Chapter 5 Meaning of "farmer"

In 1981, the famous British journalist and writer Paul Harrison published a masterpiece that made him a who's who in the world: "The Third World: Suffering, Twist, Hope" (hereinafter referred to as "The Third World"). This is the culmination of his four-year visits to 23 developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is also considered to be the most serious investigation of the third world by Western scholars in the past half century. In this book, Harrison identifies for the first time five fundamental disorders that exist in developing countries: industry develops without proper development of agriculture, and large-scale industry develops without first developing small-scale industry The speed of urbanization has exceeded the speed of industrialization; compared with the level of industry and agriculture, the service industry has developed too fast; the growth of people has exceeded the expansion of employment.

In the third part of the book, Harrison describes the road to industrialization and urbanization in developing countries. "Across the Third World, people are migrating in search of work at a faster rate, and farmers are flooding cities... because there are jobs, educational opportunities, and a good living environment they yearn for. In In most developing countries, the city has become a spoiled child, and most of the investment in public utilities is concentrated in the city...” For this reason, the fair Harrison is very indignant: why is the government so obviously biased in favor of the cities, and so egregiously discriminated against the rural citizens who constitute the majority of the population?However, Harrison also had to admit:

"Only in the city can there be the roads, transportation, power and consumer markets required by industry." Well, these farmers who have been ignored by modern civilization.Is there any "Roman road" to modern life other than "flooding towards the city"? In "The Third World", which has been translated into Chinese with 300,000 words, Harrison is always at a loss for this. Harrison is clearly not the only Western scholar who is at a loss.After World War II, development economics, which specializes in studying the economic models of developing countries, gradually became a new discipline in the field of economics.In this discipline, the peasant problem has become a daunting "Bermuda Triangle".

In the countless development models discovered by these Western scholars, the peasant always plays a backward and humanistic role far away from urban civilization, a poor "Gordo" waiting to be rescued. It seems difficult for us to attribute such reasoning to prejudice. But now, we are witnessing an alternative path to modernization beyond this theory. In rural China, especially in the coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangdong, farmers established their own industries, cultivated their own markets, and then began to build their own cities. Connected with the original urban system, they built a modern living environment full of rural flavor.