In Report On An Investigation Of The Peasant Movement In Hunan, March 1927, a young Mao Zedong wrote that the success of the coming revolution depended on the empowerment of the peasant classes. Once organised, they would be “the vanguard in the overthrow of the feudal forces”, capable of smashing “the political prestige and power” of landlords and local tyrants alike. After reading Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao’s Will The Boat Sink The Water? The Life Of China’s Peasants, it’s pretty clear that if China’s 900 million peasants were to truly flex their political muscles, they could easily put a brake on China’s drive towards industrialisation.
The Chinese government banned Chen and Wu’s book two months after publication in 2003, but it went on to become a huge bestseller on the black market – with 10 million copies sold. Told principally through four separate accounts of specific incidents in Anhui Provence, Will The Boat Sink The Water? looks behind the mythology of China’s booming economy, and gives a voice to over two-thirds of the Chinese population who previously remained unheard.
Aware that officials in higher levels of government are unconcerned with the problems of the rural poor, the four anecdotes recount how a dictatorial class of local officials have taken the place of Mao’s landlords, and begun lining their pockets with excessive taxes imposed on an already overburdened peasant class. All the while, some very dodgy bookkeeping has helped cover their tracks. Those who dare resist are murdered, beaten, imprisoned, have their property and other assets taken from them or, at best, are forced to pay even higher taxes.
All the while, a greater gap has grown between the urban rich and rural poor, with the city-dwellers earning six times the income of the rural poor by 2000. And whereas the average urbanite was taxed an average of 37 yuan a head that year, the peasant was forced to pay 146. To say that the rural poor are seething is an understatement, as evidenced by the ongoing outbreaks of violent unrest across the country.
Since its publication, China’s government has shown signs of taking the book’s popularity seriously, aware as they are that greater rural inequity will only add salt to a wound already slashed open by local cadres. Despite the ban, the top adviser to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on rural problems said in 2004 that he had a copy of Chen and Wu’s book by his bedside to remind himself of the job ahead.
As to whether a complete breakdown of Chinese society is ahead of us, the authors leave us to draw our own conclusions. What does seem certain is that, left unresolved, the problems faced by China’s peasants will bubble to the surface, threatening any ambitions China has of being the world’s next superpower.
Will The Boat Sink The Water? is published by Public Affairs and costs £9.99