This nation has the world's largest number of rural citizens and its economic
growth has benefited immensely from collective farm reforms nearly 30 years ago.
The reforms resulted in higher productivity and released abundant rural labour
to help urban development.
Despite the changes, country areas still remain synonymous with poor and
backward conditions. The overall quality of life has remained low. For years,
there had not been any new or inspiring programmes to rejuvenate rural areas
until the New Countryside plan was released earlier this year.
However, in a country plagued by an almost unstoppable building frenzy in the
cities, news from the countryside always tends to appear in the newspapers'
inside pages. Little has been reported about the implementation of the new
countryside programme since its celebrated release.
However there are some people, including journalists, who are doing
significant work to promote these new changes in rural China.
Last week, in Guangzhou, a joint conference was held by the rural development
institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Southern Press Group
(owner of a number of key media operations based in Guangdong, a southern
province of China), and some other institutions.
The conference urged for greater scope to allow for the spontaneously
developed co-operative efforts of rural citizens', in economic and in community
management.
More specifically, participants called for the early enactment of the
national law on the rural professional co-ops, which is still being made by
lawmakers of National People's Congress (NPC). In August, the draft law changed
its name from one on the "rural professional co-operative organizations" to a
more straightforward "rural professional co-ops."
In a revision made at the same time, government agencies from the
county-level above are required to provide direction and service to the rural
co-ops. In the NPC Standing Committee's August review of the draft law, some
lawmakers even suggested, although not accepted by the rest of them, that the
word professional be also dropped. Being professional is neither the main
feature nor the main purpose of those co-ops.
While law-makers may continue to debate over the wording of the legal
document, speakers at the Guangzhou conference presented refreshing views of the
changes developing in the everyday life of rural people.
Zhao Chaoying, a county official from Hebei Province, said it was only
wishful thinking to move all rural villagers into urban apartment buildings, and
turn all green farms into grey factories. Farm production-based co-operation and
specialization can continue to help the countryside produce more and raise
living standards.
In Zhao's home base of Qingxian County, farmers' co-ops were reportedly
already beginning to evolve from simple mutual help to a more integrated level,
including democratically elected councils and their own articles of association.
In daily operation, those co-ops are practising unified procurement of farm
materials and management of farm machinery, while having independent plot
attendance and harvesting.
Plans are already made for unifying family plots, unified investment and plot
attendance, and unified management in harvesting and sales of the harvests. The
plans are based on all members' clearly defined property rights. In other words,
the future co-ops will be more like joint-stock companies rather than the
traditional ad-hoc mutual help arrangements.
At the same time, participants of the Guangzhou conference all stressed that
the new co-ops will be totally different from the People's Communes that were
administratively set up in the era of the planned economy, in disregard of local
interests and conditions.
Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 09/25/2006 page4)