Daniel Meltzer reads from Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China’s Peasants by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao at the 2009 Human Rights Book Fair.

This Lettre Ulysses Award-winning book by journalists Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao was initially published in China in January 2004, but banned two months later. Will the Boat Sink the Water? is an expose of the plight of China’s peasants who are left behind by the era of tremendous economic growth. Traveling to 50 villages in Anhui Province, they uncovered rampant corruption among local, county, and provincial officials who fattened their own pockets while imposing crippling taxes on the peasants.

From Will the Boat Sink the Water?

“It’s Fine to Have a Policy, But Who Will Carry It Out?”

China’s reform was first tried out in rural Anhui, and many top people emerged through that great experiment—people who were familiar with rural conditions, cared for the peasants, and were not afraid to speak their minds.

Lu Zixiu was such a person. During the late seventies, he distinguished himself by promoting so-called “household contracts,” one of the important aspects of the economic reform being tried out in rural Anhui. When we met him on a June day in 2001, he had already retired from his position as deputy chair of the Anhui People’s Congress, but had never stopped concerning himself with rural issues.

Lu described for us a meeting that he had once attended. The Anhui provincial leadership had called the meeting of provincial and prefectural Party leaders, and the topic of the day was an overview of how the Central Committee’s directives about relieving the peasants’ burden had been implemented throughout the province. At the meeting, some of the attendees started to air their own tales of woe, the difficulties they were encountering in their domains. Lu did not like what he was hearing; he was very familiar with these municipal and prefecture leaders and had no scruples about giving them a tongue lashing.

Since the meeting was held in Fuyang Prefecture, Lu Zixiu started with the Party secretary of the prefecture. Calling him unceremoniously by name, he launched his interrogation aggressively: “You there, Wang Huaizhong, you answer only to your provincial superiors sitting over there, hey? You don’t answer to the peasants? You don’t give a damn how they can manage to support your fancy projects? You set yourself up to create a ‘dairy’ county, but all your ‘dairy farms’ are lined along the highways for show! At one of your ‘on-site’ meetings, you rent cows at great expense to make an impression! Is this how you spend the peasants’ hard-earned pennies?”

Before the man could respond, Lu turned to the party secretary of Chuzhou Prefecture: “And you, Zhang Chunsheng, how do you handle your subordinates? Tell us, how do you evaluate performances? Those bullies who extort payments and force peasants into committing suicide, you just move them to another cushy spot, hey, so long as they can come up with the dough!”

Next he asked the Party secretary of Bengbu: “And you, Fang Yiben, Huaiyuan County is under your jurisdiction. Accusations and complaints are piling up by the day.… Have you done anything about it? Are you trying to win the championship for highest volume of peasants’ complaints?

Then he pointed a finger at the Party secretary of Chaohu Prefecture: “You, Hu Jiduo, do you mean to say that you can’t pave a highway without screwing the peasants? That highway should be paid for by the state! But you don’t give a damn for the highway. You are paving credit for yourself, for the eyes of your bosses! Am I right?”

According to Lu’s account to us, he made a round of all of the officials at the meeting and ended by saying: “I’d like to address this to our comrades: we see the high-rises, but do we care who built them? We see the highways, but do we know who paved them? Right now with the reform, the peasants are just beginning to see a turnaround in their lives. But we can’t wait to pounce on them to empty their pockets! Give them a break, for heaven’s sake!” He recalled the early years of rural reform: “During the ‘household-contract’ movement, the working principle was ‘pay the state in full, reserve what is necessary for the collective, and the rest is yours to keep.’ And it worked! Now, however, all the advantages of the contract system are slipping away, quietly stolen from the peasants by government taxes at every level. The peasants have no rights at all. You can do whatever you like with them. Why don’t we try to look at things from the peasants’ point of view?”

The Party secretary of Liu-An Prefecture put in a word: “At least we don’t have a problem with excessive taxes—” Before the words were out of his mouth, Lu Zixiu cut him short: “Don’t talk to me about your taxes—I have a bunch of letters on my desk! Your peasants have barely planted a tree in the ground before your local cadres knock on their doors for taxes on the produce!” The complacent Party secretary was effectively shut up.

During a break, the provincial Party secretary, who was chairing the meeting, came up to Lu Zixiu and said to him privately, “Well done, well done—”

“Well done my ass,” Lu retorted. “Why don’t you say that openly? I am your hit man, I do it with my eyes open, and that’s that!”

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