China's New Great March: Putting End To Poverty

August 26, 1996|By Liz Sly, Tribune Staff Writer.

NINGXIA HUA XI, China — As caves go, the one in which peasant farmer Liu Ming Han had lived all his life wasn't bad. It was cozy in winter, and it was, after all, home--at least three generations of his family had lived there before him.

It was a cave nonetheless, and living in a cave comes with all kinds of disadvantages, not the least of which was the cave's irritating habit of collapsing during heavy rains, burying the family in mud and rubble.

Unfortunately for Liu and his cave-dwelling neighbors in the arid mountainous corner of the northern province of Ningxia, it never rained enough. Though peasants living in more fertile, wetter parts of the country have grown wealthy in the wake of market reforms, the Lius were lucky even to grow enough to eat through a whole year.

So imagine Liu's delight when local authorities came knocking at his cave's door last year to inform him he was being offered the chance to move to fertile land alongside the Yellow River, where he would be given money and materials to build a house.

"It's fantastic," he said, gesticulating around the little, four-room brick home he has just completed for himself and his four daughters. "It is light and there is good ventilation, and we can sleep in different rooms."

Liu's transition from cave-dweller to homeowner, a socio-economic evolution that took many millennia in other parts of the world, dramatizes the seriousness with which China regards the gulf that is starting to yawn between its rich and poor citizens after nearly two decades of market reform.

The change in his life also underlines the enormousness of the task facing China as it seeks to lift out of poverty the last 65 million or so of its most impoverished citizens, who have been left behind in the country's rush to get rich.

The government has identified the eradication of poverty by the year 2000 as one of its chief priorities, and is throwing money, energy and ideas at a problem that has proved intractable in most parts of the world. Current spending of $1.3 billion a year by the central government, in addition to sums being spent by provincial governments, is expected to be increased soon, according to officials at the State Council. A special meeting of senior party leaders next month will look at ways of coming up with extra money.

The Chinese campaign could prove to be one of the most far-reaching efforts ever to combat poverty. Plans include the relocation of more than 1 million people from poor areas to wealthier ones and the diversion of mighty rivers to reach impoverished communities.

One of the most ambitious projects is the plan to move as many as 1 million peasants living in barren, mountainous parts of the province of Ningxia to wasteland near the Yellow River and then divert the river to irrigate the land. The neighboring province of Gansu has announced plans to relocate 600,000 of its poorest peasants to better land.

In the first year of the program alone, the number of officially poor people fell from 80 million to 65 million, the government recently announced. If accurate, that would mean China is on target to wipe out poverty.

Some of those 15 million people may in fact have migrated to the cities to join the swelling ranks of urban poor, who are not targeted by the program, independent experts say.

They also doubt whether all these programs can work and whether they will prove financially viable. Not every province has proved equally effective in spending its allocation, and in some places money has either been wasted or has disappeared into local officials' pockets.

But they do not doubt the government's determination. "There's a lot of enthusiasm and idealism," said Trine Lund-Jensen of the UN's Development Program in Beijing. "Every county and every province has its own poverty alleviation plan, and we do see a lot of evidence that work is being done."

Still, many rural residents have seen no improvements in their living standards. They are living on land that is too poor, in regions that are too arid and in communities that are too remote for market forces to have any relevance.

Sharp disparities also exist between peasants in different parts of the country, and even within regions. In the famed village of Hua Xi outside Shanghai, farmers' incomes average $10,000 a year, and most peasants own cars, two-story homes and satellite dishes. In forgotten little places like the Ningxia province village of Lui Dian, accessible only by a winding dirt road, 240 cave-dwellers scratch out a subsistence living on steep, barren slopes.

It was just such a village that Liu left behind. The provincial government estimates local incomes at $48 a year, but the figure is virtually meaningless because families here function outside the market economy.

"Out of every 10 years, for at least five we don't have any harvest," said Hai Peng Shuo, 70, who lives in a cave hollowed out of the yellow rock by his great, great-grandfather. "Of course we don't have anything left to sell."

For at least two months in every year, the family relies on food handouts from the local authorities.

But if the promised resettlement program goes ahead, the cave dwellers of Lui Dian could soon be starting new lives. Hai, who has heard about the program, doesn't want to move, because he is an old man. "It is too late for me," he said. "But for the younger ones, it is the only hope. There is no future here."