There are several reason for this sense of helplessness among the peasantry, including the market economy’s disruption of the peasant economy, the irresponsibility of local governments, and peasants’ lack of social capital, but the fundamental reason is the disorganization of rural society. Rural society today lacks cohesion, “like a sheet of loose sand.” Disorganized peasant households, depending on individual strength alone, cannot overcome natural hardships, nor can they face the challenges of the market or encroachments on their interests, and their self-confidence inevitably declines. The source of peasants’ spiritual poverty, therefore, is their lack of their own organization(s), and their loss of collective solicitude. At the same time, urban culture promoting individual competitiveness and interpersonal alienation has flooded into the countryside, further affecting rural culture and worsening peasants’ spiritual poverty.

Comrade Liu Xiangbo (刘相波), better known as Liu Laoshi (刘老石), was the program coordinator of the Center for Rural Reconstruction at Renmin University of China, Ph.D. student at Renmin University’s School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, and founding director of the Liang Shuming Center for Rural Reconstruction. He passed away at 9:45 PM on March 24, at the age of 43, in the hospital of the Tianjin Armed Police Medical School, due to injuries from a traffic accident.

Regarding the present upsurge of worker action in China, liberals have used their discursive power in the overseas media to frame the strike wave as a tale of workers’ struggle for ‘independent unions,’ as if this were a repetition of Solidarnosc. What do Chinese workers want? What is the direction of the Chinese workers movement? Those who support the movement and are concerned about the fate of the working class should provide an account matching the reality of the movement. This letter of support provides a perspective different from those predominant in the mainstream media.

With thanks to Dong Xulin, we are now able to provide the full text of a little-known but often-in-demand study: Manufacturing History: Sex, Lies and Random House’s Memoirs of Mao’s Physician. This was edited by Dong Xulin and Q.M. DeBorja, and published by the CSG in 1996.

Translation of Li Changping’s “中国农村将彻底走上菲律宾道路” by Joel Andreas & Li Yuyu, first published on Chinastudygroup.net