Hi Darryl, Yes, the forced relocation from the 3 Gorges (5 rivers?) was a huge issue which is still reverberating. (I've actually just done a blogpost on my thoughts on those kind of large scale (social) engineering projects http://wp.me/pJQl5-4c .) The urban migrants who get to settle in urban areas in China are almost certainly by any objective measure better off (access to health care, education, regular (and diverse) food supply etc.) although somewhat balanced by urban congestion, pollution, and social alienation). And yes, China has deliberately kept the price of food low (both for producers and consumers) to support very rapid economic development. And finally, it would, I think (as I was arguing in my other blogpost on China) be in China's medium and longer term interests to start figuring out ways of getting services into rural areas (balancing off the advantages of urban living and building on the advantages of rural living, but they unfortunately aren't there yet. MG
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D and N Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 11:43 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] China law to make children visit parents Hi Michael I was thinking chiefly of the millions relocated in the 5 rivers project a few years ago and now the new hydro-electric project creating a similar upheaval. There were many considerations of cultural habits to consider for the peasant way of life which I'm sure with education would have been corrected but I'm still not convinced that a rural way of life is worse than an urban one. Perhaps, as here, the farmers are not paid what they should be for the food everyone else receives from their hard work. Instead the middle men are most likely to receive the higher returns for the distribution and the re-sale of the farm products. Which may be just a continuation of the 'rape the environment' attitude for better profits for those higher up the ladder of distribution. Darryl On 1/7/2011 11:28 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Darryl, In China there is forcible removal for real estate speculation purposes but not so far as I know to move folks into the city... the policy emphasis has been rather to control migration to keep it from becoming overwhelming rather than specifically to stimulate it, I believe... From a services etc. perspective urban life in China is immeasurably (and measurably for example in terms of health and life span outcomes) better than rural life... Your comments though are quite correct with respect to both India and Bangladesh where integration of rural migrants into any sort of decent life has been extremely limited and the issue of materialism in China diverting young people from their (Confucian) familial obligations is apparently a concern--although perhaps more among the still largely gerontocracy that rules China than among their younger cohorts. My feeling is that these measures in China are more on the order of attempts to direct social values (with the collapse of the ideological role of the Communist Party they have few other tools other than the media...) to forego a future crisis rather than to respond to an immediate one. M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D and N Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 10:35 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] China law to make children visit parents It would appear that this is another outcome of forcibly removing 'peasants' from centuries old family farm plots to the city for "better lives" working in factories. It is so good to have consumer goods to block our eyes and ears to the needs of family and the elderly in particular. Darryl On 1/7/2011 6:34 AM, Ray Harrell wrote: The USA went through this issue in my parent's generation. After the depression the families broke up to move to the corners of the nation to work. People like my parents, basically put the money aside for them to not have to depend upon the children financially. What that did was to free the children to go to work in situations like the Arts which are very fragile economically and which the nation doesn't support in the private market. But of course the Artists are now like Chinese parents with little capital, no retirement, an iffy medical situation and a predatory congress that wants to cut elderly benefits "for the children's sake." Meanwhile the GOP and the Evangelicals also have no discipline when it comes to birth rate. They are against birth control and abortion but have no answer when it comes to how these people will live or support their immense families with a good education or them in their old age. This is the ticking time bomb that the tea party and the GOP are ignoring and that the Democrats are too cowardly to address. Anyway, this is the Chinese Government's answer. At the end of the article are comments from around the world to the story. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 4:29 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] China law to make children visit parents At 13:48 06/01/2011 -0800, Mike Gurstein wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12130140 But not only to visit parents but to care for them mentally and physically we learn! Now that China is copying its way, technologically, into Western consumerism, it is also discovering our fault lines -- including governmental inadequacy (and ineptitude) in coping with welfare for the old and the needy. The Confucian duty of caring for one's parents was fine with multi-generational families on their own plots in older times, and when 95% of the population hardly stirred more than 5 miles from their places of birth. It is rather reminiscent of Tudor England when the same phenomenon was occurring -- when young adults started forsaking their parents in the countryside and migrated into the new townships even if they couldn't find work there. In those days, by a decree of 1536, their ears were cut off. (More exactly, one ear was cut off. If they remained without a job or didn't return to their parents, the other ear was cut off. If they still persisted, they were executed.) It was a short-lived policy, however, and the butchery disappeared within a generation. So, I suspect, will China's neoConfucian proposal. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> 2011/01/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
