The problems facing China's 800 million farmers and rural dwellers have come centre stage at the National People's Congress in Beijing this week. In his address to the gathering, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao pledged to create a "new socialist countryside" over the next five years by reforms bringing greater equity and stability.
It is an immensely challenging task, given the huge social and economic changes which are under way and the growing levels of protest against them.
In the past few days hundreds of petitioners who came to lobby the congress were arrested in an effort by the authorities to deflect attention from these protests and highlight the Communist Party's determination to tackle the issue. Often the petitioners find that they have more access to local officials in the capital than in their home regions. Coming after a year in which the level of protest has sharply escalated to some reported 87,000 incidents, there can be no denying that the question of how the Chinese transformation rewards winners and losers is a central and sensitive matter for the ruling party.
It raises the further questions of whether it is capable of tackling the problem and how this will be done. Mr Jiabao's decision to put it centre stage is an important gesture, on a par with the openness of the protests and the petitions - notwithstanding the state repression directed against them. Unless the governing system is able to address the issues which have been thrown up by the transition to a much more urbanised market society it will be in deep trouble. That includes a readiness to debate them openly and honestly. The emphasis put on social stability shows this has been realised at the highest ruling levels.
Most of the protests are against land seizures, corruption among local officials, environmental degradation arising from rampant industrialisation and the growing inequalities between rural and urban dwellers. The party leadership promises more subsidies for rural areas, enhanced educational and health expenditure and better treatment of migrant workers in the next five-year plan.
To be credible it will also have to change the legal and administrative approach to land sales and farmers' compensation. At present, land-holding is based on a system of local collective ownership introduced by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, through which farmers have title to their land. In fact, local party officials sell land for development, often corruptly as is now openly acknowledged. Reforms are being discussed which would enable farmers to sell land directly, at a higher price, to developers, which would probably be a more just system of compensation. ...