[China] pays for poverty

from Ths Scotsman

BENJAMIN ROBERTSON

CHINA will try to spend its way out of a rural crisis and must close its widening wealth gap to prevent civil unrest, premier Wen Jiabao told delegates at the opening meeting of the country's 3,000-member parliament yesterday.

Calling for the construction of a "socialist countryside" Mr Wen promised handouts to beleaguered farmers in the form of reduced healthcare costs, abolishing agricultural taxes, £2.9 billion in education subsidies, and easier access to credit.

Addressing the 2,927 delegates to the National People's Congress (NPC), gathered in the massive Great Hall of the People beside central Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Mr Wen warned of the "many difficulties and problems in China's economic and social activities".

Recently passing Britain in its total gross domestic product measurement, China still has huge developmental differences between town and country. Below the neon-lit skyscrapers of Shanghai and Beijing, 80 million people still live in poverty, earning less than £50 a year. In recent years, average income in the cities has been as high as six times that earned on the farms and Beijing has become increasingly concerned as altercations between local authorities and aggrieved Chinese continue to grow.

Last year, the government reported 85,000 "public order disturbances", most linked to the seizure of farmland for construction purposes. The most serious reported incident was in the southern Chinese village of Dongzhou last December, when at least three villagers protesting against the seizure of land for the building of a power plant were shot dead by security forces.

Such unrest is seriously divisive - one NPC delegate defended the government's decision to open fire on the protesters.

"The incident was started by some people with malicious intentions," said Jiang Haiying, deputy head of the organisation department in Shanwei, the nearby city that administers Dongzhou.

"How can you call them common people? They were gangsters," she said.

Residents of Dongzhou said it was the armed police, a paramilitary unit, that opened fire, but Ms Jiang said they were regular police acting in self-defence against villagers armed with pipe bombs.

Further indicating China's wealth gap, a population expert addressing the NPC said the government should threaten to limit rich people's access to credit to keep them from spending their way past China's one-child policy.

Being able to pay the state-imposed 150,000 yuan (£10,600) "social maintenance fees" to have an extra child has become the latest sign of the dramatic and growing divide between China's haves and have-nots.

China started curbing family size in the late 1970s to control growth of its population, now more than 1.3 billion. Ethnic minorities and rural families whose first child is a girl are allowed to have a second.

"The personal credit of private business people or celebrities should be tainted if they choose to have more children," Yang Kuifu, vice-chairman of a government population and environment committee, was quoted as saying.

Meeting annually, the NPC debates and votes on the government's work plan for the coming year. Though largely a rubber-stamping exercise, the meeting of the NPC and its sister advisory organisation, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress, does involve some last-minute backroom negotiations, and allows otherwise unnoticed provincial officials a chance to grab headlines.

This year, possibly empowered by developments in Britain and other countries, a delegate called Li Yinhe presented a proposal to introduce same-sex marriages as a means of ending homosexual discrimination. Also possibly inspired by developments abroad, Chen Guiyan, a delegate from western Sichuan province, called for legislation outlawing smoking in public places after surveys showing 50 per cent of the population suffered from passive smoking.

With an estimated 15,000 security staff involved in the event, there have also been reports of disgruntled petitioners who, having travelled to Beijing hoping to air their grievances, arrived only to be rounded up and sent home. On Saturday, an outspoken lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, was apprehended by police after staging a hunger strike in protest at police violence against dissidents.

During the congress, nightclubs and karaoke parlours - often a euphemism for brothels - have to close by 2am and the media are closely scrutinised to ensure only glowing commentaries are printed.