Xi Jinping has a peasant soul The essence of China lies in the countryside

The reformers warn, too, that China is becoming too reliant on America. And while still self-sufficient in grain crops, it is struggling to satisfy a growing appetite for meat which it currently imports in large quantities from America and Brazil. So in order to wean itself off American cattle, something which may become even more urgent with the advent of Trump 2.0, China will have to disinherit its peasantry and embrace the factory farm.

While tempted by the vision of agricultural self-sufficiency, President Xi Jinping is loath to do this. On a practical level, China’s political elites see the bountiful countryside as a social safety net during times of economic hardship. China doesn’t have a government-managed welfare system; faint gestures, such as the 医保 healthcare system, are still in their infancy. So the fact that the poor know how to grow their own food and have the land to do so is hugely important. It also provides a useful safety net in case of emergencies. During the Covid lockdowns, many of the migrant workers who keep Chinese cities running returned to their rural hometowns, planted cabbage and lived off their land. Had that land been sold, they might have starved instead.

China’s top brass also fear that if rural villagers were able to sell their land, they would be targeted by predatory corporate interests in league with corrupt local governments. This is exactly what happened in Russia during the Nineties, when citizens of the former USSR were given vouchers representing their share of the collective economy as it was privatised. Many of them immediately sold these vouchers to cowboys for cash, and drank it the same afternoon. Out of such misery, the oligarchic fortunes of Roman Abramovich and his cronies bloomed.

In any case, the CCP is terrified at the thought of swarms of disinherited peasants destabilising the urban outskirts. The hukou system currently keeps the 300 million peasants working in the cities in their place. These migratory workers are treated as second-class citizens and only residents are given priority access to local schools and hospitals. Eliminate this pecking order and Chinese public services will be overwhelmed.

But there’s another reason that Xi is hesitant to abandon the peasantry. Like the majority of Chinese leaders, he was sent to the countryside as a teenager during Mao’s Cultural Revolution — and still harbours deep admiration for the soul of the Chinese peasantry. At the age of 15, Xi was sent down to a village in northern Shaanxi, a poor and barren region, where locals live in caves. At first, by all accounts, he found it difficult to adapt to this troglodytic way of life. But it soon toughened him up. According to official propaganda, which is no doubt embellished, he built methane tanks, and dams to protect villagers from flooding. To this day, Xi credits his time in Shaanxi for teaching him what life was really about; happiness comes from struggle, he says, as he urges today’s young Chinese to do the same.

These feelings are echoed by the wider CCP leadership. For China’s elites, abandoning the countryside to robots and drones would be a sociocultural tragedy. Some respected theorists, including Wen Tiejun, believe that if the CCP betrays the peasantry, it is making itself vulnerable, as city dwellers aren’t nearly as loyal as the villagers. For Wen, the villagers preserve the true spirit of China, while the essence of the West has seeped into the corrupt cities. He has a point: the process of urbanisation is inevitably a process of social atomisation. In a city, it is every man for himself. Yet the CCP desires the opposite: for every man to be united in a shared effort, and it is villages, not cities, which produce men like that.

In 2006, former president Hu Jintao said that: “The countryside is the cradle of the Chinese nation, agriculture is the foundation of the national economy, and farmers are our bread and butter. If we lose these three, we will also lose the foundation of our nation.” Like Xi, Hu Jintao comes from a generation of elderly Chinese policymakers who once tasted rural life. They still prefer the austerity foods of their youth and many retire to the countryside in later life. These men often have an instinctual, conservative contempt for cities, and hold a near religious reverence for the ancient traditions of the villages.

So after decades of facing outwards, China’s elites are now turning inwards. Xi’s recent drive to protect Chinese ecology is a case in point: in the Qinling mountains of Shaanxi, he has ordered the demolition of villas and hotels three separate times. It has become one of his signature policies, deeply intertwined with nationalist ideas and anti-corruption campaigns. For Xi realises that while urbanites have no connection to the land, its past, or to each other, the peasantry keeps the idea of China alive. For as long as there are people tilling the fields and speaking in dialects, China will never forget who she truly is.