Posted on 01/21/2008 2:52:56 PM PST by ConservativeJen
Liren, China - The snowy, fogbound fields around this village in central China do not look like a battlefield. But in recent weeks they have become a flash point in a spreading peasants' revolt against one of the key aspects of Communist Party rule: state ownership of farmland.
"My ancestors bought this land" before the 1949 Communist revolution, says Cheng Zhenhai, a grizzled cotton farmer huddling close to the stove in his dimly lit one-room home, "so I have to keep it. As a peasant, I want nothing else."
Mr. Cheng was one of more than 10,000 peasants in Shaanxi Province who signed a public letter last month renouncing the collective land-ownership system that has governed China's countryside for the past half century and declaring the land they farm to be their private property. At about the same time, farmers in four other provinces signed similar declarations that appeared on the Internet.
The statements represent only a theoretical change, since farmers are powerless to reform the law and local authorities have cracked down hard by arresting ringleaders of the nascent movement. But some observers suggest that if protests gather steam, they could spark radical changes.
"It could be a revolution," says Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology. "Privatization of land is a foundation of democracy and the rule of law in China, because land is a basic resource."
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
During the Long March Mao’s minions pulled up survey markers and burned deeds. Eventually private land ownership will return fully and the farmers and their neighbors will know where their corners are when the time comes.
Time to throw the baby out with the bath water! A new Chinese revolution...a Democratic one!
...small “d”
I wish we could have a few politicians who understood that... It will be interesting if China undergoes a resurgance of freedom; as we fall under the increasingly heavy hand of the state.
Not going to happen.
China has had many peasant revolutions before, heck the Communists came to power their on the backs of a peasant revolution.
None of the peasant revolutions have ever led to a democratic movement. The Chinese culture is inherently totalitarian, until that changes the only form of government they will have is a the rule from above kind.
Their land has been taken from them — for the common good of course.
McCain, being an admirer of Chairman Mao, he knows how to end this heretical land grab. If only the Chinese government were smart enough to ask him.
Mao had more sense then Mugabe. He let the people who KNEW HOW TO FARM continue to do so!
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