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

Three stories of rural pain
The rural situation discussed here does not include the southeast coastal
provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian. Nor
does it include the poverty-stricken areas of the northwest provinces of
Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi and Tibet or Xinjiang. The southeast costal
provinces can be categorized into two subgroups. The first consists of the
Pearl River Delta and some parts of Fujian, where investment from outside
mainland China have created a special kind of development. Zhejiang and
Jiangsu belong to the second subgroup where TVEs (township and village
enterprises) advanced rapidly during the late 1970s and throughout the
1980s and have developed into private enterprises since the 1990s. In the
areas of northwest there is a lack of agricultural resources and very little,
if any, local industry. Even the environment is hostile to human existence.
The central provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui,
Jiangxi, Sichuan Guizhou, Guangxi and Yunnan, plus areas of Fujian and
Guangdong, the so-called ‘grain belt’ areas (Unger 2002), are not only
China’s agricultural base but also major sources of migrant workers.
Chen and Chun’s investigation into rural poverty became a media
event when their book on the rural situation in Anhui was published
in 2004. The book was soon banned by the Chinese authorities, but an
English version appeared in 2006. The following three stories are told
by Chen and Chun and may be seen as a metaphor for the agony, hardship
and the complex situation faced by most of the rural people in
central areas.
The story of Ding
THE PROBLEM OF THE RURAL– URBAN DIVIDE
In 1993 a group of farmers wrote a letter of complaint about the problems
of corruption and abusive levies. Ding was beaten to death by local
township security guards for leading the complaint group. Angry at this
brutality several thousand villagers got together to protest, an event that
made the death known to the central government through a Xinhua
News Agency journalist, Kong Xiangying. However, in order to cover up
the abusive levies and taxes under his government, Dai Wenhu, the
party secretary of Lixin County, reported to Beijing that Ding’s death
had been caused by a civil dispute. After an investigation by a team
from Beijing into the event, the State Council issued the document
Guanyu jianqing nongmin fudan de jinji tongzhi (an urgent circular
concerning the reduction of the burden on farmers). Followed by a State
Council meeting on the issue and another document, a decision was
made in Beijing that more than 120 different levies and taxes were to be
abolished, reduced or postponed. Some of those who were responsible
for Ding’s death were executed, imprisoned, or disciplined.
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