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"Its really hard for all those who are not farmers and do not
live in the countryside to come to understand what farmers' heavy
burden was and what agriculture tax meant to farmers," said Shen
Jilan, 75, a solely woman deputy who had been to the top
legislature for consecutive ten annual sessions.
??
The senior villager-turned deputy to the National People's
Congress (NPC) sessions, who has worked for the half past century
for her co-farmers, hailed on Sunday the Chinese government's
decision on the steady reduction of agricultural tax and its
eventual abolishment in five years.
??
Shen is a very popular public farmer figure well-known in the
country. Her first attendance to the NPC session was back in 1954
as an illiterate farmer picked by locality from an outlying hard-up
village in north China's Shanxi province. She then rode to Beijing,
the national capital, on the back of a donkey.
??
After over five decades of learning and sustained, painstaking
practice, she is now able to read newspapers, speak as any other
lawmakers on behalf of farmers, and lobby for their rights and
interests in the capacity of an NPC deputy.
??
"Because I've never left my home village and farming, I know
very clearly how my fellow farmers felt," said the veteran deputy
who supports herself and her mother-in-law by tilling a tiny plot
of land with an acreage of one-fifteenth hectare.
??
With a high sense of responsibility, Shen tabled three motions
to the current NPC session, appealing to the government to increase
investment for agriculture, build more roads in rural areas, and
pay still greater attention to education in the countryside.
??
Unlike the senior woman farmer, Gao Dekang, an astute farmer
deputy from China's largest manufacturer of down-padded anorak from
east China's Jiangsu Province, viewed the issue pertaining to
agriculture, rural areas and farmers from a different approach. The
fundamental way out for farmers hinges on their self-reliant
effort, vigorous growth of rural economy and solution to the shift
of rural labor force to other economic sectors, he explained.
At the current NPC session, Gao handed over a motion to suggest
the government prop up the use of biological wastes from livestock
farms, in compliance with a scientific concept of development
advocated by of the Chinese central leadership.
Gao, a noted middle-age farmer entrepreneur in the prime of
life, has experimented with building an eco-friendly "new-type
village”. For the past few years, he spent approximately 100
million yuan (nearly US$12 million) to build his home village,
Shanjing Village, into an environment-friendly, model "Kangbo
village", in which more than 400 folk households have moved into
new villa houses furbished with public utilities out of complete
environmental and biological concerns.
??
"The problems and difficulties in rural areas cannot be resolved
overnight unless villagers obtain equal rights with urbanites,"
said Gao. He called for utmost efforts to develop rural economy in
varied forms and transferring the excessive rural labor forces into
village-based industries.
??
Shen and Gao are not the only legislators lobbying for the
rights and interests of the rural population. While surfing on the
NPC webpage, one can often find that quite a large number of
motions and proposals are focused on the issues regarding
agriculture, rural areas and farmers.
??
To investigate into a host of problems in the countryside, quite
a few lawmakers have traveled extensively, on their own costs, to
solicit complaints in preparation of bills based on ideas and
opinions from rural villagers.
??
"Chinese farmers are fortunate," said an observer on farmers'
issues, "because a large number of NPC deputies are following them
closely all the time, and lobby on their behalf in legislative and
advisory sessions every year."?
(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2004)
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