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1、Rural investment pays off in ChinaBy Jamil Anderlini in Silver Dragon Village, Guizhou Province, ChinaAlgirdas BakasRebuilding in Silver Dragon, one of the villages that has benefited from a Rmb 6tn programme to bring roads and power to millionsThe carefully staged political pageant that will play o
2、ut next month in Beijing is not something that Jiang Wenhai, the 40-year old Communist party secretary of Silver Dragon village, spends a great deal of time thinking about.In this remote part of the southwest province of Guizhou, officially the poorest part of China, the locals like to say that “the
3、 mountains are tall and the emperor is far away”. But Mr Jiang is more politically correct than that.“The 18th Communist party Congress doesnt have very much to do with Silver Dragon village; its not for us to ask who leads the nation,” Mr Jiang says. “But whoever is chosen Im sure the Communist par
4、ty will continue to improve the peoples lives.”When President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao step aside at the Congress, expected in October, to make way for a new generation of leaders, they will leave behind a country that is far richer and more powerful than it has been in two centuries, with a
5、n economy roughly three times the size it was when they took over.Many economists, political analysts and Chinese intellectuals believe their administration over the past 10 years has missed the opportunity to institute real economic and political reforms during the boom years.But out here in the co
6、untryside, among Chinas more than 700m peasant farmers, the Hu-Wen government can perhaps claim its greatest domestic policy achievement.When they took power in 2002, the countryside was seething with discontent over a lack of basic services, a smorgasbord of taxes and fees levied by corrupt officia
7、ls and a bias towards developing cities along Chinas prosperous eastern coast.Almost immediately, the new government set about rebalancing growth and embarked on a campaign to “construct the new socialist countryside”.In 2006, for the first time in two thousand years, all agricultural levies in the
8、countryside were abolished and the government poured trillions of renminbi into rural infrastructure.“From 2006 until 2012 the government has invested Rmb6tn into the countryside the same amount as President Barack Obamas stimulus package in response to the financial crisis,” says Wen Tiejun, presid
9、ent of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at Renmin University and a top adviser to the Hu-Wen administration. “The US put all the money into the financial sector, which will lead to a financial bubble, but China used its stimulus to resolve the extreme shortage of capital in
10、 rural areas and support relatively quick economic growth.”Thanks to this investment, 95 per cent of Chinese villages now have roads, electricity, running water, natural gas and phone lines, according to Mr Wen, compared with fewer than 50 per cent of villages in India, where the rural population is
11、 similar in size.Throughout the countryside it is clear that many people feel their lives have improved enormously.“Silver Dragon has changed a lot since my childhood and the biggest changes were in the last 10 years,” says Mr Jiang. “Now everybody has good clothes and food, there is no problem with
12、 basic survival and the houses are all bigger than they were before.”The disposable income of an average Chinese urbanite is still more than three times higher than the total income of the average rural dweller but in the last two years rural income growth has exceeded urban income growth for the fi
13、rst time in decades.In 2011 alone, the average annual income of a Chinese rural resident increased nearly 18 per cent to Rmb6,977 ($1,106), while urban disposable incomes rose just 14 per cent to Rmb21,810, according to official data.But as a new generation of leaders steps up to take control of the
14、 country, the next phase of rural development is likely to prove much more difficult.Despite Beijings largesse, economists say the biggest contributor to rising rural incomes has been remittances from migrant workers who move temporarily to the cities to work in factories, restaurants or on construc
15、tion sites.Under Chinas strict hukou household registration system, these migrants find it very difficult to become permanent residents in the cities or to gain access to even basic social services outside the village or town where they were born.Because of this and because of rising living standard
16、s in the countryside, many former migrants are choosing to return to their ancestral homes, partially reversing the urbanisation trend that has been a key driver of Chinas growth in the last three decades.Mr Jiang is one of these former migrants who decided to move home after almost 20 years working in big cities around China as a soldier, a chef and a security guard.Like most migrants, he would send back more than half his income every month to support his parents in the villag
