Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (38 page)

Wang Jiapei was moved. He wrote a special report to the provincial leadership, telling them how Changfeng County had indeed experienced the worst of the drought, and how the county’s Party secretary managed to stand firm and tell the truth. One of the vice governors of the province traveled personally to Changfeng County, bringing relief money with him, and thus the peasants of Changfeng survived the disaster.

Not long after that drought came the flood of 1991. To prevent floodwaters from reaching the lower reaches of the Huai River, vast areas of arable land in Changfeng were flooded— turned into watery corridors. One hundred and sixteen villages were surrounded by water; almost four thousand houses collapsed, leaving their occupants homeless. Huang Tongwen again threw himself into the relief effort, directing the cadres under him to go out into the countryside to help the flood victims. Most important, he ordered that all the inflated figures of the past be officially annulled and an accurate assessment of the area’s miserable situation be reported to the higher-ups.

His colleagues at the county Party Committee became concerned that this last measure would have negative consequences for Huang Tongwen’s own future. All regions are ranked on a national index system, and the index numbers for the true state of affairs would place their county in the “extreme poverty”

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category. Officials usually juggle with numbers and inflate figures to hide the true state of their counties, doing everything they can to prevent the “poverty” label from being attached to areas under their leadership. And yet here was Huang Tongwen once again going in the opposite direction, trying hard to get his county labeled an area of “extreme poverty.” What made it even worse was that Changfeng County was part of the suburbs of greater Hefei, the provincial capital. The official story was that all the outlying counties around Hefei were well on the road to development and affluence. It would be embarrassing for the municipal leaders to be faced with a case of extreme poverty right at their doorstep. Of course Huang was perfectly aware of these implications—but he was more concerned with the condition of the peasants of Changfeng. The inflated figures would be the basis for excessive taxation. Huang wanted the true figures established so that taxes could be lifted and the peasants would get some relief and a chance to catch their breath. Huang realized that his actions would adversely affect his career, but it was clear that only when the true figures were acknowledged could Changfeng County get a chance to develop and have a future.

Just as Huang had foreseen, when the true figures were confirmed, Changfeng County was categorized as one of “extreme poverty” on the national index, and as a result received substantial subsidies and relief cash directly from the Ministry of Finances. But predictably his own career was stunted.

Later, a cadre from Jiangxi Province, Wang Taihua, was transferred to Anhui and took over as Party secretary of Hefei; he also was a member of the Anhui provincial Party Committee. He was a down-to-earth fellow, and in the space of a month he had personally visited all the outlying counties of the provincial capital. He saw in Huang Tongwen a man after his own heart. He also saw that Huang had languished for eight years working at the grass roots at the same official level with—

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out promotion. He called Huang in for a talk and suggested that Huang go back to Hefei, where he had previously worked, and become deputy chair of the municipal People’s Political Consultative Conference and double as head of the United Front department for the city—honorary desk positions both. Huang had been deputy head of the United Front department eight years ago. Now, he pleaded that he was just over forty, and would like to do something more substantial than sitting at meetings of the People’s Political Consultative Conference.

But even such a slender “promotion” was voted down by the provincial Party Committee, who had the last say on official promotions. The reason? According to them, after being entrusted with running Changfeng County, Huang had handed them a case of “extreme poverty!” How meritorious was that? Wang Taihua and the municipal Party Committee compromised by making Huang Tongwen head of a different committee, at the same bureaucratic level as the position he had held more than a dozen years before.

Meanwhile, Wang Taihua made more thorough investigations into conditions in Changfeng County. Finding that the terrain was harsh, the natural resources extremely poor, and the infrastructure virtually nonexistent, he realized that it was unrealistic to expect rapid development in the county. He designated April 23 as Changfeng Day, an annual event when all the leaders from the province and the municipality as well as related departments convene in Changfeng to meet with the locals, listen to their opinions, and do their best to help develop the county with cash and projects. As Party secretary of Hefei, Wang also made the decision to exempt Changfeng County from its mandatory tax payment to the provincial finance department; Changfeng’s tax payment would henceforth come out of the Hefei municipal budget.

Wang Taihua ultimately became Party secretary of Anhui province; with his backing, Huang Tongwen was finally pro—

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moted to deputy Party secretary of Hefei and he served simultaneously as secretary for the municipal Party Disciplinary Committee.

Huang Tongwen, the honest truth-telling official, was finally recognized and his life changed—but it was not through the normal channels of the system.

Behind and Beyond the Glitter and the Gold

Anhui is a large and populous province, an excellent source of labor. By 2000, when the central government started the experiment in changing taxes into fees and charges, there were 10 million surplus laborers in the Anhui countryside, 40 percent of the rural labor force. Agriculture had become a losing enterprise. The peasants had toiled on the soil for untold generations and had looked on the soil as the source of life itself, but now the soil had become a burden. Thus an army of peasants turned their backs on the soil and marched into the city.

In the city, however, all the benefits of the urban residents such as the newly invented “basic insurance,” “medical insurance,” “housing benefits,” and so on were beyond the peasants’ reach. Since the “residence permit” forbade them permanent status in the city, the vast army of incoming peasants were doomed to remain migrants in the city.

According to national statistics, the number of peasants who cross provincial borders migrating from country to city accounts for almost 10 percent of the whole population. Among these, peasants from Sichuan, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, and Guangdong provinces make up 60 percent of the total. Anhui is the source of the second-highest number of migrants.

As of 2005, the rural population of Anhui is 27 million. Seven million of these are now migrants, 1.25 million in

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Shanghai alone; Anhui rurals make up one third of the migrants working in that city. This is the official number. In reality, many more migrants have found a footing in Shanghai and brought their families to join them, so that the real population of Anhui rurals in Shanghai is over 2 million.

According to a local study, the four districts in Shanghai that have seen the fastest development are Minhang, Baoshan, Jiading, and Pudong; it is no coincidence that migrants from Anhui are most concentrated in these four areas.

Anhui migrants in Shanghai have found themselves working— and excelling—in every conceivable occupation: construction, weaving, the car industry, breeding freshwater fish, to name just a few. Some of them have even been honored with titles of “Standard-bearer” or “Model Worker” in their field. For instance, a woman named Gao Yumei who works in the Tonghai cotton mill has been named a member of the Shanghai Shock Troop in the “New Long March Toward Modernization”; the migrant worker Wu Lunzhong founded the ZhongZhong Art Design Studio, one of the ten biggest in Shanghai, and capitalized at over 10 million yuan. The migrant Niu Zhuanyun is a self-educated computer specialist who works as a consultant to big corporations to fix their computer problems; he is known far and wide as the “computer doctor.” These migrants take jobs rejected by locals and make use of discarded materials to do creative things. The migrant worker Jiang Guangneng made use of furnace slag to repair roads and now owns four companies with a combined investment of more than 10 million yuan. Five hundred Anhui migrants form the cream of workers at the Jiangnan Shipbuilding Company, which builds battle ships. The chairman of the board, Chen Jinhai, praised their skill and hard work, saying that they had

overtaken the regular workers in the consortium.

Some of the Anhui migrant workers in Shanghai have risen from the ranks of workers to become managers, thus creating

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the bizarre situation of a migrant overseeing a group of regular Shanghai workers. For instance, Tang Qizhuo has been hired by a joint Chinese-American enterprise, the Gaoshengda Fashion Company, to head a workforce of over one thousand regular Shanghai workers. He is an outstanding leader and has been instrumental in making a profit of more than $5 million for the company.