Loudspeakers back in vogue and playing a vital role in rural areas
Print Edition
LOUDSPEAKERS are making a comeback in villages as China’s rural population continues to age.
Every day Wu Wenkui passes on the latest news and information via a loudspeaker to fellow villagers in remote Xiaowu Village in east China’s Shandong Province.
“Subsidies for growing rice are now available for collection,” the loudspeaker broadcasts Wu’s voice. “Please bring your land permit to collect your subsidy from the office.”
For many Chinese, loudspeakers, which were used to disseminate information in rural areas during the collective economy era in the 1960s and 1970s, are now thought of as memorabilia. With the emergence of modern technology such as TV sets and the Internet, the use of loudspeakers had almost faded into history.
But Cao Xingwei, Party Secretary of Shandong’s Shimiao Township, said that as rural youth leave for jobs in big cities, demand had grown for loudspeakers for the left-behind elderly population.
The township has spent about 300,000 yuan (US$43,550) buying loudspeakers for all 127 villages under its jurisdiction.
“Every morning from 7:30 to 8:30. And every afternoon from five to six, the loudspeakers reawaken the spirit of the village,” said Yao Xingqing, 53, a Shimiao resident. “They are particularly useful in spreading news about the current events in the village.”
By the end of 2016, more than 220 million Chinese were older than 60, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The government predicts the country’s elderly will account for a quarter of the population by 2030.
The aging population is particularly noticeable in rural China. In 2011, the number of senior citizens in rural areas accounted for 15.4 percent of the entire rural population, 2.14 percentage points higher than the country’s average, according to the Gerontological Society of China.
In an era of information accessibility, many elderly rural residents don’t know how to operate modern equipment like computers, increasing the need for loudspeakers, according to Cao.
Yao said he was unsure what to do with straw from the corn harvest in October last year, but heard on the village loudspeaker that a nearby feed mill was buying straw.
“I collected the straw from my 0.47-hectare corn field and sent it to the mill,” he said. “I earned more than 2,000 yuan.”
Yao said that in the past, straw was left in the field to rot or sometimes burned, which was “not only a waste of resources but also bad for the environment.” Thanks to information he heard on the loudspeaker, he transformed that straw into money.
When Qinqi Township, in northwest China’s Gansu Province, received torrential rain a few years ago, the loudspeakers broadcast warnings for villagers, preventing damage and loss of life, according to He Yanqi, a local official.
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