China Shifts Focus to Poor with“New Deal”

2 min read

Chinese government have launched their most ambitious initiative in decades，promising billions of dollars in social spending and farm aid this week to help the 800 million people in its neglected countryside catch up with its booming cities.

A Chinese woman pours water into her container near a newly dug aqueduct in Xiangfan，China’s Hubei province March 6，2006.Premier Wen Jiabao told parliament on Sunday that China would channel its surging economic growth to improve living conditions of rural people and narrow the widening gap between the country’s rich cities and restive countryside.

The blueprint unveiled at the meeting of China’s parliament rivals U.S.

President Franklin D.Roosevelt’s job-creating New Deal of the 1930s in scale，and is aimed at easing mounting tensions over the growing gap between China’s rich and poor.

But Beijing faces daunting challenges making it work in the countryside，where control over local leaders is limited，abuses are common and anger at corruption and land seizures is rising.

“The countryside is very much like a lawless place，”said Ding Xueliang，a former Communist Party official who teaches at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The plan for a”new socialist countryside”promises new schools，hospitals，roads and other aid to the countryside，where many people are as poor as ever while a small elite have prospered from two decades of economic reform.

The programs are the starting point of what the ruling party has said will be an effort lasting at least a decade to shift development resources to the countryside.

“China is now standing at a new historical starting point，”Premier Wen Jiabao said Sunday in a speech to parliament delegates.

Ding said the current leaders are better aware of what is going on than previous generations.

President Hu Jintao and Wen spent many years in Tibet and other impoverished regions，and they have extensive contacts outside Beijing.

“They know much more about the realities in the terribly poor regions，”Ding said.

A key source of rural unrest is the seizure of farmland by local officials who sell it at a profit to developers to build shopping malls，factories and other projects.Thousands of protests have erupted over complaints that farmers are paid too little.