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Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants Paperback – April 24, 2007

by Chen Guidi (Author), Wu Chuntao (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
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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 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.
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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    PublicAffairs
  4. Publication date
    April 24, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.65 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1586484419
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1586484415
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A banned book whose publication is compared to a clap of thunder... delves deeply into the rural conundrum that continues to bedevil China's Communist Party leaders"

"Among the most explosive books in recent years."

Banned in China: "A heartbreaking tale of what can happen when ordinary Chinese try to demand justice and accountability from their leaders."

About the Author

Wu Chuntao was born in the Hunan province of China in 1963. Her husband, Chen Guidi, was born in 1943 in the Chinese province of Anhui. Both come from peasant families. Wu and Chen are members and respected writers of the Hefei Literature Association.Mr. Chen received the Lu Xun Literature Achievement Award -- one of the most important literary prizes in China. Both authors have received awards from the journal Contemporary Age for groundbreaking reportage.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ PublicAffairs (April 24, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1586484419
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1586484415
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.65 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
30 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Scott Galer
5.0 out of 5 stars Critical information for the serious China hand
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2007
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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.
16 people found this helpful
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notkeel
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting look into China from the inside
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2021
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I like that it's a banned book
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D White
5.0 out of 5 stars Will the boat sink the water
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2011
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This is an amazing book that sheds light a new light on the economic challenges of the world's most populated country. Very good, insightful and masterfully translated.
One person found this helpful
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Mary Levenson
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2009
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This is an excellent book for anyone who is interested in China as it is evolving today and how things have been for the majority of Chinese for such a long time.
2 people found this helpful
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peter H. calcott
5.0 out of 5 stars An eye opener
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2010
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was recommended by a friend who knows China very well. What aneye opener. Gives you another perspective on the country.
One person found this helpful
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Casey
4.0 out of 5 stars I bought this book a few years ago and I ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2017
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I bought this book a few years ago and I have read it a couple times. I have a lot of empathy towards the peasants in China and this book provides details of life experiences of rural Chinese people and their sacrifices.
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K. M.
5.0 out of 5 stars "The Revolution is a Dinner Party"
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2007
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.
21 people found this helpful
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Adrian
5.0 out of 5 stars A special book which anyone interested in China should read
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2009
There are a lot of so Westerners out there who call themselves "experts" on China, but no Westerner has ever come close to the genuine research of this Chinese husband and wife team. I cant emphasise enough how special this book is. It gives a unique and, unfortunately, depressing view of rural China. While there haven't been real peasants in Europe for centuries, they still exist in China, along with despots. They get threatened, extorted, and even need to set up night watchmen, as if law and order were non existent.

Many urbanite Chinese have done well. But back in the country, it is a different story. This book tells it as it really is. Unsung heroes are tortured, people die trying to do the right thing, and corruption is endemic.

Warning- This is not an uplifting book. My father said it was so sad, he couldnt read more than halfway. I read the whole book, but I struggled for a while, as it was getting too gloomy. But I felt I owed it to the authors, who risking life and limb to research and write this book, to finish it.

This book shows the truth about China, and it helped show me what happens when the freedom of expression that we Westerners all take for granted is not a normal part of society.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Jankowski, Marianne
5.0 out of 5 stars Wll the boat sink the water?
Reviewed in Germany on August 2, 2018
Verified Purchase
One easily jumps to the wrong conclusions, if one relies on the media (TV and papers) alone. If you read these reports, only a few at a time - you simply cannot endure to face the whole horror at once - you look behind the scenes, those sky scrapers, super modern highways and pompous political leaders. They are worlds away from the West and stumbling and halting as our Democracy exasperingly is, we usually manage to avoid the horrors revealed here.
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