Will the Boat Sink the Water - Review

Much is talked about China's peasants in the time of reform but so little is based on actual research. This is particularly true when looking at peasant resistance to taxes and maltreatment by the state. Only a few books such as Ian Johnson's 'Wild Grass' and Kevin O'Brian and Li Lianjiang's 'Rightful Resistance' can truly claim to be based on first hand research. Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao's book 'A Survey of the Chinese Peasants (中国农民调查Zhongguo Nongmin Diaocha), translated into English and published under the title, 'Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants,' is a welcome insight into the subject.

The book is based on several years of research in Anhui province and tells the stories of various villages burdened by exploitative, and mostly illegal, taxes. The picture is grim, village after village is bankrupted by officials looking to make money or to increase their profile in the party hierarchy. Dissenters are arrested, tortured, murdered. The stories are simply but evocatively told and it is impossible not to sympathise with the peasants who were told that the revolution was in their name.

By the middle stages of the book little analysis has been provided and the repetition of endless narratives of suffering peasants begins to numb the soul. However at this point the authors begin to question the background of the stories. Why has China's bureaucracy grown so virulently? Is it just individual bad eggs who exploit peasants or is it more systemic? The book eventually heads towards a conclusion when one the heroes of the early stories turns villain and extorts his own exploitative taxes. The fact is that the funding given to townships is not even sufficient to cover the basic (and very modest) salaries of the top officials. In this climate there is no way for the bureacracy to fund itself without the exploitation of peasants. The only honest officials are supported by their families as most of their wages are spent on the administrative costs of running their offices. With the basic question of financing China's local rural government unanswered, the systematic exploitation of peasants cannot be halted.

The book provides a clear analysis of the current situation of China's peasants in a society which claims to have lifted millions from beneath the poverty barrier. It is a timely and important work which anyone interested in the truth about life in China behind the propaganda, both Chinese and Western, must read.