China's farmers nostalgic for Mao's vision
Updated
China is celebrating the 60th anniversary of Communist rule with a parade and pageant to highlight the country's boom since the 1980s.
But the opening up of China to outside markets and widespread privatisation of many industries has left some old communists - including farmers - despairing that the vision of Mao Zedong has been lost forever.
Presenter: Stephen McDonell
Speakers: Mao Zedong; Li Cheng-Rui, former guerilla and Communist Party official; Xing Yanjun, farmer
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STEPHEN MCDONELL: On the 1st of October 1949 Mao Zedong walked onto the Gate of Heavenly Peace and claimed victory in the civil war by naming a new country.
(Archival audio of Mao Zedong speaking)
"The Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China is founded today," he said.
Eighty-seven year old Li Cheng-rui was there for the announcement.
LI CHENG-RUI (translated): From the bottom of my heart I felt very excited. The workers, the peasants and the working intellectuals became the real masters of the country.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: From the age of 15, Li had been a guerrilla fighting against the Japanese. After becoming a communist official, he entered Beijing in 1949 with the first troops of the People's Liberation Army.
LI CHENG-RUI (translated): When I first arrived in the city, to use an old Chinese saying "misery and suffering greeted the eyes everywhere". Social order was a mess, prices were unstable and people's lives were extremely hard.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: He had great hope then in what the Communist Party would deliver but now thinks the country has lost its way.
LI CHENG-RUI (translated): These days officials collude with business people, deals are done between power and money. This has greatly damaged the base of the people's government.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: I asked if Chairman Mao came back now, would he like present-day China?
LI CHENG-RUI (translated): I can definitely tell you what he'd say - those in power have taken the capitalist path.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: In 2009 most Chinese people still don't live in big cities. They're from the many towns and villages which are dotted around the country. So in any assessment of the performance of the Communist Party after six decades in power, the living standards of rural people are crucial.
XING YANJUN (translated): In my parents time they didn't have enough to eat or wear. Nowadays we not only have enough food to eat but also enough to sell.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Xing Yanjun has an orchard two hours outside Beijing. He says the lives of poor farmers get better every year, especially after the recent abolition of agriculture taxes. But he says there's one key area in which they're lagging behind.
XING YANJUN (translated): If we go to any big hospital it would cost us hundreds of thousands of Yuan. Peasants wouldn't have this level of savings. People save money their whole lives and then if they're really sick all their savings will be gone.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: I asked if it was fair that rich people don't have this problem. He thought this was funny question.
XING YANJUN (translated): (Laughs) Whether it's fair or unfair, some people have the ability to make more money. We don't have any choice.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Modern Beijing could fit in pretty much anywhere in the Western world but tomorrow's mass military parade and communist pageant will be like an enormous blast from the past - the first such spectacle seen in 10 years. Both rural reforms and the opening of China to world markets will be big themes in the parade, along with the Beijing Olympics, China's space program and high tech weaponry - a new image for China, old fashioned way of delivering it.
