Thirty years ago, there was a slogan, “return the agricultural fields to the woods”, because the chaotic management of the land made soil erosion and environmental degradation very severe. Back in 2005, when Xi Jinping was the head (party secretary) of Zhejiang province, he famously said that the green mountains are the gold mountains (meaning that a good ecosystem is economically important).
Since then, many farmers have started growing a great variety of trees on their land, cities have planted millions of trees to beautify the streets. This is the China Western observers often marvel at: what high efficiency it has!
But this year, things turned, high efficiency still, but the direction changed.
First, a new management organization appeared in the countryside (it was created in 2020, but no one seemed to notice the new org), they are called the “agriculture management” (AM), which is a new counterpart to the “urban management” (UM) in the cities. UM has existed for decades and is often the source of grievances in the city because they harass small vendors on the street with very violent enforcement of the “laws” by destroying goods (e.g. street vendor inventory) in public in the street. Almost every day there is a video of bad UM officers on social media, like this one, in which they were beating up a disabled man. UM officers are so universally hated in China that recently a video about three UM officers falling into a river and no one offered to help was celebrated on Twitter.
I have not seen any ordinary people praise the UM. Now the AM is rolled out with propaganda on how much they care about folks in the countryside. But one Twitter user offers his guess on the purpose of AM in the countryside:
In addition to increasing revenue via confiscation, and strengthening stability, reducing the possibility of grassroots conflicts created by returnees from the cities due to unemployment, the biggest purpose is to tie the farmers to the land, restrict their movement, achieve the convenience of grid-based management of authoritarian rule, right? Others say it is to prepare for war and sanctions.
This, in the 1950s, was achieved by the registration system that started the two-tier caste system, which impoverished the farmers for generations. If the purpose of the AM is indeed to control the farmers (when Deng launched the economic reform in the 1980s, restrictions on farmers’ movement was eased step by step, and thus allowing the rise of an army of migrant workers which is the fuel and engine of the economic development in the last 4 decades), this is clearly a rollback of the economic policies.
According to many posts on Chinese social media in April, as summarized here in a video by RFA, the newly minted AM already works hard to carry out the new directive from Xi, to return woods to agriculture land. In the 2-minute video, you see actions from the AM officers to 1) destroy 30 some big sweet olive trees to grow rice, 2) destroy a bamboo grove to make a rice field, 3) a local government official boasting of the rice field they built on the mountains in Yuanan, 4) in Guangxi, crops were destroyed, to grow rice, 5) in Shanxi, wheat that is to be harvested in a month is destroyed, 6) Chili peppers in Guangxi are destroyed, 7) a strip of trees to protect the environment in inner Mongolia is destroyed (in March), 8) Pine trees in Shanxi are destroyed.
One man told social media that he was growing 1000 square meters of ginger this year. He was hoping for a good harvest, but on April 23rd, when he went to his field, he found that the crops were all destroyed. After asking around, he learned that the AM team was responsible for it.
That “efficiency at all costs” is indeed amazing.
Why such a change? Because in Feb this year, the central government issued a directing document, requiring the country:
to build new high-standard farmland to safeguard China’s arable land and further increase China’s food production without crossing the 1.8 billion mu “red line”
mu is a Chinese unit of area, it is 667 square meters.
Then in March, Xi issued the following order:
The central government should sign agrarian land protection ‘military order’ in all places, with strict assessment, lifelong accountability, to ensure that 1.8 billion mu of arable land to true in reality.
So, with high efficiency, destroying wood is in high gear.
Chengdu, a city in South West China with 16 million people and vibrant urban culture, has destroyed the green park of 100 km circling the city to make for agricultural land, reversing a 30 billion RMB project. High efficiency, just like that!
Of course, the AM officers, with their newfound power, are not satisfied with merely destroying trees. On social media many people voiced grievances: some AM officers didn’t like the style of the houses in the village and proceeded to destroy them, some saw tobacco crops and proceeded to destroy it, some went to check the machines the farmers were using and fine them for various reasons…
It seems that there is nothing people can do about it, except complaining on social media. What a country of good governance and rule of laws.
Why is Xi doing this?
Well, remember, Xi said he is “Preparing China for war”, as reported by Foreign Affairs. And he meant it.
As we mentioned earlier, Taiwan is on Xi’s mind these days. The propaganda department has been preparing the Chinese public for a war with Taiwan in recent years. Chinese youth are more and more “patriotic”, and hostile towards the outside world, at least that is how they behave on social media. With the current rhetoric, it is not a far-fetched guess that Xi is preparing a war, a war that he is not likely to win very fast and the country will face a sanction from the West for sure. (I guess he learned something from the Ukraine war)
So, he thinks food security is very important.
Many wealthy Chinese are leaving for Singapore. Some are crossing the Mexico-America border:
Over the course of three weeks this month, @Reuters witnessed hundreds of migrants from China crossing an isolated stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. @DEERECHO interviewed dozens who all said they learned how to come through Latin America on social media (Douyin, Chinese version of TikTok).
The number of Chinese nationals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border this year is so far about 15 times more than any previous year’s total.
Some people are finally voting in China: with their feet.
On April 7th, news media reported that the “husband” of the chained woman has been sentenced to 9 years in prison, along with others involved in trafficking and buying and selling of women. This sparked another round of debate on social media. Some men think 9 years is too much, and the kids should not be punished by not having their father. Most women were outraged that the sentencing is too light and the chained woman herself still has no freedom. Wuyi, a feminist who tried to reach the chained woman is also missing. No one knows what is happening to these women.
Chinese feminists displayed a large banner to urge accountability from the Chinese gov, freedom of Xiaohuamei & release of Wu Yi.
(see previous newsletters 39,45,47 and 112 for more background on the chained Woman)
I have seen increasing Twitter news on violent crime on the street in China. Four young people who connected via social media planned a suicide in a national park together. They carried out the plan and all died on April 4th. Twelve middle school students jumped from the school building in March and April in the city of Tianjin. This sparked a debate on social media about the despair young people are facing these days.
On April 8th, a man drove his car into a crowd killing 3, because of a relationship problem. But this is only one of many similar cases happened lately.
On social media, someone observed that many more violent crimes were not reported on purpose. The police department at local governments have realized the trend, and their solution is to visit the following five kinds of people:
Would visiting these people work? Shall we wait and see?