A close look at Chinese poverty

By Daniel Gross

Teng, who didn’t complete primary school, earns 70 renminbi (about $12 per day) working at a brick factory in Luan, a nearby city. His marriage prospects are poor, because he doesn’t earn much money. And he can’t leave for a higher-paying job on the coast because he must take care of his parents.

To reach this village in the Qinling Mountains, you drive 90 minutes outside bustling Xi’an on a deserted toll road. In China, the infrastructure frequently precedes the traffic. Turning off the highway, you climb into the mountains on a well-paved road that climbs around gorges, past a shallow, rushing river where water spills rapidly over large boulders, past a temple complex nestled in a small valley. The small bus beeped loudly every time it rounded a switchback. After 45 minutes, we pulled off the main road into the village — about 40 yards of paved road flanked by a couple dozen buildings with terra cotta roof tiles, and braids of drying corn nailed to the wall.

Here, 28 families scratch out a meager existence. The children have left for schools in larger towns, and the able-bodied who can seek work in the cities. The rest go into the mountains to gather herbs, grow some soybeans and corn, or subsist on extremely meager pensions of about80 renminbi ($15) per month.

Here’s some breaking news for the China bulls: Despite the gleaming towers of Shanghai, the monumental glass-and-steel sprawl of Beijing, the massive airports and high-speed rail networks, this is a very poor country. The urban China of bourgeois living, brand names and chic restaurants is real and growing. But the denizens of modern China are only 20 years removed from the poverty of Ta Ping. And a huge chunk of the country remains trapped in it.

“China is in the process of developing from a poor country to a rich country,” says Wen Hai, a senior professor of economics at Beijing University. “On the one hand you have the people on the coasts, and then you see the backwater.”