Not all lucky to enjoy the wealth
October 14, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SOME workers in the area complain that they are already being chewed alive by a widening gap between rich and poor.
Huaxi Village has merged with 20 surrounding villages to become a 35-square-kilometer "Big Huaxi" with a population of 35,000.
That's created a three-tier society, with the 2,000 original Huaxi villagers on the top, the outlying village residents in the middle and more than 20,000 migrant workers on the bottom living in shabby rental housing.
One Huaxi bus driver, who is part of that middle rung and declined to be identified, said he and his neighbors aren't receiving any of the goodies enjoyed by people from the original central town area.
"My salary is almost 10 times less than the same driver who is an original Huaxi villager, but the workload is the same," he said.
Huaxi distributes 3,000 yuan of groceries to every villager every year - a practice that Wu Renbao says embodies communism at its core - but not everyone shares in the largesse.
"We get nothing," said a migrant worker surnamed Wang, who works in a local restaurant.
Wu's family controls more than 90 percent of the Huaxi fortune, according to one survey made by the village.
Wu has four sons and all have leading positions in the village and its financial affairs. His two daughters head up local administrative bureaus.
Urban planning experts express doubts that Huaxi can be a role model for rural development.
"The conditions of Chinese villages are too complicated, and there can be no common model," said Zheng Fengtian, deputy director of the Rural Development Academy at Renmin University of China.
"It's impossible for rural villages to follow in the steps of Huaxi, where agriculture accounts for only 1 percent of the local economy," said Dang Guoying, an agricultural expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a research organization under the State Council.
Huaxi Village has merged with 20 surrounding villages to become a 35-square-kilometer "Big Huaxi" with a population of 35,000.
That's created a three-tier society, with the 2,000 original Huaxi villagers on the top, the outlying village residents in the middle and more than 20,000 migrant workers on the bottom living in shabby rental housing.
One Huaxi bus driver, who is part of that middle rung and declined to be identified, said he and his neighbors aren't receiving any of the goodies enjoyed by people from the original central town area.
"My salary is almost 10 times less than the same driver who is an original Huaxi villager, but the workload is the same," he said.
Huaxi distributes 3,000 yuan of groceries to every villager every year - a practice that Wu Renbao says embodies communism at its core - but not everyone shares in the largesse.
"We get nothing," said a migrant worker surnamed Wang, who works in a local restaurant.
Wu's family controls more than 90 percent of the Huaxi fortune, according to one survey made by the village.
Wu has four sons and all have leading positions in the village and its financial affairs. His two daughters head up local administrative bureaus.
Urban planning experts express doubts that Huaxi can be a role model for rural development.
"The conditions of Chinese villages are too complicated, and there can be no common model," said Zheng Fengtian, deputy director of the Rural Development Academy at Renmin University of China.
"It's impossible for rural villages to follow in the steps of Huaxi, where agriculture accounts for only 1 percent of the local economy," said Dang Guoying, an agricultural expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a research organization under the State Council.
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