EAST LANSING, Mich. — China should protect land rights of all farm families and restrict corporate farming, argues a Michigan State University researcher whose team found that secure farm land rights will be key to closing the income gap between Chinese cities and countryside.
The study was recently published in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ 2011 blue book, an annual report of China’s rule of law. It found only 44 percent of China’s 200 million farming families has been issued land-rights documents as required by law, said Jeff Riedinger, dean of MSU’s International Studies and Programs, and a co-author of the study.(more…)
In 1968, when Su Wei left his family behind and voluntarily joined the millions of urban youth who were being sent by Chinese leader Mao Zedong into the countryside to work the land as part of a “re-education” movement, his spirit was nearly broken.
As part of Mao’s “up to the mountains and down to the villages” campaign, initiated in 1968 to quell civil unrest during the Cultural Revolution, all urban 16-year-olds were commanded to travel to rural villages to be schooled in hard agricultural labor. More than 20 million teenagers were sent to work in the countryside, often devoting more than a decade of their lives to farm labor. Not only did this deprive them of a formal education, but parting from their families was a heart-wrenching experience for most of the youngsters. However, for then 15-year-old Su — now a senior lector in East Asian languages at Yale — leaving life in Guangzhou (Canton) represented an escape from an even more brutal life, and so he set off eagerly for the countryside even before he was required to do so. (more…)
