Home » Opinion » Opinion Columns
Rice for the rich rips off peasants
By Wan Lixin |
January 6, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
HALF a kilo of rice, when lavishly packaged and labeled "organic," can carry a price tag of 199 yuan (US$31).
That's a lot, but not unthinkable in an age when a handbag or a bottle of liquor can be priced at thousands of yuan, and still grabbed as "bargains."
After all, rice can sustain life and producing it involves months of backbreaking toil.
What really makes news is that the surplus value of this exorbitantly priced item does not in any degree trickle down to the peasants who raised the crop.
The rice was first purchased from the peasants at less than two yuan per jin (500 grams), and then branded as a luxury gift priced at 199 yuan.
This happened in Wuchang, Heilongjiang Province, which in recent years has been advertised for the quality of the rice it produces.
Xinhua News Agency attributes this pricing phenomenon to the "weak bargaining power" of peasants when confronting the capital dominating rice-processing channels.
In this process, the government departments that are meant to safeguard peasants' interests are colluding with rice-processors to maximize the profit of the rice, at peasants' expense.
To remedy the situation, a Xinhua commentator calls on peasants to enhance their bargaining power by forming truly effective economic cooperatives, and stresses the government's role in providing peasants timely guidance, service, and support.
What this commentator fails to ask is whether this practice of turning rice into a luxury item is consistent with traditional Chinese values, which center on honesty, or any rational pricing mechanism?
According to Marx, the exchange value of an item incorporates the amount of work that went into creating it.
As it is calculated, the true cost for processing this gift rice stands at around 0.2 yuan for every jin, meaning the luxury rice package is sold at a profit totally disproportionate to the value added.
Thus the exorbitant profit benefits only the capitalists.
Today this way of making money can be openly touted as a case of successful marketing or branding, fit for enthusiastic citation at an MBA session.
There are a host of reasons why this kind of money-making should be discouraged.
A simple, but nowadays unthinkable approach, would be to ban sales of the outrageously overpackaged item.
The vanity and status value it's supposed to radiate is neither good for our morals, nor our environment.
Ban it
There are more compelling reasons to ban the rice-for-the-rich.
Farming has never been lucrative, but for thousands of years nearly all Chinese governments had placed a higher premium on farming, believing that the wealth of a nation was derived solely from the value of "land cultivation."
Thus, although it has never been easy to eke out more than a subsistence by cultivating small plots of land, farming in China has been all along a dignified calling, with many mandarins citing farming as more ennobling than a political career.
But when a peasant's labor is grabbed and stolen at two yuan for 500 grams and then rebranded by a crafty businessman who, with a snap of the finger, resells it at 199 yuan, we find it not unlike adding insult to injury.
It is a mockery of honest labor.
It also does little to reconnect migrants workers to the land from which they have become estranged in recent years.
A recent survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that more than half of Chinese peasants wish their land would be appropriated by the state and that they would be fairly compensated.
A young migrant worker from Henan Province working in Shanghai posted online allegations about illegal land expropriation back home, and thanks to his exposure, the grabbed land was returned to local peasants.
Contrary to expectations, when the young man returned home, he was not welcomed as a hero, but as the target of overwhelming public outrage, for he deprived villagers of the coveted chance to leave peasant behind and be compensated. He was forced to flee his home.
In an article in China Business Weekly, writer Zheng Fengtian estimated that compared to growing one mu (0.16 acre) of wheat near Beijing's Fourth Ring Road area, erecting buildings in the same plot could be at least 300,000 times more profitable.
For years Chinese peasants have turned their back on the land, moving to cities for work and leaving the elderly and children behind to fend for themselves.
On New Year's Eve during a visit to a construction site in Hunan Province, Premier Wen Jiabao talked about the issue of left-behind village children.
This is an issue affecting tens of millions of rural households.
And any solution would be elusive if it fails to invest Chinese land tillers with the dignity they deserve.
This rice case might be isolated, but reflects vividly the plight of Chinese peasants.
That's a lot, but not unthinkable in an age when a handbag or a bottle of liquor can be priced at thousands of yuan, and still grabbed as "bargains."
After all, rice can sustain life and producing it involves months of backbreaking toil.
What really makes news is that the surplus value of this exorbitantly priced item does not in any degree trickle down to the peasants who raised the crop.
The rice was first purchased from the peasants at less than two yuan per jin (500 grams), and then branded as a luxury gift priced at 199 yuan.
This happened in Wuchang, Heilongjiang Province, which in recent years has been advertised for the quality of the rice it produces.
Xinhua News Agency attributes this pricing phenomenon to the "weak bargaining power" of peasants when confronting the capital dominating rice-processing channels.
In this process, the government departments that are meant to safeguard peasants' interests are colluding with rice-processors to maximize the profit of the rice, at peasants' expense.
To remedy the situation, a Xinhua commentator calls on peasants to enhance their bargaining power by forming truly effective economic cooperatives, and stresses the government's role in providing peasants timely guidance, service, and support.
What this commentator fails to ask is whether this practice of turning rice into a luxury item is consistent with traditional Chinese values, which center on honesty, or any rational pricing mechanism?
According to Marx, the exchange value of an item incorporates the amount of work that went into creating it.
As it is calculated, the true cost for processing this gift rice stands at around 0.2 yuan for every jin, meaning the luxury rice package is sold at a profit totally disproportionate to the value added.
Thus the exorbitant profit benefits only the capitalists.
Today this way of making money can be openly touted as a case of successful marketing or branding, fit for enthusiastic citation at an MBA session.
There are a host of reasons why this kind of money-making should be discouraged.
A simple, but nowadays unthinkable approach, would be to ban sales of the outrageously overpackaged item.
The vanity and status value it's supposed to radiate is neither good for our morals, nor our environment.
Ban it
There are more compelling reasons to ban the rice-for-the-rich.
Farming has never been lucrative, but for thousands of years nearly all Chinese governments had placed a higher premium on farming, believing that the wealth of a nation was derived solely from the value of "land cultivation."
Thus, although it has never been easy to eke out more than a subsistence by cultivating small plots of land, farming in China has been all along a dignified calling, with many mandarins citing farming as more ennobling than a political career.
But when a peasant's labor is grabbed and stolen at two yuan for 500 grams and then rebranded by a crafty businessman who, with a snap of the finger, resells it at 199 yuan, we find it not unlike adding insult to injury.
It is a mockery of honest labor.
It also does little to reconnect migrants workers to the land from which they have become estranged in recent years.
A recent survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that more than half of Chinese peasants wish their land would be appropriated by the state and that they would be fairly compensated.
A young migrant worker from Henan Province working in Shanghai posted online allegations about illegal land expropriation back home, and thanks to his exposure, the grabbed land was returned to local peasants.
Contrary to expectations, when the young man returned home, he was not welcomed as a hero, but as the target of overwhelming public outrage, for he deprived villagers of the coveted chance to leave peasant behind and be compensated. He was forced to flee his home.
In an article in China Business Weekly, writer Zheng Fengtian estimated that compared to growing one mu (0.16 acre) of wheat near Beijing's Fourth Ring Road area, erecting buildings in the same plot could be at least 300,000 times more profitable.
For years Chinese peasants have turned their back on the land, moving to cities for work and leaving the elderly and children behind to fend for themselves.
On New Year's Eve during a visit to a construction site in Hunan Province, Premier Wen Jiabao talked about the issue of left-behind village children.
This is an issue affecting tens of millions of rural households.
And any solution would be elusive if it fails to invest Chinese land tillers with the dignity they deserve.
This rice case might be isolated, but reflects vividly the plight of Chinese peasants.
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