Wei Sheng in front of his new house.	Small villas built by Hongyan villagers to attract tourists.	Portraits of revolutionary lesders hang in the meeting hall of the Xialu Village Villager's Committee.

The year 2006 sees the launch of the Chinese government’s campaign to “build a new socialist countryside.” After more than 20 years of reform and opening-up, the focus is now on China’s huge rural population. The government acknowledges that China’s economic and social progress can be of benefit to the entire population only after development of the rural economy, construction of new homes for farmers and a general upgrading of living standards have been accomplished. Domestic demand may then steadily expand and sustained development of the national economy be promoted.

In order to achieve its goal of building a new socialist countryside, the Chinese government will adopt a series of measures. They include the allocation of RMB 339.7 billion (US $42.5 billion) this year from the central treasury to agriculture, the countryside and farmers -- an increase of RMB 42.2 billion (US $5.3 billion) over the 2005 figure, and of RMB 100 billion (US $12.5 billion) to building highways in rural areas. Abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006 will make farmers better off by RMB 33.6 billion (US $4.2 billion). Charges and fees, including compulsory contributions to a pooled education fund, to the value of RMB 70 billion (US $8.8 billion) have also been abolished. In the coming five years, the central treasury will invest RMB 20 billion (US $2.5 billion) in renovating township clinics and county hospitals and upgrading medical equipment. It is expected that by the year 2008, a cooperative system of medicine and medical aid will have been established in China’s rural areas. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has confirmed that the government will concentrate on infrastructure construction in the countryside, and make greater investments in irrigation and water conservancy, roads, methane pits, power grids and communications.

The criteria for a “new countryside” are: developed production, relative affluence, a hygienic and pleasant social environment and democratic administration. In March 2006, China Today sent reporters to rural areas in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region where they witnessed ongoing rapid development in the region’s villages.

Xialu Village

Portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping hang on the wall of the Xialu Village Villagers’ Committee meeting hall -- visual confirmation that Marxism-Leninism remains the fundamental doctrine of the Communist Party of China. In the 1920s and 30s, Mao Zedong waged the Agrarian Revolutionary War that culminated in redistribution of landlords’ land to poor farmers. Establishment of people’s communes and collectivization of land in the 1950s was the first step towards communism in China. It was in the 1980s, however, that Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China’s reform and opening-up, perceiving that China was still at the primary stage of socialism, redistributed land to farmers. This won him the respect of rural dwellers throughout the nation such as that accorded Mao Zedong. It is, therefore, understandable that portraits of China’s great leaders are more a feature of the countryside than large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Chinese farmers have a lifestyle and mode of production distinct from that in urban areas, and their own perspective on social changes. Land is still their lifeline, yet in the four villages we visited in southern China little is used for growing grain. The emphasis has turned to cultivation of fruit trees and economic crops as a means to a larger income and a higher standard of living for farmers.

Wei Sheng’s two-story home, with its eye-catching façade of white ceramic tiles, is near the village entrance. This style of building was popular in big cities a decade or so ago, but is now mainly seen in the more prosperous villages of southern China. The couplets pasted on his door indicate that Wei Sheng is newly wed.

Wei Sheng lives with his wife and parents. The fruit trees growing on all 40 mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) of the land he contracts are his household’s main source of income. In 1999, Wei Sheng went to the city to work for the power company where he earned RMB 300 a month. Accustomed as he was to being his own boss, he returned to the village a year later and began cultivating wampee and oranges to sell to urban dwellers.

In the past five or six years, Wei Sheng has prospered from selling his fruit produce and now owns a tractor and a motorcycle. He has converted his home into an 18-bed family inn where visitors from cities and towns eager to try a taste of rural life come to stay. Xialu Village is only 30 kilometers from the regional capital of Nanning, many of whose residents enjoy weekend trips to the countryside. These visitors constitute another source of income for Xialu villagers. After deducting fruit growing expenses and living costs, Wei Sheng’s family now earns a net annual income of RMB 10,000 (US$1,250). [This may not seem much, but it must be remembered that rural residents are far less dependent on ready money than their urban cousins. Villagers live very well on the produce they grow and generally either bank surplus cash or invest it in farm equipment.]

Xialu Village is under the jurisdiction of Wuming County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Ninety percent of the 800 villagers of Xialu’s 210 households are of the Zhuang ethnic group. Xialu is relatively small, according to village head Wei Shining, who told us that that bigger villages in Wuming have populations as large as 6,000. All 900 mu of Xialu’s arable land have been distributed among its residents, but its 3,000 mu of forestland is withheld as collective assets whose management is contracted out to villagers through bidding. On it villagers grow longan, oranges and litchi. The village annual per capita income is RMB 3,600 (US$ 450).

Now that they have land and money, farmers want a better life. In the 1950s Chinese farmers yearned to “live in multi-storied buildings equipped with electric lights and telephones.” Today, Wei Sheng’s home has all that plus a television set, refrigerator, and sterilizing cupboard.

Village head Wei Shining told us how villagers have contributed to the cost of building a canal and a road from the village to the nearest town, as well as to roads linking various neighboring villages. Villagers are particularly keen to upgrade their lavatories and bring about what they call a “rural sanitary revolution.” In the past, household lavatories consisted of a pit with two strategically placed slabs of stone at its mouth. Renovations have now brought flush toilets to every household, the majority of which also have showers and water heaters.

It was in 1998, in response to the common desire of residents, that the village leadership began making Xialu into an ecologically friendly village, and it has since been designated a national ecologically friendly model village. The criteria it fulfills are: methane utilization, surfaced roads, renovated lavatories, indoor running water, and cultural and recreational facilities such as reading rooms and basketball courts. Each household has a methane pit containing human and animal sewage that is used as an alternative energy source, and the residue as fertilizer. The village has also dug its own well and built its own waterworks. Each ton of running water is priced at RMB 0.8 [ US $0.1], which seems affordable, but thrifty habits die hard and women can still be seen washing their clothes at the village pond rather than indoors.