Absurdity, Allegory and China

From yesterday’s Xinhua, China earmarks 73 mln USD for rural environment protection we read that the Ministry of Environmental Protection is throwing what seems to be a lot of money into the polluted countryside to deal with environmental issues.

The fund would help save 600 villages out of severe environment problems and award 100 others which play exemplary roles in ecology. The program would directly benefit 4 million people, the ministry said.

The money would be mainly used to address problems of drinking water contamination in rural areas and pollution arising from household livestock raising, and to build polluted water treatment facilities.

The ministry said the money was being distributed to rural areas, which was expected to stimulate another 100 million yuan of local rural environment investment.

This reminds me of a story – one that I happened to be involved in, dating back all of three weeks – of a privately funded water project in the countryside to address this very issue: contaminated water where the villagers had no other choice but to use it. I will not mention where it was, though I will give you a hint: the villagers live in the high mountains of western China and have a long history of dealing with yaks.

In 2002 the local government installed a water system in this area. The source of water is a clean spring beside a stream that often floods in the spring and summer. The money was given and a system was installed, though the work that went into it was subpar – the typical MO: get in, do as little as possible and get out with the cash. When the seasonal floods came the holding tank where the good clean water was collected quickly silted up, and within two years the unprotected system was rendered useless. So, for the locals it was back to hauling water from the polluted stream, a task that fell to the women. A view down the valley at any time of the day always included at least a few women hauling water up the steep hills to their homes, a task for the young and old and usually several times a day. Often these were women too old to herd and young women who should have been in school but were kept home to do the critical chores. In these communities the sexual division of labor dictates that water hauling and fuel gathering is women’s work.

In the two years that the original water system worked the community had good, free water, but, the quality of the work ensured that the system wouldn’t last. After we went in last year and assessed the problem, privately raised the funds to redo the system and worked with the villagers to dig water lines, build wired stone dams to protect the source, rebuild the catch tank so that it would be higher than the highest water of the seasonal floods, redirect the flow of the stream and, with the help of a backhoe, protect the buried water line with the strategic placement of large rocks in the most critical area, 90 households now have running clean water into the walled yards of their houses. A current view down the valley now shows no one hauling water or washing clothes in the polluted stream. All good, right?

Well, two days after the water began running the local government showed up, saw the progress that had been made and decided to take action: everyone would now have to pay a water tax, despite the fact that there had not been one even during the two years when the old system actually worked, and despite the fact that the government had nothing to do with the expensive repair of the broken system. The tax for yearly use of the water is now assessed at 27.3 RMB per household – the local minority primary school was assessed as six (6) households and the local medical clinic was assessed as three (3). So people with very little money – and who had no water prior to our project – now have water but also a yearly bill, payable to someone who, most likely, is not accountable to anyone else.

At first the villagers refused to pay, arguing that the local government had done nothing to help their situation, and to tax them was unjust. The officials told them it was fine if they didn’t pay the tax, though the consequence was that there would be no further development projects that would come to their village. “So, think about it!” The result will be that the villagers will pay, and that someone, most likely, will pocket the money. That’s the way things work around here. There is an unspoken rule of thumb that all development projects have a 40% “skid greasing” fee, money that goes into official pockets. So when I read that the government is distributing money to rural areas I do the math, and then I wonder how much of money will actually get to the projects and the people in need of the very basic services, as well as wondering how much it will end up costing the rural folks in the end. What sounds good on paper (and in the papers) often ends up being just the opposite.

So, when I read articles like the one in Xinhua, I always look for the strategically placed, less direct and very mushy “would.” In the above article there are two: “The program would directly benefit 4 million people, the ministry said,” and “The money would be mainly used to address problems of drinking water contamination in rural areas….” If only it were so. A simple, more confident will would have pulled this off in a more direct, inspiring fashion, though apparently that would also have been entirely too hopeful. Someone’s choosing his/her words very carefully while providing a conveniently placed rabbit hole to hop into. Which reminds me of Mengzi’s (Mencius) exhortation to the poor ruler: “When people die, you say, ‘It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year.’ In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying — “It was not I; it was the weapon?”

Some of these lessons are as old the hills that the women trudge up with their water.