Canberra, Aug. 31 (CNA) Hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers have been hit hard as they missed out on the benefits of mainland China's economic reforms, forcing them to resort to demonstrations against the growing abuse of power by local officials.
In a dispatch from Hong Kong, The Australian Financial Review on Thursday reported that the villages around Fengcheng in the impoverished central province of Jiangxi -- a key recruiting ground for the Chinese Communist Party during the late 1920s and early 1930s -- are now at the vanguard of a new social movement in mainland China, with up to 20,000 poor farmers rioting last week in protest of onerous local taxes.
The daily quoted the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy in China as revealing that at least 50 farmers had been arrested after attacking the offices and homes of local government officials, and prompting Beijing to send more than 2000 police to villages around Fengcheng. By last Wednesday, the protests spread to other towns of Yuandu, Baitu, Duantang and Xiaotang, the daily reported.
"Farmers do not have enough to eat, while even a junior Yuandu township official will be able to own at least a car and a house," the daily quoted an unnamed farmer at Yuandu as saying.
The daily reported that many of the rural communities that account for 70 percent of China's population of 1.3 billion are increasingly missing out on the benefits of Beijing's program of economic reform, which was started in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, the late former paramount leader.
The daily quoted a recent study by China's Rural Development Institute as indicating that the average income of urban workers in 1999 was 2.65 times that of rural workers, compared to 2.51 times greater than rural laborers in 1998. (By Peter Chen)
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