One-on-One

My one-on-one class was one of the most challenging classes I took at CET Harbin. This class was the main reason I chose to study in Harbin, as it provided a real opportunity to do research in China, using Chinese language sources and with the support of a mentor. My first mentor, who I really loved, was a reporter in Harbin. Unfortunately, less than a month into the program she had to leave to take care of her mother who was struggling with terminal cancer. For another week the program’s director, Professor Ren, was my mentor until she found another teacher who was able to be my mentor until the end of the program. At first I did not like the new teacher, Professor Liu, as much as my first mentor, but over time we grew to get along really well and I made a lot of progress in the class.

My topic centered on Heilongjiang Province’s agriculture, rural development, and rural environment. I read newspaper articles on erosion and deforestation in Heilongjiang, summaries of changes China’s rural economic policy over the past 40 years, the history of migration to northeast China, corruption in rural areas, displacement, modernization, and the modern rural-urban migration. I studied all of China’s recent changes and challenges – an incredibly broad array of topics – through the narrow lens of their effects on this one province.

Heilongjiang Province is in the northeastern part of China often called Manchuria in the West. The area was sparsely populated until the 1600’s when the Manchus conquered China. They tried unsuccessfully to prevent Han migration into the northeastern part of their empire, but the Han came anyway, fleeing poverty, famine, and political unrest in northern and central China. Some came by foot and others by canoe. The migration continued well into the 20^thcentury. Today, Heilongjiang province, the northernmost part of northeastern China, is home to over forty million people.

Heilongjiang is known for its cold weather and its rich black earth, similar to the rich soils of antebellum Mississippi and the Ukraine. Its rich soil is so fertile that it feeds over 200 million Chinese with one growing season. Unlike other parts of China where the average farming family has less than one acre of land, families in Heilongjiang often have five or ten acres of rich soil. However, in recent years a combination of deforestation and excessive cultivation has caused horrific erosion, threatening a province which 16% of all Chinese rely on for food.

Starting in the late 1970’s, China began a process of de-collectivization of farmland, allowing farmers to work and manage their own plots instead of working on large communes. The process fueled rapid economic growth in the Chinese countryside in the 1980’s. However, excessive taxation, corruption, and policies aimed mostly at urban development caused rural incomes to lag throughout the 1990’s as costs of living increased. Faced with poverty and a lack of opportunities, young men and women began fleeing the countryside by the tens of millions, heading for jobs in the cities. Today, China’s farms are worked mostly by the elderly and children. Despite the new opportunities created by de-collectivization, China’s farmers remain tied to a system in which while they can manage their land, true ownership lies in the hands of the government. In practice, this means that the land is owned by local officials, who since the abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006, have been making their fortunes selling farmland out from underneath disenfranchised farmers to developers, loggers, etc. The trend has displaced tens of millions more, and has caused China’s farmland to come dangerously close to 300 million acres, the “red line” set by the government as the amount of farmland needed to feed China’s people.

In one case I read about, local officials in Heilongjiang in 1996 were inspecting a thousand acres of pristine land up for auction and decided to take the land for themselves, giving the adjacent thousand acres of farmland to the buyers. However, 48 farming families lived and worked on the adjacent land, which soon became the property of a company which later leased the land to a shady figure who wanted to rent the land out to new farmers. In 2006, he showed up and found the land already occupied by hundreds of people. He called the police and the farmers learned for the first time that the land they had grown up on and worked their whole lives had been stolen from them. Instead of the land being returned it to its proper owners and the local officials being put in jail, the farmers were driven from the land by the police, arrested, and put through a sham trial. Some fled the province; others went to jail or into hiding. Many of the youth went to the cities to work as prostitutes and petty thieves. The article was very disturbing, but reading it helped me better understand modern China and its issues.

The class culminated in two very long papers and two presentations, one before spring break and one at the end of the term. I learned a lot about Heilongjiang, vastly improved every aspect of my Chinese, and had a lot of fun working with articles and sources in Chinese.