Via Howard French’s Glimpse of the World site, I read this Economist article about land ownership in rural China. The problem is that, although peasants have their own allocated patch of land which they can farm as they like, ownership still lies with the government – and local party elites are using this push, intimidate, cheat or otherwise drive the peasants off the land in order to sell the usage rights to developers. Of course, the party officials make big profits.
I’ve mentioned this before as being an issue for China’s development. However, it came close to home the other day, when I had dinner with a Chinese guy I’ve known for a couple of years. This budding entrepreneur has a plan: to plant timber to fuel China’s booming construction. In itself, it seems a good idea – it might even be good for the environment, as China is at present importing huge amounts of wood from ASEAN countries, which is speeding up the destruction of tropical forests. So, developing China’s indigeneous timber industry could be a sound investment.
The fly in the honeypot for me was: where is the land going to come from? My friend was confident: no problem, he had good connections with local government officials, and they can get land from the peasants very cheap, he said, very cheap. I can’t help but wonder how that would happen. The other thing that bothered me was that the land would only be on a thirty-year lease, long enough to get three timber harvests, and then the land would be “returned to agriculture”. Again, I wonder… I’ve seen cleared forestry areas in Wales, and I don’t think it’s so easy to just start farming again. My friend certainly didn’t seem to have made any budget allowance for restoring the land to its original condition.
In the end, I could only say that I felt it was certainly an interesting plan, and I suspect that he will indeed make a lot of money. I felt that he was telling me all about it because he’s looking for foreign investment, and felt I might be able to help – but he was looking for US$5 million, so I was of no help at all!
All part of the great Chinese drive to get rich quick…
