Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants [Hardcover]

Chen Guidi (Author), Wu Chuntao (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What's most surprising about this exposé of the Chinese government's brutal treatment of the peasantry is not that it was banned in China, but that it got past the censors in the first place. The authors—a husband and wife team who have received major awards—recount how, in the poor province of Anhui, greedy local officials impose illegal taxes on the already impoverished peasantry and cover their tracks through double-bookkeeping. Outraged peasants risk their freedom and sometimes their lives by complaining up the command chain or making the long and costly trip to Beijing, but for the most part the central government's proclamations against excessive taxation don't effectively filter back to the local level. The authors criticize the central government for its own heavy taxation and underrepresentation of the peasantry, though in much more measured tones than they fault the local officials. "Could it be that our system itself is a toxic pool and whoever enters is poisoned by it?" they ask. As Westerners look toward China as the world's next superpower, this book is a reminder that the country's 900 million peasants often get lost in the glitter of Shanghai's Tiffany's. (June)
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From Booklist

China's 900 million peasants continue to toil under a feudalistic system even as the nation enjoys economic prosperity built, in part, at their expense. The authors, husband-and-wife Chinese journalists, spent three years in Wu's home province of Anhui to uncover the poverty of peasants betrayed by Mao's revolution and bullied by petty bureaucrats, their labor exploited and their voices stifled. This expose was banned by the Chinese government, and the journalists were sued for libel by government officials. Drawing on interviews with villagers, the authors offer intimate portraits of the struggles of peasants that read with the ease and familiarity of stories but carry the urgency of news reports of lives about which little has been written. A local peasant who complains of taxing and accounting irregularities that rob the village is killed; peasants resist a corrupt deputy village chief who appropriates their land and public funds. Readers interested in the unseen and unreported lives of Chinese peasants will appreciate this revealing book. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (June 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586483587
• ISBN-13: 978-1586483586
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #891,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Revolution is a Dinner Party", April 3, 2007

By 

K. M. "literary devotee" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (Hardcover)

John Pomfret writes in his introduction to this book that when he was in college in the late 1970s, professors taught that the Chinese Communist Party "truly represented the wishes of China's dispossessed" and one quoted Mao's saying that "A revolution is not a dinner party." Chinese reporters Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao document the plight of the peasants in their country, showing Pomfret and anyone else who dares to read their expose how corruption, excessive taxation, miscarriages of justice, too many layers of bureaucracy, and unchecked industrial pollution oppress and threaten the very existence of China's poorest.

China is no worker's paradise. The rural population is basically an unprivileged underclass -- a class of serfs -- that the government squeezes mercilessly. Despite declarations from the top Chinese Communist rulers that peasants should not be pay more than 5% of their annual income in taxes, 19% is closer to the truth. For a subsistence population, such heavy taxation (often in the form of ill-defined, sometimes illegal, fees and fines) is more than they can bear. Yet, their appeals for relief to various levels of their government generally result only in the status quo retained.

A sizable portion of the book relates journalistic investigations into specific several cases of murder of peasants by village or township officials. The petty officials became enraged to the point of doing or ordering bodily violence against peasants because the fed-up farmers were taking public steps to expose their (the officials') corruption.

Then, the authors cite some of the recent policies of the Chinese central government that have increased the sufferings of the peasants. Examples include increasing the layers of local governance, commanding villages to invest in industrial enterprises that are not sustainable and that force them into mountains of debt, and permitting giant gobs of industrial pollutants to turn black rivers peasants must use for bathing and drinking water.

"Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants" does feature portraits of good, conscientious officials who put the welfare of their villages or regions ahead of their own advancement. But the Chinese Communist system does not ordinarily promote such people. The Party is more interested in keeping the peasants in their place, and it promotes those officials who inflate the agricultural yields and other economic "successes" of their locality and who deliver their assessed taxes in full.

This revealing look at China at the grassroots level should be read by everyone who has read glowing reports of the progressive, sweeping economic and social strides allegedly remaking the most populous nation on earth. There *is* a dinner party going on: the Chinese peasants are being feasted upon by their cadres, village heads, and Party watchdogs.

This English translation of the book now banned in China is very highly recommended.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical information for the serious China hand, January 3, 2007

By 

Scott W. Galer (Rexburg, Idaho) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (Hardcover)

I agree with John Pomfret, who concludes that this is one of the most important books to come out of China in a long time. I am a China specialist who regularly spends time in both urban and impoverished rural areas of China. This book provides excellent anecdotal examples of some of the sacrifices that China is making to modernize. These sacrifices are manifesting themselves in many ways: displaced workers, lost arable land and displaced farmers, corruption, increasing urban-rural income gap, etc. The book was originally published in China under the title _Zhongguo nongmin diaocha_ (An Investigation of Chinese Peasants). The book has since been banned in China. This translation will seem somewhat "foreign" to the non-Chinese speaker, but it is accurate and reflects the original language.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars China's peasants are still suffering., April 8, 2007

By 

Kevin M Quigg (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (Hardcover)

Forget the title, this is an interesting expose on the Chinese peasant. These 900 million people toil in the backwaters of rural China, and were instrumental in getting their country industrialized. They also helped the country sustain itself following the Great Leap Forward (or backward in reality) and the Cultural Revolution. These people spend countless hours in backbreaking labor only to have party cadres unfairly tax them beyond their means. This book by a husband and wife team examines stories about their home province and show the corruption of village and party administration. China may be a coming superpower, but it better solve these problems before the people throw the rascals out.

I found this a very informative read. It starts out slow, but this is an intensely interesting book about the unfair lives led by millions of Chinese peasants and the people that are supposed to protect them-the party and village government hacks.