Crossing the great divide
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First, hundreds of millions of farmers risked their lives for the birth of a new nation by firmly supporting the Communist Party's efforts to encircle the cities from the countryside.
Second, in the era of industrial development immediately following the founding of the People's Republic, farmers made another sacrifice for the growth of heavy industries thanks to the "price scissors", a move by the government to artificially lower the price of rural produce while raising the price of industrial products, in order to accumulate wealth for further industrial growth.
Last but not the least, hundreds of millions of farmers came to cities to work in low-paid and less desirable jobs on construction sites for high-profile national projects, such as the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.
Fortunately, the inequality and unfairness endured by Chinese farmers has not gone unnoticed. The central government has long stressed equal values for urban and rural development. It rescinded the thousand-year-old agricultural tax, established a new-type of rural cooperative healthcare system and is now experimenting on a new-type of rural social insurance system. In his work report last year, Premier Wen Jiabao vowed that the government will propel reform of the household registration system by loosening the requirements for migrants to obtain resident status in small and medium-sized cities.
We have every reason to anticipate the dawn of equality between urban and rural residents as the government is paying more attention to rural development.
The author is a doctoral scholar with the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, School of Law, China University of Political Science and Law.
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