China Development Brief - Livelihoods

Eco-tourism: snapshots from four villages

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:54:18 +0100

It is a decade since mass tourism arrived in the picturesque northwest Yunnan towns of Dali, Lijiang and Zhongdian. But what of the villages and townships that some more adventurous tourists are beginning to visit? Julie Perng visits four communities that hope to embrace tourists without being overwhelmed by them.

In 2006, total receipts from tourism in Yunnan Province reached CNY 49.97 billion (USD 6.2 billion), almost 90% of which came from Chinese tourists. Receipts were up 16.7% on the previous year, and accounted for 12.5% of the provincial GDP. The tourism industry is clearly flourishing in one of China’s most ethnically, geographically, and biologically diverse provinces.

Scholars question division of pastoral lands

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:11:33 +0100

Grassland conservation and development cannot be separated from pastoralist culture and people, but decision-makers have ignored this over the past decades, academic experts and environmentalists say.

Some have started initiatives to bring people involved in grassland issues together for better policy-making and research.

At the 16th International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences Conference to be held in Kunming in July 2008, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) will host a parallel meeting to discuss the grassland environment and changes in herders’ lives.

Brick kiln ‘slavery’ exposé follows Olympic child labour report

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 03:10:34 +0100

Senior Chinese officials vowed to act on an international NGO and trade union report alleging abusive practices in four Pearl Delta factories contracted to produce goods for the 2008 Olympics, even as the report was overshadowed by shocking revelations of forced child labour in brick kilns in the provinces of Henan and Shanxi.

Capitalist fillip for China’s new socialist countryside

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:29:39 +0000

At the end of 2005, the People’s Bank of China (China’s central bank) launched a pilot initiative to create new, privately invested lending institutions in some of China’s poorest areas. A year later, the China Banking Regulatory Commission announced measures to stimulate new “village banks” and financial cooperatives, and on the last day of 2006 it also licensed the Post Office Savings Bank to enter the rural credit market. Rural finance experts have welcomed the new measures. But, Nick Young reports, many earlier efforts to encourage rural credit have faltered and it may be some time yet before financial services trickle down to the poor.

Rural Cooperatives: Getting together again

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:48:13 +0100

In January the Ministry of Agriculture launched a month-long drive to inform farmers and local officials about the new Law on Farmer Professional Cooperatives (农民专业合作社法). Given China’s long and varied experience of things called “cooperative” it might take longer than a month to get the message through, Chang Tianle (常天乐) concluded after visiting Anhui, Sichuan and Yunnan.

First Person: "My fortune started with two rabbits and a sickle”

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:16:06 +0100

Although average rural incomes have failed to keep pace with rising urban incomes, some people in China’s countryside are managing to thrive. Here, Ren Xuping (任旭平) tells Chang Tianle (常天乐) about his journey from poverty to relative prosperity in rural Sichuan, and how this led him to become a social entrepreneur.

New breeze for NGO-government cooperation flagship

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 11:59:22 +0000

Five Chinese NGOs have been awarded government funds to facilitate village-level poverty alleviation and development projects in Jiangxi Province as part of an Asia Development Bank-supported programme whose progress was discussed at a forum in Beijing on January 19.

This was the second round of funding in a two-year programme that has the backing of the State Council’s Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development Office and its local counterpart in Jiangxi. They are together providing around USD 1.7 million to match a USD 1 million ADB technical assistance grant.

Chinese farmers feel WTO pinch, says report

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:11:00 +0000

A steep rise in soybean and cotton imports, mainly from the United States, has led to falling prices for Chinese farmers, with the result that “many . . . get almost nothing from the plant[s]” and twenty million have given up farming altogether, according to the November 30 issue of Beijing Review.

Amber light for farmers' organisations

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 10:37:04 +0100

A recently published World Bank study of farmers’ associations in China reviews a number of policy experiments that are now culminating in a draft Law on Farmers’ Economic Professional Cooperatives (农民经济专业合作社), which is expected to be released for public consultation before the end of the year, writes Nick Young. But, the authors of the World Bank study warn, although a clear legal framework would be a major breakthrough, local governments should support the development of farmers’ organisations without being tempted to direct or dominate them.

"Searching in the dark" for the credit switch

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 05:15:48 +0000

Although in theory farmers in China can access credit through a national network of Rural Credit Cooperatives, in practice these are not always able or willing serve poor, remote communities. Numerous local and international NGOs have tried to plug the gap by offering microfinance as part of integrated rural development projects. Myriam Bartu explores the difficulties and the achievements of these schemes and, in a downloadable attachment, presents case studies of five NGO projects in Sichuan and Yunnan.

Mercy Corps and ethnic Yi NGO tackle minority women’s skills deficit

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:28:13 +0100

International development NGO, Mercy Corps, is partnering with a local organisation established last year in Sichuan Province’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in a new initiative to improve life skills and livelihood opportunities for teenage, ethnic minority girls who have grown up in an area ravaged by poverty, drug use and AIDS.

Canadian support enables Gung Ho to keep cooperative spirit alive

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:09:07 +0100

The veteran International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, also known as Gung Ho, is embarking on a three-year project to develop farmers’ cooperatives in three counties with different levels of economic development.

Leading state adviser offers frank assessment of rural challenges

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:32:11 +0100

Not just the so-called “three problems of agriculture” (三农) but as many as seven rural conundrums are explored candidly by a senior government researcher in a report that summarises the findings of recent fieldwork and is published in a new, English language magazine, China Economist.

Seven Issues Directly Affecting Farmers’ Interests is written by the Director of the State Council Development Research Centre’s Rural Economy Department, Han Jun (韩俊), who pulls few punches during a frank discussion of education and health financing, land requisition, rural infrastructure, migration, farm credit, and farmers’ lack of bargaining power.

NGO merger counters trend towards fragmentation

Mon, 22 May 2006 08:41:23 +0100

Two relatively well established and well-known independent organizations, Beijing’s Institute for Environment and Development (IED) and the Fuping (富平) Vocational Training School, have merged to form a new Fuping Development Institute, against the trend of China’s non-profit sector development which has previously been marked by more divorces than marriages.

Editorial: It’s not “construction” that rural China needs

Tue, 02 May 2006 03:36:54 +0100

The recent pledge by China’s top leaders to “construct a new socialist countryside” (建设社会主义新农村) appears designed to stem a growing tide of rural unrest and to address the concerns of urban intellectuals who, for several years, have been harping on “three problems of agriculture” (三农). But it is not yet clear whether the plan amounts to more than a rhetorical acknowledgement of growing “imbalances” in income and opportunity; and the reference to “construction”(建设) is depressingly familiar.