China is abuzz with the phrase "new countryside." It is supposedly a key component of the government's development program for the next five years.

It is of course a good thing that attention is being paid to all the rural problems accumulated since the 1990s, when the only thing that seemed important was to build manufacturing power.

That was a time when investment was concentrated on large projects. Comparing the slogans raised by local officials, in quite a number of cities, with the nation's realities, one saw a laughable lack of common sense, such as to build an inland city into an "international financial center" (a goal even Shanghai has yet to achieve), and a "business corridor" to connect a certain distant part of the world.

The "new countryside," in contrast, reflects no more romanticism of that foolhardy sort. To be sure, on the regional level, development is still to be overseen by the same officials, or by the officials promoted by the ones who used to dream about the grand new cities. The "new countryside" serves as a reminder for them to remember, as they think about building more high-rises, how much remains to be done on the ground floor of the very building where they stay.

One province after another, grand plans are being released for building the "new countryside." In a 38-item plan made by the provincial officials of Anhui, a province in east China, 3.1 billion yuan (US$380 million) has been pledged for related purposes, showing a year-on-year increase of 20 per cent.

However, whether the "new countryside" scheme can really do its job is still to be seen. It will still take several years to decide whether it has really helped residents in the under-developed rural areas share the development generated by the cities. And before any result is achieved, it remains, like the one about building international financial centers in the 1990s, essentially a slogan.

There is one key link to grasp for any development program to avoid becoming just a slogan, however all-round it may seem.

There needs to be a trigger or something that can give rise to a whole train of changes once the thing itself goes through a change.

The trigger for the "new countryside" is rebuilding rural communities. There are around half a million villages and between 50,000 and 60,000 towns in China's countryside. And these villages, by theory, are the most democratic institutions in whole country, because they have direct elections for their village chiefs and villagers' committees.

More importantly, villages have their own historical and sociological roots. Many have had autonomous management for hundreds of years in the past. Under the modern rule of law, and with a moderate amount of mediation (not interference), self-management and development of some common interests can proceed in an orderly way or at least, like under every democracy, people can avoid making big mistakes.

It should not be just a shift in the government's spending focus. Building local hospitals and village schools are all important. But the hospitals and schools will in the end be managed by local communities. If the communities have only weak leadership or weak autonomous resources, there won't be much for the local residents to achieve by themselves, except waiting for continuous feeding of welfare funds by the government.

If that happens, little chance will remain for any development in the true sense of the word. There would be neither village autonomy, nor community-owned assets or welfare. That would be a life of total dependency.

(China Daily March 20, 2006)