Will the Boat Sink the Water
The State of the Chinese Peasants ( Chinese "中国 农民 调查", Pinyin Zhōngguó nongmin Diaocha ) is one of Chen Guidi (Chinese陈桂棣, Pinyin Chén Guidi, born 1963 in Anhui Province ) and his wife Wu Chuntao (Chinese吴 春桃, Pinyin Wú Chuntao ) authored study on the situation of the farmers in the People's Republic of China.
Authors
Chen Guidi, son of a peasant family, and his wife Wu are both members of the Writers' Association of Hefei, her home in Anhui. Chen Guidi is also a member of the Chinese Writers' Association and has received the Lu Xun Literature Achievement Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in China, for his report on the environmental conditions on the river Huai He.
Formation
The idea for a report on the situation of China's rural population, the two had discussed more than ten years. Rash at the start was the birth of her son; at that time they observed the death of a mother and her child who had to die because the mother had no money for medical treatment.
As of 2001, the pair of authors researched for over three years and conducted interviews with farmers in 50 cities of rural Anhui province. They made exploitation of the rural population determined by a variety of taxes, fees and by charging excessive prices as a state system, exacerbated by enrichment and discharge elevation of local cadres, where there is neither legal nor social protection. Design in the report a bleak picture of the situation of the approximately one billion people of China's rural population.
In the preface the authors write: "We observed unimaginable poverty and unthinkable evil, we saw unimaginable misery and helplessness unthinkable, unimaginable resistance in an incomparable silence, and we were faced with incredible tragedies beyond our imagination ... ".
But the statistics of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China have 93 charges, funds and reserves of 24 authorities that have to do with farming loads. In the regions, there are up to 293 loads - this excessive prices for deliveries are not yet registered.
There are plenty of theft, embezzlement, breach of trust, and levy arrogance of corrupt and criminal officials. These officials maintain their exploitative regime with an iron violence. Among the many examples of the book include a process by which a corrupt vice headman four farmers who were chosen by their village in order to complain about him, made in front of everyone split the skull. Witnesses and accusers are partially beaten to death, often with the help of the police.
Effect story
In literary magazine Dangdai ( Modern Magazine ) was published in late 2003 an advance copy of the text. It was sold in a short time in ten editions over 100,000 times. Extracts in German published in the German magazine Lettre International, 2004.
The book, which appeared in China in January 2004, has quickly sold 300,000 times. After the two authors had been interviewed in over a hundred and fifty days, the book was banned in March 2004. Since then, however, more than 8 million copies have been published as pirated editions.
2004 got the pair of authors for the book which is endowed with 50,000 euros Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage world ( Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage ).
In March 2005 they were sentenced to a heavy fine, for allegedly slandering the high Party official Zhang Xide in her book. The sentence was fought before the Fuyang Court, where the son of the functionary is judge. The opinion of Zhang Xide:
In March 2006, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel was on her first visit to China a reception for the couple.
Comments on the book
" For months, the reporter Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao have resided in the villages of the Chinese peasants, minute by minute, document by document reconstructed forth with radical righteousness, what corruption, mafia involvement, murder have served in a large kingdom for whose liberation of arbitrariness in the great revolution, millions died. "
Swell
- Richard Ingersoll heart: In the depths of progress, in: World on Sunday, 1 October 2006 p 86
- Http://www.time.com/time/asia/2005/heroes/chen_wu.html
- Http://www.lettre-ulysses-award.org/authors04/chen_wu.html