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
