Guidi Chen Knihy

The Chinese economic miracle is happening despite, not because of, China's 900 million peasants. They are missing from the portraits of booming Shanghai, or Beijing. Many of China's underclass live under a feudalistic system unchanged since the fifteenth century. They are truly the voiceless in modern China. They are also, perhaps, the reason that China will not be able to make the great social and economic leap forward, because if it is to leap it must carry the 900 million with it. Chinese journalists Wu Chuntao and Chen Guidi returned to Wu's home province of Anhui, one of China's poorest, to undertake a three-year survey of what had happened to the peasants there, asking the question: Have the peasants been betrayed by the revolution undertaken in their name by Mao and his successors? The result is a brilliant narrative of life among the 900 million, and a vivid portrait of the petty dictators that run China's villages and counties and the consequences of their bullying despotism on the people they administer. Told principally through four dramatic narratives of paricular Anhui people, Will the Boat Sink the Water? gives voice to the unheard masses and looks beneath the gloss of the new China to find the truth of daily life for its vast population of rural poor.

Die chinesische Wirtschaft verzeichnet zweistellige Zuwachsraten, und die Volksrepublik gilt als riesiger Zukunftsmarkt für Europäer. Doch abseits der Megastädte leben über sechzig Prozent der Bevölkerung in extremer Armut: 900 Millionen Bauern, Land- und Wanderarbeiter. Auf dem Land herrschen Despotie und Willkür. Die Bauern sind mit erdrückenden Steuern belastet, die der industriellen Entwicklung und dem Wohlstand der Ostküstenmetropolen zugutekommen. Diese Kluft ist so groß, dass selbst die Bewohner von Peking und Shanghai kaum etwas über die Lebensbedingungen der Landbevölkerung wissen. Das Schriftsteller-Ehepaar Wu Chuntao und Chen Guidi, selbst vom Land stammend, entschloss sich, die Situation der Landbevölkerung zu dokumentieren. Sie reisten in die Provinz Anhui und fanden erschütternde Zustände vor. Über Monate hielten sie sich in den Dörfern auf, rekonstruierten minutiös die Korruption und Gewalt, die die Bauern erleiden mussten. Die Berichte zeigen grausame Realität: Ein junger Bauer wird wegen einer Steuerprüfung ermordet, während ein Dorfvorsteher vier gewählte Vertreter brutal hinrichtet. In einem anderen Dorf werden 52 Bewohner von Polizisten verschleppt, weil sie gegen die Steuerforderungen protestiert hatten. Die Reportage wurde in China schnell zum Bestseller, doch die Zensurbehörde griff ein, und das Buch kursiert mittlerweile millionenfach als Raubkopie.

The Chinese economic miracle is happening despite, not because of, China's 900 million peasants. They are missing from the portraits of booming Shanghai or Beijing. Many of China's underclass live under a feudalistic system unchanged since the fifteenth century. They are truly the voiceless in modern China. They are also, perhaps, the reason that China will not be able to make the great social and economic leap forward, because if it is to leap it must carry the 900 million with it. Chinese journalists Wu Chuntao and Chen Guidi returned to Wu's home province of Anhui, one of China's poorest, to undertake a three-year survey of what had happened to the peasants there, by asking the question: have the peasants been betrayed by the revolution undertaken in their name by Mao and his successors? The result is a brilliant narrative of life among the 900 million, and a vivid portrait of the petty dictators that run China's villages and counties and the consequences of their bullying despotism on the people they administer. Told principally through four dramatic narratives of particular Anhui people, Will the Boat Sink the Water? gives voice to the unheard masses and looks beneath the gloss of the new China to find the truth of daily life for its vast population of rural poor