Sunday, August 01, 2004
Amid China's Boom, No Helping Hand for Young Qingming
... His public high school tuition alone consumed most of his family's income for a year. He wanted to attend college. But to do so meant taking the annual college entrance examination. On the humid morning of June 4, three days before the exam, Qingming's teacher repeated a common refrain: he had to pay his last $80 in fees or he would not be allowed to take the test. Qingming stood before his classmates, his shame overtaken by anger.
"I do not have the money," he said slowly, according to several teachers who described the events that morning. But his teacher — and the system — would not budge.
A few hours later, Qingming, 18 years old, stepped in front of an approaching locomotive. The train, like China's roaring economy, was an express. ...
This year, the number of destitute poor, which China classifies as those earning less than $75 a year, increased for the first time in 25 years. The government estimates that the number of people in this lowest stratum grew by 800,000, to 85 million people, even as the economy grew by a robust 9 percent.
No modern country has become prosperous without allowing some people to get rich first. The problem for China is not just that the urban elite now drive BMW's, while many farmers are lucky to eat meat once a week. The problem is that the gap has widened partly because the government enforces a two-class system, denying peasants the medical, pension and welfare benefits that many urban residents have, while often even denying them the right to become urban residents.
...
The Zheng family village, Sanceng, is nestled into a mountainside, accessible by a dirt trail that climbs through terraced rice paddies. The rumble of a waterfall drowns the occasional roar of trucks passing below. Making a phone call requires a sweaty 20-minute hike to a dusty roadside store.
The house the Zhengs share with several other families has electricity but little else. It is a sprawling barnlike structure built of adobe and wood more than a century ago. Food is cooked on open wood fires. At lunch smoke chokes the interior and leaves doors and windows stained with black ash.
Zheng Qingming grew up here by chance. He was born a second child to parents who could not afford the fine they faced under the one-child policy if they wanted to rear him. Just after birth he was secreted into the care of his mother's brother and sister-in-law, who are both mentally retarded. His foster parents were often mute and disoriented, and the burden of raising him fell on his maternal grandparents.
...
The family grows corn and rice, and raises a dozen chickens and ducks on a half-acre of land. They produce enough food to eat but little extra to sell, a problem when Qingming reached school age and needed to pay tuition.
The elder Mr. Zheng had few ways of making money. He had little schooling and could not read. But even at 74, his strapping forearms and muscular hands look as if they belong on a weightlifter, or a convict doing hard labor. He found work chopping stones into pebbles to make roads. ...
... His public high school tuition alone consumed most of his family's income for a year. He wanted to attend college. But to do so meant taking the annual college entrance examination. On the humid morning of June 4, three days before the exam, Qingming's teacher repeated a common refrain: he had to pay his last $80 in fees or he would not be allowed to take the test. Qingming stood before his classmates, his shame overtaken by anger.
"I do not have the money," he said slowly, according to several teachers who described the events that morning. But his teacher — and the system — would not budge.
A few hours later, Qingming, 18 years old, stepped in front of an approaching locomotive. The train, like China's roaring economy, was an express. ...
This year, the number of destitute poor, which China classifies as those earning less than $75 a year, increased for the first time in 25 years. The government estimates that the number of people in this lowest stratum grew by 800,000, to 85 million people, even as the economy grew by a robust 9 percent.
No modern country has become prosperous without allowing some people to get rich first. The problem for China is not just that the urban elite now drive BMW's, while many farmers are lucky to eat meat once a week. The problem is that the gap has widened partly because the government enforces a two-class system, denying peasants the medical, pension and welfare benefits that many urban residents have, while often even denying them the right to become urban residents.
...
The Zheng family village, Sanceng, is nestled into a mountainside, accessible by a dirt trail that climbs through terraced rice paddies. The rumble of a waterfall drowns the occasional roar of trucks passing below. Making a phone call requires a sweaty 20-minute hike to a dusty roadside store.
The house the Zhengs share with several other families has electricity but little else. It is a sprawling barnlike structure built of adobe and wood more than a century ago. Food is cooked on open wood fires. At lunch smoke chokes the interior and leaves doors and windows stained with black ash.
Zheng Qingming grew up here by chance. He was born a second child to parents who could not afford the fine they faced under the one-child policy if they wanted to rear him. Just after birth he was secreted into the care of his mother's brother and sister-in-law, who are both mentally retarded. His foster parents were often mute and disoriented, and the burden of raising him fell on his maternal grandparents.
...
The family grows corn and rice, and raises a dozen chickens and ducks on a half-acre of land. They produce enough food to eat but little extra to sell, a problem when Qingming reached school age and needed to pay tuition.
The elder Mr. Zheng had few ways of making money. He had little schooling and could not read. But even at 74, his strapping forearms and muscular hands look as if they belong on a weightlifter, or a convict doing hard labor. He found work chopping stones into pebbles to make roads. ...
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