Success by consensus
By Erik Nilsson (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-10 10:29
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The reconstruction of a motorway has taught residents of a village in quake-hit Sichuan a whole new way of working together. Erik Nilsson reports
When Shengli village's farmers reconstructed the road to their settlement after the Wenchuan earthquake, they weren't only building a new motorway but also a new way of doing things.
The farmers in the hinterlands of Sichuan province's Guangyuan city believe the improvements the road has made to their lives extend beyond the material. They have learned how to undertake tasks through participatory decision making and shared work.
Their approach has proved so successful, many governments in places such as Mianyang, Deyang and Bazhong have adopted the "Shengli Model" in other post-quake road reconstruction projects, paving more than 80 km.
"The people took charge of everything, so they know the construction quality is high, and they didn't have to worry about the money disappearing," 53-year-old farmer Zhou Zhilin, who mixed cement, says.
When NGO Oxfam Hong Kong offered Shengli 649,000 yuan ($9,500) in development assistance, it allowed villagers to decide how to use it. About 80 percent of residents voted to pave the road to the village, and 120 of 150 farmers' representatives favored working according to a democratic process.
More than 100 meetings followed. Options were voted on and delegates were elected to four project teams - technical, finance, resource management and supervisory. They resolved to build the road themselves and contribute their own money - 200 yuan per adult and 100,000 yuan in total - to make up the difference between the project's expense and Oxfam's contribution.
"Nobody wanted to give any money at first, but eventually we all agreed because we realized we all wanted and needed this road," 37-year-old farmer Zhou Xinhua, who evened the pavement, says.
"Because we would be the ones using and paying for the road, we worked harder than if we were building it for someone else as migrant workers. I feel like I did something for myself."
It took 288 volunteers 69 days of working up to 14 hours daily to finish.
Since farmers avoided waste because they'd invested their own cash, they were able to pave an additional 300 m inside the village with leftover materials.
"The Shengli project's greatest success isn't the road it's the participatory process and harmonious community building," Oxfam's Sichuan earthquake rehabilitation project manager Zhai Fan says. "After this project, they can apply what they've learned to other tasks."
The 3.6-km mud road that curled up the mountain, down which Shengli's houses appear to tumble, was inconvenient at best and treacherous at worst.
Travel by car was impossible. Rainfall would melt its surface into impassable slop. The two hours it took to traverse on good days made it difficult for farmers to sell vegetables in town. And it was rare for construction workers laboring in Guangyuan city to continue living in the village, even though it was only a few km away.
It was also impractical for transporting reconstruction materials to rebuild Shengli's 195 destroyed and 105 damaged houses; only five homes were unscathed by the quake.
And the road's cost wasn't only a burdensome life but, sometimes, even life itself.
Village Party chief Zhou Xingyin recalls that an elderly woman died of a stroke in her home three years ago because the ambulance couldn't reach the settlement. But it took emergency services only 12 minutes to take an old man to the hospital when his stomach began bleeding last May, saving his life. A similar story happened later, when a farmer toppled off the roof of a house he was repairing.
"The road has changed the destiny of Shengli," Zhou says.
He explains it has caused the village's economy to grow by 40 percent. The 1,305 residents earn a total of about 50,000 yuan per year, or about 1,500 yuan per household on average.
Village doctor Hou Jingyu, who also farms and does migrant labor, says his household's annual income has doubled to 6,000 yuan.
"When it rained and my family couldn't transport our vegetables, they'd just rot," the 44-year-old, who laid concrete, says.
"It used to take an hour or two to bring them to town, but now it takes 20 minutes. Time is money here, too. Before, we could only sell one-third of our harvests, but now can sell it all."
The family uses the extra money to pay tuition for his 21-year-old daughter and 11-year-old twin boys.
It also allows him to make a 20-minute ride to buy medical supplies weekly, rather than trekking for 8 km to carry them up the mountainside in a backpack once a month.
Zhou Xinhua's household income has doubled, too, to about 10,000 yuan per year. She and her husband farm and work at construction sites.
And Zhou Zhilin's family's earnings has also increased dramatically, although he declines to reveal by how much. The potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, spinach and pigs two of his eight family members grow contribute 20 percent of their income, while the rest comes from construction.
He says rebuilding his 120-sq-m house, which crumpled in the quake, cost more than 100,000 yuan. It's slated for completion this month.
"We use the extra money to eat well," Zhou says. "And we're getting old. Sometimes we need the extra money to go to the hospital."
His son, who owns a construction company in Guangyuan, also plans to buy a car.
And like many villagers, Zhou's two sons, aged 31 and 36, can work in Guangyuan while still living in Shengli. The younger sibling had rented a place in the city where he stayed during the week. He'd planned to buy a house there after the quake destroyed the family's village home.
Zhou Xingyin explains that only 20 villagers work and live outside Shengli since the road's construction.
"Shengli's farmers don't need to go to places like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to make money," he says. "They can do it in Guangyuan and live here, because it only takes a few minutes to get into town."
He points out this gives them an economic advantage.
"A lot of young rural people work in big cities, where they earn but also spend more," Zhou says.
"Those living in Shengli and commuting to Guangyuan earn and save more."
The village chief also explains that the road helped farmers cut transportation costs for home reconstruction materials by 60 percent. They could bring twice as many bricks per load - about 6,000 - and make each trip in one-fifth of the time.
Most villagers finished their new houses in May 2009. It would have taken at least another month and cost an average of 10,000 yuan more per home without the new road, Zhou says.
"It would have been very, very hot in the temporary shelters in June," he adds.
But the quest to build the road wasn't without its bumps.
Zhou says some villagers tried to make the road thicker than the 18-cm standard - up to 30 cm - in front of their own homes. Teams were assigned to certain stretches and had to post daily tallies announcing their resource use and area constructed on a large board for public scrutiny.
Also, the villagers had decided by consensus that construction work would be mandatory for able-bodied residents younger than 60.
"If a person didn't do his share of work, the entire village went to his home to complain," Zhou says. "That only happened once; once was enough."
And there were disagreements about how to do things, he adds.
"We had a celebratory meeting on the day the road was finished, and everyone who had disagreements reconciled," he says.
Zhai points out that most infrastructure projects in the countryside use a top-down approach.
"Throughout the participatory process, the different stakeholders can present their ideas about what's good and bad," she says.
This, Zhou Zhilin says, is something Shengli's community has come to appreciate.
"We believe in this way," he says. "And we can use it to achieve other things together."