Re: [Marxism] Chinese peasant land ownership

[John Gulick <john_gulick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan,

As always, you offer interesting facts and analyses that one misses if one
relies on the Western press alone. I have a couple of questions...

You wrote:

> But already a new category of 'peasant' has emerged: landless, reportedly
> numbering about 40
> million.

One often sees the "fact" cited that China's floating population numbers in
excess of 100 million.
But, of course, many of these 100 million are working in the urban informal
sector illegally, and most
retain rural citizenship and have access to leased plots of cropland if they
so desire. These 40 million landless you refer to, do you mean 40 million
peasants who have been deprived by force and fraud of access to leased land
plots, but at the same time aren't affliliated with an urban danwei? Or
what?

> Another fetter is the central state, which appears set to follow a policy
> of modest support for >agricultural producers: the ag tax has been
> abolished, and major reforms in health care and >education for peasants are
> planned.

The abolition of the agricultural tax seems like a big breakthrough, but at
several successive NPC meetings hasn't the Hu-Wen leadership vowed to
increase central government spending on education and health initiatives in
the countryside, with little follow-through? Why should this time be any
different?

> A wild card in all this is the political organization of China's
> peasantry. The abolishment of the agricultural tax means that many
> grassroot cadres (tax collectors for the most part) may also go by the
> wayside. There's intense worry in China that this vacuum will be
> filled by the most organized non-government grassroots groups:
> organized crime and religion. But many peasants are getting relatively
> organized after campaigning against corrupt officials, heavy burdens,
> land grabs, etc., for many years. We'll see.

Are you suggesting that a huge portion of state functionaries in the
countryside are revenue gatherers? This seems a little off to me. And if it
were true, why would a bunch of tax collectors play any role in shaping the
cultural cohesion of the rural masses?

I recall reading an interesting piece in the NYT several years ago about the
reemergence of smuggling and racketeering networks (as well as social
bandit-style secret societies) in China. My impression was that these
outfits were more prevalent in rural parts of far southern provinces
-- Guangdong, Guanxi, etc. -- rather than elsewhere, not in the least
because clan-based social organization was never dissolved to the same
degree in the far south as elsewhere. Is that correct?

John Gulick
Knoxville, TN