Foreign Correspondence

[ergo sum]

Almost nothing gets reported about the People's Congress. Yet the growing unrest and the huge income gap has to be addressed at some point. Will there be another cultural revolution? Time will tell.

China pays for poverty
BENJAMIN ROBERTSON
IN BEIJING
CHINA will try to spend its way out of a rural crisis and must close its widening wealth gap to prevent civil unrest, premier Wen Jiabao told delegates at the opening meeting of the country's 3,000-member parliament yesterday.

Calling for the construction of a "socialist countryside" Mr Wen promised handouts to beleaguered farmers in the form of reduced healthcare costs, abolishing agricultural taxes, £2.9 billion in education subsidies, and easier access to credit.

Addressing the 2,927 delegates to the National People's Congress (NPC), gathered in the massive Great Hall of the People beside central Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Mr Wen warned of the "many difficulties and problems in China's economic and social activities".

Recently passing Britain in its total gross domestic product measurement, China still has huge developmental differences between town and country. Below the neon-lit skyscrapers of Shanghai and Beijing, 80 million people still live in poverty, earning less than £50 a year. In recent years, average income in the cities has been as high as six times that earned on the farms and Beijing has become increasingly concerned as altercations between local authorities and aggrieved Chinese continue to grow.

Last year, the government reported 85,000 "public order disturbances", most linked to the seizure of farmland for construction purposes. The most serious reported incident was in the southern Chinese village of Dongzhou last December, when at least three villagers protesting against the seizure of land for the building of a power plant were shot dead by security forces.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=336202006