Chinese Leaders Cultivate Rural Support

ZHONGTANBAO, China — Liang Yunan stands in front of a small shop selling cigarettes and dried noodles, casting his eyes over his nearby vegetable fields. “President Hu Jintao has been good to farmers,” he says. “If he were here now, I’d thank him.”

At a time when desperate farmers are taking to the streets in growing numbers, Liang’s faith in the government might seem incongruous. But top leaders, mindful that unrest in the vast Chinese countryside could pose a threat, have made boosting Liang’s prospects, and those of millions like him, a major goal as they open the National People’s Congress today.

Under the banner “Building a New Socialist Countryside,” Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao are showcasing an ambitious rural development program aimed at transforming China in much the same way the New Deal changed America in the 1930s. Headlines in Communist Party mouthpieces have been trumpeting the reforms for months.

There’s a lot at stake. If successful, the initiative could help break down a two-tier social system that has seen hundreds of millions of Chinese locked in rural poverty as their urban cousins have enjoyed growing opportunities, status and wealth.

“Building rural socialism is the most important policy challenge ahead for Hu and Wen,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor with the Beijing Institute of Science and Technology, who is not related to the president. “The countryside is a powder keg. If they don’t get it right, China faces real trouble.”

“Mass incidents,” China’s blanket term for uprisings and demonstrations, rose 6.6% last year to 87,000, according to government figures. And two protests by displaced farmers in the last three months turned deadly in Guangdong province near Hong Kong after police fired on or beat up villagers, killing at least four people.

The rural development program faces some major obstacles. China’s Communist Party has a long history of launching political campaigns that quickly lose steam, replaced by another program with new slogans. And the costs are huge, pegged by some at upward of $1.2 trillion over two decades.

This year, Beijing will spend an extra $5.2 billion on rural schools, hospitals, crop subsidies and other programs, raising spending by 15% in those areas, Wen said today in his opening speech to the congress.

The congress marks Hu and Wen’s third year in power, a point at which the pair have largely consolidated power, sidelined or co-opted allies of former President Jiang Zemin and convinced most party stalwarts of their steady hand at the helm.

Their priorities are coming into clearer focus. In addition to their cornerstone bid to improve prospects for the rural poor, they’ve displayed a willingness to clamp down on intellectuals, the media and other critics while blanketing party members with ideological classes aimed at binding them to the traditional Marxist line.

At the same time, their tough Taiwan policy and support for military modernization have bolstered their credentials among hard-liners. Wen reminded Taiwan today not to pursue independence.

On Saturday, the government announced a 14.7% increase in defense spending, boosting the military budget to $35.3 billion. Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for the congress, downplayed the spending increase, explaining that the funds would go toward salaries, equipment, training and fuel costs. “I wish to emphasize that China is a peace-loving nation,” Jiang said.

Some Western analysts, however, believe military spending is significantly higher given that reports don’t include weapons purchases and other major costs.

Although Hu and Wen’s stronger hand should allow them to act more decisively this year, both are careful men, not known for bold policy prescriptions. But if the headlines are to be believed, China’s 800 million rural residents -- who earn around $400 annually, or about a third of what their urban counterparts do -- have cause for hope.

In the months leading up to the congress, state media have heralded the elimination of rural taxes and school fees. The government has promised pension and healthcare programs for farmers, and water, telecommunications and electricity service to far-flung communities. It has also pledged to extend household subsidies for the underprivileged, expand rural infrastructure and cap seed and fertilizer prices.

This has produced some early political dividends as long-neglected farmers begin to feel that someone is finally listening. This, combined with Hu and Wen’s carefully cultivated image as modest leaders sympathetic to the underprivileged, appears to have boosted support for the administration in a nation that doesn’t release polling data on leaders’ performances.

“They’re easing our burden,” said Li Changfu, 56, a farmer from Sichuan province’s Longtan village.

Li said the government recently stopped collecting the $12 in taxes he pays on his $600 annual income, and has extended a small annual land subsidy. Although not a windfall, he said, this helps poor families make ends meet.

“The measures are very good,” Li said, playing with his 1-year-old grandson on a broken couch as family ancestors watched over them from an altar mounted high on the wall.

Still, China’s top leaders, no matter how good their intentions, also sit atop a deeply flawed structure hobbled by inertia, incompetence and corruption. One result is that central government initiatives can founder at the hands of lower-levels officials twisting its provisions to line their own pockets.

Even as the one-party state acknowledges its corruption problem, it refuses to tolerate political opposition, an independent media or any of the other checks and balances that might expose and rein in corruption, and cut waste.

“Corruption is rampant, and local officials don’t care about ordinary people,” said Wang Shuqing, a 49-year-old farmer in Gengjia in northeastern China whose brother recently lost his land to loan sharks linked to local officials. “The central government’s policy is good, but by the time it gets down to us at the grass-roots level, it’s dismal.”

Marxist policies forbidding private ownership of property allow local officials to seize land from farmers with little or no compensation, even if their ancestors had farmed it for centuries. All too often, rural experts add, corrupt local officials then sell the land to developers, pocketing huge sums.

Analysts say the government’s continued unwillingness to enact meaningful land reform, despite its obvious link to rural unrest, reflects strong opposition from party hard-liners on ideological grounds, and by powerful interests that benefit financially from the status quo.

Wen reportedly told a conference late last year that the Communist Party risked committing a “historic error” if it ignored farmers’ grievances, especially illegal farmland seizures, which were “sparking rural mass incidents.”

But few outright decisions related to the administration’s rural initiatives will be made at this year’s congress.

Although the legislature is the nation’s “highest lawmaking body” on paper, in reality policymaking is deemed too important to be left to elected officials. The body’s unwieldy structure, with its nearly 3,000 delegates and only one 10-day session each year, all but ensure that little is accomplished.

Real power remains in the hands of a few middle-aged men behind closed Politburo doors.

Hu and Wen view the congress, however, as a way to energize support for its rural development program among the nation’s 70 million Communist Party members and 1.3 billion nonparty citizens. Increasingly in China’s market economy, however, consumers vote with their remote controls, opting for soap operas and game shows over the pageantry of party congresses.

As the rich-poor gap widens, some rural residents say they don’t hold a grudge against their urban cousins, they’d just like to have the same opportunities.

“I’m not jealous,” said Wang, the farmer. “They work hard. The problem is, no matter how hard we work on a farm, we just can’t earn much.”