorities. In the southern boom city of Shenzhen, thousands of armed police were deployed earlier this week to quash a protest by more than 3,000 prostitutes and karaoke hostesses who were left without jobs after a crackdown on massage parlours and discos.
A nightclub owner said: "It has paralysed the local economy." He said about 8,000 people participated in a protest at the Shenzhen municipal government building, before police broke it up and arrested some of those involved.
