Ramon took Brother Galer’s Chinese Culture class last year and also read China Road. While Ramon was taking the class we talked about some of the topics from the book. One conversation I remember having with Ramon was about land grabs. Land grabs “continues on the outskirts of almost every city in China.” When we went to DaTong about a week after we got to Beijing we stayed in a hotel in a small town. Leaving the town we witnessed a land grab protest. On our way home we talked about the protests, which most of the time follow land grabs. Driving quickly past the protest I thought to myself good for them. They need to protest, they need to have a voice in a country that won’t allow them to have one. Reading Gifford’s book I was able to learn more in depth about land grabs.

I found it most interesting the history and motive behind land grabs. Farmers were no longer a reliable source of modernization for a successful future. So the “Communist Party began to abandon the farmers and ally itself with the new moneyed classes, the entrepreneurs, businessmen, the urban elite.” As said by Gifford, “Pity the poor, long-suffering Chinese peasants. This was supposed to be their revolution. They form the majority of the Chinese population (some 750 million people), and they have suffered longer and more deeply than anyone. They were promised so much. They were supposed to be liberated by this great experiment in social equality called Communism.” These farmers were liberated for a small amount of time. But now they have suffered more than the Chinese citizens who work in factories.  Before “Officials of the party came to power promising to give land to the peasants are taking land from the peasants for their own personal gain.” Farmers are paid far below the market rate for their land. Officials earn an income by taking the land away or taxing them for more money. These poor farmers who make 1,000 Yuan a year are taxed only because someone else couldn’t get enough income on land grabs.

While reading China Road I decided to go online and find more info about land grabs. I came across this article and was astonished by what I read. I found this article on BBC Beijing. The title was “Chinese woman sets herself alight in ‘land grab’ protest.”

The article opens with a picture of Zhang Shulan burned by the acts she had done to herself. Later on in the article it shows a picture of what she first looked like.She tells her side of the story as she states “When “hired thugs” came to evict her earlier this year she poured petrol over herself and set it alight. I did it because they tore down my house without my permission. I set fire to myself because I didn’t want to live – they forced me – I had no choice, said a tearful Mrs. Zhang. Ordinary people don’t have any rights at all. I feel so upset.” Zhang Shulan fought for what she believed in, and so many people “in her district have similar claims, as have thousands of others across China”. Just like Zhang Shulan she objected and when others object, local officials or hired thugs will force them to leave their land.

The “Party knows that the hundreds of millions of angry peasants is a much more serious problem than a few thousand angry urban intellectuals. By lowering taxes and trying to rein in corrupt local officials, the Party is doing everything that it can to prevent the same kind of rural revolution that once led.” They really aren’t doing everything they can. They are still finding other ways to charge them, for example school and health care. They will always find a way to do something that will be detrimental to these farmers. Whether it’s building on their land, taxing, silencing them with money or even making them pay extra for health care and school.