Of Note: China's Peasant Populism: A Look Inland

China's Peasant Populism:

A Look Inland



Since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1978, China has maintained a remarkably rapid rate of economic growth, lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty, and secured its position as the largest economy in the world. Nonetheless, its success has also ushered in a host of attendant problems associated with other major developing and industrialized countries. One of its growing troubles is the marked increase in rural protests by peasantry deprived of or adversely affected by China's economic growth. Dissent is populist in both nature and rhetoric, with protest frequently directed toward corrupt and heavy-handed local Communist Party of China (CPC) officials or the Chinese middle and upper classes with whom the peasants share little in common.¹

Populism is nothing new to China. Mao Zedong marshaled an army of thousands of rural indigent Chinese on the basis of perpetual class struggle and a communist revolution by China's agrarian peasantry. But his fiery brand of communism barely describes China in the present day. Today's China eschews domestic and foreign instability and competes vigorously in world markets. In its wealthy coastal regions, evidence of the CPC's vision of stability and state-run capitalism is in full display: the rapid pace of construction, the ubiquity of international brands and firms, and the increasing appetite for luxury and high-quality goods are extraordinary.

A look inland, however, reveals many of the drawbacks of the Chinese economic model and the escalating but dispersed political effect on the rural population. Increasing urban pollution, local corruption, and state seizure have triggered protests among the rural poor in several of China's inland provinces.² In July of 2005 in Xinchang prefecture, about 200 miles outside of Shanghai, as many as 20,000 Chinese farmers attacked a pharmaceutical plant because its chemical waste, they said, was destroying their crops and damaging their health.³ In 2004, over 11,000 farmers signed a petition to remove local Communist Party officials in Tangshan prefecture who had allegedly pocketed displacement compensation and beat or jailed any farmer who independently protested.⁴ In August of 2004, a planned protest over seizure of farmland (Chinese officials say that 60 percent of land seizures are illegal) by local officials turned violent when police fired rubber bullets into the unarmed crowd.⁵ According to Zhou Yongkang, China's senior police official, there were more than 74,000 protests involving 3.7 million people in 2004, up from 58,000 in 2003 and 10,000 in 1994 (all likely to be conservative estimates).⁶ In rural areas, this corresponds to between 90 and 160 protests a day, over one-third of daily protests. Still, Chinese peasant populism is essentially local, disorganized, and relatively small, and therefore does not represent a direct threat to the CPC, but rather a long-term, ideational challenge to the nature and pace of China's reforms, and by extension, the CPC's legitimacy.⁷ The CPC has taken notice, along with the rest of China.⁸ The party's central committee has indirectly addressed peasant populism in most of their recent annual meetings, stressing the need to improve 'social harmony' through rural development and anti-corruption measures. Accordingly, Beijing has begun to dismiss corrupt local leaders of their posts and compensate or return seized land to the rural peasantry. There is much more to do. Rooting out corruption entails more than sacking corrupt administrators, and balancing China's economic development with its effects on the rural poor is no easy task. Chinese peasant populism, in turn, is a testament to China's larger problem of growing income inequality and social stratification, which the CPC has recognized.⁹ After all, divisions in Chinese society initiated a bloody rebellion and swept the CPC into power once before. Now, it hopes for a tranquil economic revolution.