In Britain people tend to think of the countryside as a rural idyll, a bucolic landscape of green fields and happy folk.

In China, if they can, people try not to think about the countryside at all.

When they do, it is not of a rural idyll, but a grim, dirty place where people are poor and life is harsh.

In Britain the countryside is somewhere to escape to. In China it is somewhere to escape from.

China’s urban population has a strong tendency to look down on country folk. The word for “farmer” in Chinese has a distinctly pejorative flavour.

“Rural people are of a very low quality” is a phrase you often hear in Beijing.

And rural people are not just treated like second class citizens, they are. Almost everything in the countryside is worse than in the cities, according to popular belief.

People say the schools are bad, the teachers awful; there are very few doctors, and hardly any clinics or hospitals; local communist party officials are invariably corrupt, and often abuse their power for personal gain.

In the last decade, two things have happened to make the tension between the city and the countryside worse.

_{Urban shift}

One is that the countryside has begun moving to the city. Between 100 and 150 million Chinese peasants have quit their villages and headed to the cities to look for work.

The second is that the city is moving to the countryside. As China’s urban centres boom they are gobbling up farmland at a voracious rate. A total of 16 million acres (6,475,000 hectares) have gone in the last 20 years.

The tens of millions who have moved to the cities find themselves treated like second class citizens there too. In a system akin to South Africa’s apartheid, people born in rural China find it almost impossible to become full urban residents.

They are denied access to urban housing and to urban schooling for their children. Work is found in factories or on construction sites. Life is a tenuous, hand-to-mouth existence.

Last year the Chinese internet buzzed with the story of a rural migrant from north-west China sentenced to death for a brutal double murder. The man had stabbed his victims to death during a fight at a construction site. The argument began when he went to claim back-wages. It turned out the man had not been paid for two years.

Land grab

The only security these rural migrants enjoy is their piece of land back in their village.

But that too is now under threat.

In China, agricultural land is owned communally. In theory each village owns the land around it. Each family holds its bit of land on a long term lease.

Farmland used to be almost worthless. But as China’s cities expand it is now in high demand.

What happened to the village of Yangge, on the edge of Beijing, is typical.

Yangee sits along a picturesque river 25 km north of the city centre. It is just the sort of area in which Beijing’s wealthy new middle class might like to own a spacious suburban villa.

That is exactly what a Beijing property developer thought. He paid several million dollars to acquire the land from the local township government. The villagers were never consulted, and they saw none of the money. Now, less than 100m from the village, rows of huge new American-style homes are rising out of the fields. A thousand are to be built. The asking price – close to $1m each.

All over China land disputes like this are turning violent.

Last year three people were shot dead by police in southern Guangdong province during a violent protest against another land seizure. Villagers said the number killed was closer to 20.

This week Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao promised to bring prosperity to China’s countryside. But without fundamental change in the way China works, its 700 million peasant farmers will remain second class citizens.

Appendix

NEWS AND FEATURE STORIES

A NEWS STORY is an article aimed to describe an event that has recently happened (breaking news). Influencing the reader is secondary. Usually there’s no message (the main or important idea that the author is trying to tell the reader about) in such stories.

News stories usually have straightforward “sentence headlines” briefly summarizing their content.

The opening paragraph of a news story summarizes its content. It is called the lead and generally contains the most important facts of the story. The lead answers the questions who, what, when, where, why and how. If it answers all the five W’s and H it is called the classical AP* lead. The modern lead contains the what and the when, abbreviates the who, where and how, and omits the why altogether. Because the modern lead does not try to tell everything at once, some elements must be left until later.

The body of a news story contains details on the information given in the lead. These subordinate facts are arranged in the order of decreasing importance (the inverted pyramid form). Thus a news story ends with less important information (even if it is more interesting).

A FEATURE STORY is an article aimed to explain events covered in the news, analyze what is happening in the world, nation or community, teach an audience how to do something, suggest better ways to live, examine trends, entertain. Thus its main purpose is to influence the reader by educating, entertaining, etc. The main or most important idea that the author is trying to tell the reader about in a feature story is called the message.

Feature stories tend to have teasing headlines offering a hint of what the story is about, teasing readers with cleverly worded information.

The lead of a feature story consists of one or two paragraphs that set the scene and/or the mood and may contain a startling statement. Its purpose is to hook (draw) the reader into the story.

A feature story is like a piece of short fiction. Often the story begins with some details and ends with the climax of the material, just the opposite of straight news account. Its body usually consists of quotes (direct quotes, indirect quotes or a paraphrase of what the source said) and transitions between them (the quote /transition model) and includes the thread of the story (a single person, an event or a thing, usually highlighting the theme) and the voice of the author used to inject color, tone, and subtle emotional commentary into the story.

A feature story ends with a conclusion that wraps up the story and comes back to the lead and often has the form of a strong quotation or a surprising climax to leave the reader with something to think about.

There is no firm line between a news story and a feature, particularly in contemporary media when many news stories are “featurized”. The news story approach emphasizes the facts of the events, while the feature displaces the facts to accommodate the human interest of the story. Most news broadcasts or publications combine the two to reach a wider audience.

TYPES OF FEATURES

Column − a short newspaper or magazine piece that deals specifically with a particular field of interest, or broadly with an issue or circumstance of far-reaching scope. They appear with bylines on a regular basis (daily, weekly, etc.) They may be written exclusively for one newspaper or magazine.

Essay − a short, literary, nonfiction composition (usually prose) in which a writer develops a theme or expresses an idea.

Exposé − these articles use in-depth reporting with heavy research and documentation. Used to expose corruption in business, politics or celebrities. Also called the investigative article.

How-to − How-to articles help people to learn how to do something. They provide step-by-step information for the reader.

Human interest story − an article that involves local people and events and can be sold to daily and weekly newspapers. Human interest elements, such as anecdotes or accounts of personal experiences, can support ideas in articles as firmly as facts or statistics. Also called “true-life” stories.

Op-ed − articles that run opposite the editorial page. They are a response to current editorials and topical subjects. Political op-eds are the most common, but they don’t have to be limited to politics. They must, however, reflect items that are current and newsworthy.

Personality profile − a personal or professional portrait − sometimes both − of a particular individual.

Seasonal − an article written about a holiday, season of the year, or timely observance. This kind of article must be submitted months in advance of the anticipated publication day.

Service article − an article about a consumer product or service; it outlines the characteristics of several of the same type of commodity. The aim is to help the consumer make the best selection possible.

Sidebar − a short feature that accompanies a news story or magazine article. It elaborates on human interest aspects of the story, explains one important facet of the story in more depth, or provides additional factual information − such as a list of names and addresses − that would read awkwardly in the body of the article. Can be found in a box, separated from the main article on the side or bottom of the page.

Trend story − a trend story examines people, things or organizations that are having impact on society. Trend stories are popular because people are excited to read or hear about the latest fads.

In-depth story − through extensive research and interviews, in-depth stories provide a detailed account well beyond a basic news story or feature.

Backgrounder − a backgrounder (also called an analysis piece) adds meaning to current issues in the news by explaining them further. These articles bring an audience up-to-date, explaining how this country, this organization, this person happens to be where it is now.

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