The Real cause of Chinese Peasants' Poverty

Recently, I have mainly moved around in some state-level poverty-stricken counties in the southwest. After going to some poor places, I found that poverty is not as simple as we thought: poverty is due to the low quality of farmers, lack of education, ignorance, poor natural environment, and so on. We attribute the cause of poverty to the poor themselves, as if poverty has little to do with the government, the system and the mainstream population. No! To a large extent, poverty stems from lack of rights, and poverty stems from unreasonable systems designed by mainstream society.

Let me start with a story. I went to a township in a certain area, where there are 14000 people, with tin, lead and coal mines. The mineral output value pulled out of this township every day is about 400000. The miners are the "big bosses" of Zhejiang, Sichuan and Yunnan. They provide less than 500000 of the tax revenue to the township government every year, but the mining vehicles that come and go damage the road surface and spend no less than 1.5 million on maintenance every year. The mine is open, the environment is destroyed, the resources are gone, and the mine is toxic, the miners do not have any labor protection, each miner can only work in the mine for three months and can no longer work, and his life is in danger after a long time. For such work, the salary of each miner is less than 300 yuan per month. If you go to the mine and see those miners, your first feeling is that there is not much difference between these miners and cattle. It is difficult for people who do not live in such an environment to understand the realistic choice of "I would rather die of fatigue than starve to death".

The second story: I went to a poor county, where the primeval forest has been cut down since the 1990s, and there is no compensation when cutting down trees, because people in mainstream society say that forests belong to the state, and cutting down forests naturally has nothing to do with the local people. When there is no deforestation, the local people mainly make a living by hunting, supplemented by simple farming, life is still relatively comfortable. After the trees were cut down, the local people had to turn from hunting to farming and worked hard to build terraces. In recent years, the government has forced locals to return farmland to forests to protect the environment and prevent soil erosion. When the forest is cut down, there is no compensation; the painstaking terraces are written down in a document, saying that they will supply you with 300 jin of grain a year and it will be over for five to eight years. When I was there, I was extremely ashamed. Many people show great kindness and compassion when they talk about protecting the environment, but they are so immoral in the face of vulnerable compatriots.

When I go into the depths of poverty to face poverty, I really have no reason to blame people who are struggling in poverty, they are not wrong! After thinking for a long time, I have a clearer understanding of poverty. There are at least a dozen major unreasonable systems that restrict poverty and lead to poverty, which need us to review: the property right system.

Both of the above stories are related to the property right system. Mineral resources belong to the state-owned, who has state-owned? Whoever has the right to examine and approve the development of mineral resources will represent the country. Some people may say, if the people share the tax, who will collect the tax on behalf of the country? Of course it's a matter of a few people. There is a tax of 35 yuan to 50 yuan per ton of coal, but 10 tons per car is only 5 tons. 10 cars are taxed during the day and 100 cars are not taxed at night. Even if the tax is levied, how can the local people realize the right to share the tax revenue?

If we say that forests and mineral resources belong to the state, it would be fine if the poor cannot share the benefits, but the "state" should also occupy the property of the poor. For example, the property rights of highways, bridges and water conservancy facilities run by farmers' fund-raising offices do not belong to farmers. Since it was set up by farmers to raise funds, why do farmers have no income from property rights? If the infrastructure invested by farmers, such as electricity, transportation, energy, communications, and so on, are allowed to share property rights and benefits, farmers will not be so miserable and poor.

Not only that, by the late 1980s, the state encouraged farmers to set up grain processing plants, and a processing plant had to invest hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. In the 1990s, when the state issued a document, farmers were no longer allowed to operate grain, and farmers suffered heavy losses. The state does not bear any responsibility; in the 1980s, the government encouraged farmers to sell and slaughter pigs, and in the 1990s, the "one-stop train" of pigs set up by farmers collapsed, and no one lost money; in the late 1980s, farmers were allowed to operate seeds, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and in the 1990s, supply and marketing cooperatives re-monopolized the farmers, causing hardship to the farmers. As a result, the debts borne by the peasants cannot be paid off by one or two generations. The enterprises in the city go bankrupt when they go bankrupt, and the farmers' enterprises are forced to go bankrupt, and the money still has to be repaid. How come the farmers are not poor?

Financial system: electricity and telephones in rural areas are built by farmers themselves, while electricity and telephones in cities are invested by the state, and electricity and telephones used by urban residents are cheaper than those in rural areas; schools in rural areas are built by farmers themselves. Rural teachers are paid by the peasants themselves. Schools in cities are built by the state, and teachers in cities are paid by the state finance; roads in cities are built by the state, tens of millions or even tens of millions per kilometer, and roads in rural areas are mainly built by farmers themselves. Almost all the infrastructure construction in rural areas is financed by farmers themselves, and of course the state also has financial support, but that is a drop in the bucket. They are all Chinese citizens, and the standards are different in terms of possession of financial resources.

Social security system: China's social security system does not cover farmers. Talking about the social security system is too extravagant for farmers. The theory of great inequality is in vain, and it's all right if we don't say it. However, we can not destroy the farmers' own security system, that is, we can not deprive farmers of the right to own land. For those farmers living in poor areas, how can they live once they lose their land? What kind of social security do we provide for those who have lost their land?

Financial system: urbanites can use their ID cards to buy houses from banks, but countrymen cannot; urbanites can use houses as mortgage loans, and farmers' houses are also houses, so why can't they use their houses and land for mortgage loans? The wealth of farmers is also a part of national wealth and the basis of the RMB. Why don't Chinese banks recognize it? If our farmers' mountains, farmers' land and farmers' houses can also be mortgaged in the bank, then there is no shortage of investment in rural areas, and farmers also have the money to develop. Now, farmers' loans to produce agricultural products for urban people to enjoy, the loan is also so difficult, the interest is still several times higher than in the city. Foreign banks do not go to the countryside, Chinese banks have also entered the city, and the state does not allow the existence of rural private finance, can it not be expected that astronauts can provide financial services in rural areas?

Tax system: the per capita income of farmers is more than 2,000 yuan (per year), not disposable income, which also contains seeds and grain eaten by themselves and livestock. The state collects agricultural tax on the basis of 8.4% of farmers' agricultural output, but if the part that farmers consume and put into production is excluded, it must be a tax rate of more than 20 percent or more. Moreover, if the tax rate of grain processing and circulation is taken into account, the tax rate of agriculture may be more than 30%. A farmer's disposable income is only a few hundred yuan a year, and he has to pay taxes; city dwellers have social security of several hundred yuan a month. If city dwellers lose money in their business, they don't have to do it; if farmers lose money in farming, can they not grow it? Is it possible not to pay tax if you don't? No, you can still pay taxes if you don't farm. Agriculture is the weakest industry, and farmers are the most vulnerable group, but they face the most unfavorable tax policies. Why are the peasants not poor?

Resource allocation system: let's talk about the resource allocation system for poverty alleviation. The poverty alleviation resources of the country belong to the money of the poor. Who allocates these resources? It is arranged by cadres. Whoever runs "money" will be given to those who run frequently. It is costly to go to poverty alleviation resources, and it is necessary for wild geese to pluck resources through the downallocation of resources at one level. When these resources arrive at the project site and how the community should be used, there is still no voice for the poor, and it is still the national cadres who have the final say. When bidding for projects is carried out in many poor areas, who presides over the bidding, who has the right to participate in the bidding, a very small number of rich people, where are the poor? 99% of the poor are excluded. If the legal system allocates poverty alleviation resources, it will certainly be more effective than the allocation of cadres' power; if the resources go to the community and the common people dominate the use of resources, they can do very big things with very little money, because there is plenty of surplus labor in China's rural areas. However, in many places, the allocation of poverty alleviation resources and public resources has become a trading game of power and power, power and capital.

Education system, health care system: these two systems are similar, only talking about education. People seem to agree that "education changes fate". Can education in the Midwest change the fate of the people in the Midwest? I don't think so, but it makes them more and more miserable. I wrote about a high school student in my Poverty Alleviation Diary. His parents borrowed a lot of debt in order to train him. He graduated from high school and went to work in the city with a monthly salary of 400 yuan. He had to work for more than ten years to pay off the debt. He said that as long as he paid off his debts and saved 2000 yuan, he would go back to his small mountain village to get married and never come to work again. At that time, he was probably 40 years old, and the city people would not ask him to work if he did not go back to the mountains. What is the current rural education? Poor parents, with a lot of debt, paid a huge cost of education, and it was not easy to train a high school student. What do high school students give their parents in return? No! What did he get when he gave the city his golden time of 20 cents and 40 years old? No! By the age of 40, he was getting old, and the cities and developed areas did not want him, leaving the burden of providing for the aged to the Midwest and to the poor. Is education a pump? Education continues to draw resources from the central and western regions to developed areas, and resources from the poor to the rich. When I was in primary school, I studied for a few cents or one yuan for a year; when I was in junior high school, I spent two yuan a year; when I was in high school, I spent 3.5 yuan for a year; when I was in college, the state subsidized more than 20 yuan a month and 35 jin of food stamps. Where are my children studying now? More than 1000 in primary school and 1000 in middle school, the admission score is raised to a high level in the high school entrance examination, with a shortfall of 100 yuan or a few hundred yuan. Now we go to college, the state gives us a little money or even no money, and more schools collect money. I calculated that the price of agricultural products has risen less than seven times since 1985, which is equivalent to a seven-fold increase in farmers' income. But now farmers' expenditure on education has increased hundreds or even thousands of times, you say why farmers are not poor! Farmers can sell a little money, they are completely absorbed by our education, farmers are in debt to raise their own children, and to train talents for developed areas.