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2 Rural rags
to urban riches By Michael Jen-Siu
GUSHI COUNTY, China - Eleven years ago,
Zhang Jin left his village of 300 people and most
of his family to see if he could make it in
Beijing. Zhang, who worked teaching political
theory to other teachers, picked Beijing over
other well-off Chinese cities because he wanted to
see Tiananmen Square.
He and his wife
relocated from Gushi county in Henan province in
central China to a gritty downmarket Beijing
suburb full of other
renters from out of town.
While working at a factory, his first Beijing job,
Zhang realized that his fellow migrants had no
place to send their children because Beijing
schools didn't take out-of-town kids.
So
Zhang set up his first migrant school, which
started small but grew to 1,000 students whose
families paid 700 yuan (US$88) per year in
tuition. Other migrants would seek him out for
jobs as teachers.
Because of Beijing's
rush to demolish older buildings for highrise
housing, Zhang, 40, moved the school four times
and gave up entirely in 2005. But he had saved
enough money to build what he expects will be a
million-yuan English-language school on two
hectares in the urban center of Gushi county.
"I'm always thinking and thinking," he
said. "Rural people dare to think and dare to
act."
Urban Chinese normally live better
than their 800 million to 900 million rural
compatriots because of first-rate infrastructure,
better job opportunities and special legal
privileges. But although China's wealth is
concentrated in cities, those who claim it are not
all city people. A mix of capitalism, government
policy, wits and luck are letting more and more
people from rural areas like Gushi county follow
Zhang Jin to prosperity.
But while city
dwellers drive sedans and live in three-bedroom
apartments bought with monthly incomes on average
four times those of rural residents, the biggest
gap in the world, some people in the countryside
still make barely enough money to eat.
Back on a one-lane muddy road in Gushi
county, Li Xuegang and his family of four make an
annual profit of 300 yuan from their 4 mu
(about a quarter-hectare) of rice and wheat in
this highly arable county of squat hills,
plentiful rainfall and a million people. The state
waives the school tuition for Li's two children,
but the family, like most rural Chinese, lacks
public health insurance.
"We can live, but
we don't make anything," Li said. Li could migrate
to a city for higher-paid work, as about 40% of
his neighbors have, leaving mostly children and
elderly people behind, but he has chosen to stay
because no one has suggested leaving.
Li
expects people such as Zhang to employ people like
himself locally when they open companies with
their urban savings. "They'll come back and we'll
work for them," he said.
The contrast
between the Zhangs and the Lis of China has
prompted the villages of Gushi county to raise
their concerns with the United Nations office in
Beijing and the World Bank in Washington. The
rural wealth gap could cause a "political issue"
that prevents China from achieving its goal of
surpassing Japan's economy by 2020 and the US
economy by 2050, said Bert Hofman, head of the
World Bank office in Beijing.
"It's your
neighbor who gets rich," Hofman said. "Somebody
has a much better car or a much better apartment
than others."
Increasingly obvious wealth
gaps sparked the communist revolution in 1949,
after which Mao Zedong implemented the land
reforms that are in effect today. But as the
amount of land per person shrinks, former farmers
are coming back to the village loaded with cash,
often displaying their new wealth by building
nicer homes or opening businesses.
"The
first thing is, poor people feel envious," said Hu
Jia, who researches rural issues for the Loving
Source Information Center, a non-governmental
organization that helps AIDS orphans. "Then they
get jealous. Everyone came from a poor background,
but some are still poor."
The rural income
divide could stir social unrest because of a
perceived lack of justice, said Alessandra Tisot,
senior deputy resident representative for the UN
Development Project. "If I know you are not smart
and you still make a lot of money, then you'll
hear about it," she said.
Chinese
celebrities such as television personality A-Bao
and China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, grew up
in the countryside and got ahead through hard
work, persistence and luck. This success formula
works now more than ever because post-1980s growth
in manufacturing and construction has created new
jobs for migrant workers from the countryside,
especially since members of the relatively
contented urban middle class don't want these
jobs.
Workers in Gushi county can reach
the employment centers of Hefei and Wuhan within
five hours.
"There's not enough land," a
Gushi county mushroom grower complained. "Only if
you go out and work can you make any money."
About 200 million country dwellers live
just above the $1-a-day poverty line, earning
about $2 per day, just enough to move upward,
Tisot said. Knowing they lack urban advantages,
rural
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