Die rooi reus

Ek arriveer binnekort in China, eers die selfregerende outonome gebiede van Hongkong en Macau (waar politieke vryheid nie eintlik meer geduld word nie) en dan die groot rooi reus vanself. Hier plaas ek 'n klein uittreksel uit 'n artikel in die jongste Time waarvan die voorblad my aandag getrek het - dit was oor ongekende betogings in China deur plattelanders, die boere, 900 miljoen van hulle. Die kommunistiese revolusie is destyds grotendeels gelei deur die boere, maar die nuwe leiers in China het geen simpatie vir hulle nie - daar is van die ergste armoede op die platteland terwyl die stede blink en die mense ryk word. Dis vir my 'n groot jammerte, 'n land wat met edel ideale begin het, wat alles net laat vaar het ter wille van geld, die groot gejag na geld. Agtien van die twintig mees besoedelde stede ter wereld is in China. Die omgewing word letterlik verkrag. Maar almal wil daar bele^ en in die groot geld deel. Dis hoekom ek self wil gaan kyk, ook miskien terwyl daar nog 'n bietjie van die ware, ou China agterbly. En ek wil Tibet toe gaan voordat dit ook net een groot Chinese winkelsentrum word. Ek sal een van die dae self kan berig oor wat ek daar sien (dis nou natuurlik as ek nie visumprobleme optel nie!), maar hier is 'n stukkie uit Time - die volle artikel verskyn hier.
The man is almost too scared to talk. "I am just a farmer," he whispers, shortly after the police had descended on his village of Panlong in China's southern Guangdong province. "I know I don't matter." But what he has witnessed does. In mid-January, the man joined a remarkable protest against the local government's decision to seize communal farmland and lease it to a foreign investor. For several days, more than 1,000 villagers gathered near the disputed land, brandishing pitchforks and blocking a highway. But the brief exercise in free expression ended in tragedy. As dusk fell on Jan. 14, men armed with electric batons poured out of police vans and attacked the farmers. Villagers say a 13-year-old girl who tried to hide behind a woodpile was beaten to death, and they estimate that 20 or so others were seriously injured. (A spokesperson from nearby Zhongshan City claims the girl died of a heart attack.) The clash was barely reported within China, but few locals believe it will be the last. Says the witness, who doesn't want his name used for fear of official retribution: "The local government has lost the hearts of the people."
China's leaders had better try to win them back. Violent local protests are convulsing the Chinese countryside with ever greater frequency--and Beijing has proved unable to quell the unrest. By the central government's own count, there were 87,000 "public-order disturbances" in 2005, up from 10,000 in 1994. Most took place in out-of-the-way hamlets like Panlong, where peasants who were once the backbone of the Communist Party feel excluded from China's full-throttle economic development. Many of China's 900 million rural inhabitants are farmers, who have little legal or political leverage. They have borne a disproportionate share of the side effects of China's growth, from environmental degradation to misrule by local party officials more eager to line their pockets than provide basic services. Income disparity between the urban rich and the rural poor is at its widest since the People's Republic was founded in 1949. "What China has now is the worst of a planned economy and the worst of capitalism," says Christine Wong, a University of Washington professor who studies local governance in China.