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sundawu5 孙大午
"He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller becomes a small man" Mencius
The Latin Americanization of China
George J. Gilboy and Eric Heginbothain
Council on Foreign Relations, September 2004
China's rural areas ar now in deep crisis with sluggish income growth, peasants burdened by excessive taxes and fees and local governments overstaffed, in debt, and unable to provide adequate services for peasant families.
http://www.cfr.org/pdf/gilboyhegin.pdf
Exposure of poverty in China shames regime
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
(Filed: 25/02/2004)
An exposure of the sufferings of the nearly one billion peasant farmers in China has rocketed into the country's best-seller lists, apparently forcing the regime to address the issue.
A new survey has drawn attention to the suffering of peasant farmers in China
Chinese Peasantry: a Survey discloses the poverty and corruption affecting the rural majority of 900 million, whose exploitation underlies the gloss of China's perceived urban economic miracle.
It describes farmers being beaten to death for complaining about embezzlement, officials conniving to hoodwink Communist Party leaders about production levels, and a tax system which forces the poor in effect to subsidise the rich minority. It helps to explain the exodus of workers from farms to low-paid, often dangerous jobs in the booming coastal provinces or Europe and America.
China: Foreign Lending Soar Amid Cash Crunch at Home
August 08, 2003
In June, Sun Dawu, one of China's leading entrepreneurs, was arrested for trying to establish an independent credit cooperative as an alternative to state-controlled banks. Sun publicly criticized Beijing for neglecting rural development and he railed against state-owned banks for moving funds--largely made up of China's 800 million rural resident's personal savings--into urban projects.
Sun's case raised a critical issue. He suggested that if Chinese citizens do not approve of Beijing's fiscal policy, they could influence the government by withdrawing their funds from the state banks, a move that could have dire consequences for the government if it were to become the impetus for a run on the banks.
Beijing's decision to allow state banks to lend large amounts abroad risks angering large swathes of the population, and they might be inclined to do something about it.
China struggling with acute issues today
Zhang Kai, April 06, 2003
Wang Xuchao, President of the China Poverty Alleviation Fund, said that there are still around 30 million people in China's countryside who are below subsistence level, and about 60 million at the subsistence level. There are 14.59 million people in absolute poverty, with an annual income below 500 yuan. There are 90.33 million in poverty, with an annual income below 1,000 yuan. Those with an income between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan are 310.79 million.7 They amount to about half of the agricultural population.
At the National Political Consultative Committee, Chen Mingde, Deputy President of the China Democratic State Building Society, said that over half of China's population had an income below 2,000 yuan, and the rich-poor disparity has exceeded the international caution line.
The central government recognized that the burden on peasants had to be alleviated, and had issued decrees to reduce tariffs on peasants. In over 20 provinces, a reform turning fees into taxes has been experimented. There have been reports of local governments finding ways to bypass decrees of central governments. The different levels of the bureaucracy are still very much an obstacle to peasants improving their lives. Sun Dawu, Director of Dawu Farming and Animal Husbandry Group in Hebei Province, pointed out that a peasant intending to legally sell boiled eggs would have to go through over 40 procedures. The compartmentalized interests of different state departments and the excessive powers held by the local rural power mechanisms made it difficult for peasants to increase their income and for the countryside to develop.
http://www.stratfor.com/corp/Corporate.neo?storyid=220948China
China's Business Leaders: Assuming a Political Role
A principal reason that business people want more change is their treatment at the hands of the state, particularly local officials. Take, for example, the case of Sun Dawu, a rural entrepreneur in the north China province of Hebei, as reported in August 2003 by The New York Times. Sun came from a farming family and worked early on in the Agricultural Bank of China. In 1985, he set out on his own and crated a business that leased idle land and then used it for raising pigs and chickens. The company subsequently diversified into food processing, cattle breeding and grape growing. For his success. Sun was rewarded with a seat in the local people's congress, a fairly powerless body. But he faced continuing obstacles in securing financing for his ventures. The state banks would not lend to him, preferring larger, state-owned firms or private entrepreneurs who would "encourage" loans by offering favours to bank officers.
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cnaps/papers/survey2004/7china2.pdf
Richard C. Bush
Freedom of Speech
Yu Jie, May 17, 2004
The recent Sun Dawu web dissident case gives an example of the power of web opinion. Traditional conservative media such as Central Television were forbidden to report on this case. Most likely if it were not for pressure from web opinion, Sun would have been dealt with much more severely.
http://www.chinaherald.net/2004/05/internet-freedom-of-speech-yu-jie.html
Chinese Farm Reform: Something Revolutionary This Way Comes?
January 06, 2004, Jay Chen, Silicon Investor
The second, and even more surprising, event is the rehabilitation of Chinese tycoon and self-appointed champion of the peasant, Sun Dawu. Sun was arrested after publishing essays critical of government policies and state-controlled banks and for establishing an unauthorized independent credit cooperative for farmers. The outspoken businessman committed two venal sins in China: First, he openly criticized the government, and by extension the Party; and, second, he encouraged Chinese farmers to withdraw their money from state-controlled banks if they did not like the way the government loaned money -- an idea that strikes a chord with the farmers who seethe at the thought that the vast majority of the loans from China's Big Four commercial banks go to unproductive state-owned enterprises, while they find it difficult borrow anything.
Not long ago, Sun would have received a one-way ticket to a re-education camp in a barren part of China, but he got off with little more than a sharp slap on the wrist, heavy fines and a three-year suspended sentence for "causing disorder in the local financial sector." Sun's favorable treatment indicates a couple of things: First, he is well-connected, and that is what likely saved his skin. But more importantly, his commuted sentence reveals that -- in the eyes of Beijing -- the entrepreneur's charges against the state were correct.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:h-iooOSgluIJ:www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp%3Fmsgid%3D19661705+sun+dawu+Stratfor+2004&hl=en&start=5
Gatekeeper State:
Gatekeeper State: Limited Economic Reforms and Regime Survival in Cuba 1989-2002
Javier Corrales, September 2003
In 2001, Chinese president Jiang Zemin called for the ruling party to accept nontraditional classes, including private businessmen (Stratfor 2001), and joined the World Trade Organization, which requires China to improve property rights and ease restrictions on investment (ADB 2002). Simultaneously, the Chinese government continues to subsidize the inefficient state sector as a way to protect labor from the adversities of market competition. The Chinese state is still prepared to repress economic winners who express dissent. But its main strategy of self-perpetuation consists of generating large numbers of new winners, hoping that some of them become new allies, and that some losers remain appreciative of state protections. In June 2003, for instance, the state penalized the Dawu Group, one of China's largest private companies, by confiscating assets, freezing its bank accounts, and arresting its wealthy founder, Sun Dawu, for publicly opposing Beijing's policies (Stratfor 2003).
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:vrL5Tp-XyNsJ:www.amherst.edu/~jcorrale/The%2520Gatekeeper%2520State%25203.pdf+sun+dawu+Stratfor+2002&hl=en&start=4
A Thorn in China's Side, July 28, 2003
It's almost impossible to operate within the law in China. Anything local officials choose to permit is permitted--until it isn't...
Still, Yang's troubles are a vivid reminder of a key problem plaguing China: Beijing really doesn't know what to do with its entrepreneurs. lt's almost impossible for the owners of sizable private businesses to operate altogether within the law in China. Restrictive company laws, a dysfunctional tax system, and a government shrouded in corruption and secrecy all conspire against the development of an entrepreneurial culture that can fuel the growth the country's economy so badly needs.
This isn't anything new. Hong Kong Securities & Futures Commission Chairman Andrew Sheng, the territory's top securities cop, thinks China lost its economic momentum three centuries ago "because private-sector property rights were never defined by civil law." Today, legal changes are slowly being put in place to ensure that entrepreneurs are not discriminated against. Yet there have been a series of high-profile arrests of businessmen. Two months ago, authorities took into custody Zhou Zhengyi, the head of Shanghai Land Holdings, one of the city's largest property developers. And Sun Dawu, founder and head of one of China's biggest agricultural companies, has been held by authorities in Hebei Province since May on charges of running an illegal bank. ...
Without making judgments about these cases, it's clear that in China's convoluted and restrictive system, business owners often are forced to make illegal compromises with local officials to stay in business. These officials also want to generate jobs and economic growth in order to get promoted. That means anything goes -- as long as growth is high and tax revenues flow in. "If you are a good tax-paying company, the local government will tell you anything you want to do is O.K.," says Marcia L. Ellis, a lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in Hong Kong.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:-uqJpxdjFPoJ:www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_30/b3843133_mz033.htm+sun+dawu&hl=en
银行改革 不希望出现第二个孙大午
December 18, 2003
American scholars once conducted research to China's non- regular financial question, discovered through the on-the-spot investigation and the real diagnosis analysis: First, economical backwardness area nothing but regular finance; Second, the collective economy developed area (for example Quanzhou), the collective enterprise can obtain the bank loan support, but the privately operated enterprise mainly depends upon the non-regular finance; Third, the private sector develops in an earlier area (for example Wenzhou), to the non-regular financial comparison tolerance, it also got up in the economical development the positive role; Fourth, a state-owned enterprise reform duty heavier area (for example Zhengzhou), the non-regular finance is restricted, mainly through bank support state-owned enterprise. Therefore, "In Zhejiang cannot appear Sun Da noon" this view has the certain basis.
Links verified December 21, 2006
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Sun Dawu 孙大午 : Philosopher (homepage)
On Interpreting the Three Agricultures (1)
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