Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

economically or both)? Obviously this question is too ambitious to
address here, and is outside the scope of this chapter where I evaluate
the rural situation. But it is clear to me that even if the Chinese system
collapses, the direct cause is unlikely to come from rural China. Li
Changping specifically addresses this issue by stating that a large-scale
peasant rebellion in contemporary China is not likely (Li 2004).
Meanwhile we have become accustomed to media reports that
China has been experiencing a major economic boom and is the engine
of economic growth in Asia with its huge increase in volumes of trade,
and that China is the playground for modern architecture (Thornton
2004, Stucke 2004, Samuelson 2004, Einhorn 2004a). For the urban residents
of the booming southeast costal cities, the China they know and
care about is the one in which the goal of life is to achieve ‘middle class’
status – a status that includes family cars, holidays abroad and children
studying overseas. But in the other China the picture is completely
different (Gao 2003). In some rural areas we can still see ‘unimaginable
poverty’, ‘unimaginable helplessness’, ‘unimaginable silence and
unimaginable tragedy’ (Chen and Chun 2004).
The urban–rural divide
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
According to research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, after 20 years of reform urban residents now earn 2.8 times
more than rural people (Cheng 2004). If factors such as rising costs of
education and health are taken into consideration, the gap is as high
as six times, the highest in the world. According to another study, of
the average rural dweller’s per capita income of 2,618 RMB in 2003,
agricultural contributions fell below 60 per cent, while the contribution
from migrant workers’ earnings rose from 8 percentage points to
more than 40 per cent. The average net annual income of migrant
workers, after living and travel expenses, came to 3,768 RMB (about
US$500) in 2003, according to the survey, which was based on interviews
in 20,089 rural households in China’s 31 provinces (Kynge
2004). According to the Chinese official media, there was a 5.8 per
cent reduction in grain production in 2003 compared with 2002, and
99 million rural residents left their homes as migrant workers in 2003,
a 5 million increase compared with 2002 (Xinhua News 2004). According
to another study, urban residents who make up only 15 per cent
of China’s total population consume two-thirds of the country’s
healthcare resources while the other 85 per cent of the population
have access to less than a third of the country’s healthcare resources
(Song Bingwen et al. 2003). Clearly, the rural–urban divide has been
widening and the deteriorating rural situation has been ignored by
the Chinese leadership for a long time.
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