Chapter 19 3. The reason for the waste canal

Mr. Cao Jinqing told the story of an abandoned canal in "China by the Yellow River", and gave a lofty and clear explanation.This book is one of the best works on rural China that I have read in recent years. It is detailed and extensive. It takes readers to walk from village to house by the Yellow River, and talk to people of all colors. It is a pleasure to read.However, I disagree with some of the author's thoughts and explanations.What needs to be questioned here is the assertion that Chinese farmers are not good at cooperation, and Mr. Cao's explanation of Chinese farmers' bad cooperation.By the way, let me say a few more words about the relationship between "unfavorable cooperation" and the democratic system.

"The natural weakness of Chinese farmers is that they are not good at cooperation." This kind of statement is similar to the problem of national character raised by Mr. Lu Xun, and it is profound and profound, but I dare not echo it.The problem caused by this statement seems to be more complicated than the problem it tries to solve. I am more convinced of the simple calculation of human nature such as seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages. Dongyuan Village and Xiaojinzhuang Village in Lankao County, Henan Province share a canal, hundreds of meters long, which is connected to the river channel that has water all year round, and can be pumped for irrigation at any time.Dongyuan Village treasured this canal and lined it with cement, but Xiaojinzhuang Village abandoned its section of the canal, and the ground could not be watered.Therefore, the average yield of wheat per mu in Xiaojinzhuang Village is two to three hundred catties lower than that in Dongyuan Village.

Dongyuan Village is relatively large, and according to the calculations of their village secretary Dong, due to watering, the annual income can be increased by more than 200,000 yuan.Xiaojinzhuang Village is a little smaller and has not calculated this account, but it is conservatively estimated that it will lose more than 100,000 yuan every year.This canal has been abandoned for four or five years, and RMB 500,000 or 600,000 have been lost.The standard of living of the farmers in Xiaojinzhuang Village is nothing more than food and clothing. How can this huge sum of money go away in vain? At the junction of two canals with sharp contrast, there happened to be four or five villagers from Xiaojinzhuang chatting. Cao Jinqing had a few questions and answers with them, which are transcribed as follows:

"When was your canal built?" "It's been seven or eight years." "The building probably started in 1988." "When did it become obsolete?" "It's been four or five years." "Why doesn't the water in the canal to the east flow into your canal?" "People in Dongyuan Village won't let us use their water. What can we do?" "You can discuss with them!" "Discussion? If you don't win (it's useless), the cadres in my village can't do it. If they don't talk about it, what should we do?"

"Village cadres can't do it, you can also unite and hold a meeting to discuss a solution." "What do you want us to discuss?" "The yield of the wheat they watered can reach seven to eight hundred catties per mu. The yield of the wheat on your side is at most five hundred catties per mu. If you give them fifty catties of wheat for every mu of land watered, wouldn't you pay them back for every mu? It can increase the income by two hundred catties. Give them fifty catties of wheat per mu, will you be willing to use water?" Cao Jinqing wrote: "Four or five villagers discussed it, but I couldn't hear what they said clearly."

On the way back, the villager Lao Li who accompanied him said to him: "Even if we pay for water, they will open the gate to steal the water there. What can you do?" Cao said: "When the water is released, you can send someone to guard it." The entire canal is only a few hundred meters long, so send one person to solve it.” Lao Li said: “That’s not okay. They will say, your water passes through our land, and I use a little water from you, so why bother?” Lao Li's conclusion is: "Nowadays, we divide the land and work alone. Everyone has their own plans, and no one cares about this matter. Anyway, the whole village can't get water, and it depends on the sky for food. Everyone has nothing to say."

Cao Jinqing asked, cadres don't care about things, "What about the common people? Why can't they unite to discuss a solution to solve the problem? Why do we often hear words such as 'no one cares' or 'there is no way' in places where cooperation and negotiation are required What about the answer? 'No one cares' and 'no way' is perhaps the most common mentality in the village society. We must not underestimate the cultural meaning of these two village idioms. 'No one cares' means' There must be someone in charge of them', and 'no way' means that they are unable to come up with a solution through cooperation and negotiation, but can only rely on 'others' to make decisions for them."

Ten days later, Cao Jinqing raised the issue to a new level, and his expression was clear and powerful. I continue to excerpt as follows: Let's not talk about politics first, but just talk about the villagers' understanding of their own interests.If, as Mr. Cao said, they only know their own short-term interests and cannot see the long-term interests, let alone the common interests among farmers formed on the basis of long-term interests, so they cannot establish a cooperative organization beyond the family, then , these villagers really need to be enlightened and educated, because they are indeed short-sighted.

But I think that using farmers' short-sightedness to explain the destruction of the canal is a superficial explanation and a taken-for-granted explanation.What the abandoned canals reflect is not the ignorance of the farmers, but their wisdom. In terms of the total amount, the value of the wealth that Xiao Jinzhuang has lost is as high as 500,000 to 600,000 RMB, which is indeed a large number.But what about apportioning it to each villager?Based on the figures provided by the author, we can calculate that due to lack of irrigation, each villager’s annual income is reduced by 700 to 800 yuan, and after four or five years, the total loss is more than 3,000 yuan.If we lived in this village, if we were not made of special materials, if we had a far-sighted vision, saw past losses and future losses clearly, and did not want to bear greater losses, how should we act?

I will count the pros and cons.If paying a price of 1,800 yuan can solve the problem, I will start working hard.If the problem can only be solved by paying a price of 18,000 yuan, or if the problem is not necessarily solved, I will abandon this idea.It doesn't pay off.Even if it is cost-effective to bring in the interests of future generations, I don't have that much money. The way of thinking of the villagers is the same as mine. They expressed their meaning, and the author wrote it down, but they didn't really listen to it. Let's take a look at the total cost of doing this. The example of Dongyuan Village is just ahead.

Dong Yuan's village party secretary was 39 years old at the time, graduated from high school, worked as a village accountant, and was good at settling accounts.His eldest brother is the director of the Finance Office of Lankao County, his second brother is a judicial officer at a farm in Zhumadian, his third brother is the director of the Secretary Office of the Lankao County Government, his fourth brother works in the township finance office, and his brother-in-law works in the Lankao County Industrial and Commercial Inspection Brigade.In Dong Zhishu’s words: “We have people in the county and township governments, in the finance and taxation, judicial, and industrial and commercial departments.” In the understanding of ordinary people, the above items mean that Dong Zhishu is not only smart, but also capable of using government resources to give Others provide benefits or cause harm. Dong Zhishu became the village accountant in 1986, and became the village party secretary in 1990, so he has a long-term village-level overall vision.He said: We see how difficult it is to get things done.Dong Zhishu thinks that the two most difficult things are asking for 300,000 yuan from the Water Conservancy Bureau, and convincing the farmers who occupy the land. The former matter, together with the special factor of "someone in the county", is rare.If there is no such special factor, we can reasonably speculate that the 300,000 yuan will not be obtained, and the water conservancy project will not start.Even with this special factor, we also saw the brave and heroic behavior of running into the middle of the river in winter and kneeling in the icy water, and we also saw that the cadres of the Water Conservancy Bureau were moved by this heroic behavior.Obviously, being a hero and appreciating heroes are also special factors that cannot be met.Without this factor, we also have reason to speculate that this matter would not have been accomplished.That is to say, if we lived in Dongyuan Village, if we were civilians, without connections with the county, and without heroic temperament, we would not consider the problem of water canals, and it would be useless if we were willing to pay such a price. There is no such special resource. Little Jinzhuang Village doesn't need to be so troublesome.However, Dong Yuan's 300,000 yuan cannot be used by you for nothing, and you must share part of the price paid by Dong Yuan's people.In this way, the 300,000 yuan invested by the county water conservancy bureau became a trouble for Xiao Jinzhuang's negotiators.This trouble will turn into the trouble of collecting water conservancy fees in Xiaojinzhuang Village.Giving someone fifty catties per mu is easy to say, but it requires transaction costs to do it.People from Dong Yuan may ask for a hundred catties.People in Xiaojinzhuang Village may not even think thirty catties is too much.Even if the fifty catties are negotiated, there must be some people who refuse to pay the money, and some people will steal water if they don't pay the money.How do the 132 households in the village settle this charge?How much is this negotiation fee worth?Who will pay for this?The ideal way is of course to share among the whole village, but this requires negotiation and a meeting.Even if we have great skills, such negotiations are not guaranteed to win, so the efforts to organize negotiations and convene meetings are likely to be in vain. Then, who will pay for the start-up costs and all these troubles? It's not just about money and trouble.Most of us in the city have work experience.In a unit of 500 to 600 people, or counted on a household basis, in a unit of more than 130 people, some ordinary people will hold a plenary meeting to discuss raising funds for a major event, which should be done. Can the meeting be held for a major event that the current leadership team is in charge of?Even if you can drive it, do you dare to drive it or not?How will your leader see you and treat you?Even if you are courageous and resourceful, the meeting has been held, funds have been raised, and the agreement has been passed. To implement this agreement and implement this agreement, you must have a fixed organization.The functions of this organization highly overlap with the functions of the leadership team of this unit. Can such an organization exist legally? I have to honestly admit that I wouldn't go to a convention like this.I think this conference can only attract a group of onlookers, and there will not be many formal participants of the conference.Even if there are many participants, I have this ability, and I still won't pick this kind of thing.This is a blatant declaration of war against the current leadership, a challenge to the current regime, and the establishment of a new central government.I wouldn't do it if it cost me 10,000 or 20,000, let alone pay for it.In short, like the villagers in Xiaojinzhuang, I don't even think about it.I think this is wise, not stupid. Regarding this set of calculations, the villagers of Xiaojinzhuang expressed it in this way: "Discussion? No. The cadres in my village are not good. They don't talk about it. What should we do?" Put yourself in their shoes, and you will understand what they said It is absolutely true.They just can't help it.Conversely, think about it for the cadres, there are so many troubles, it is also wise for them not to ask for trouble.The cadres and their families only have five or six acres of land, and they are not big landlords. After repairing the water conservancy facilities, they will not benefit much, and if they do not repair them, they will only bear the annual loss of seven to eight hundred yuan.With time and energy, where can't I find the seven or eight hundred yuan?Can this set of troubles be smoothed out by seven or eight hundred yuan?Instead of asking for trouble, what can the villagers do to him? We continue to settle accounts.If all goes well, 50 catties of wheat per mu is exchanged for the right to use channels, an agreement is reached on the internal charging mechanism, and the cost of the charging itself is apportioned, then we will encounter the second problem encountered by the Party Secretary of Dongyuan Village.He wants to persuade the farmers to allow the channel to occupy their contracted fields.Since it involves other provinces, counties and townships, this matter can only be negotiated, not exercised power.Secretary Dong said that this matter was the most difficult, with more than 100 round trips and a cost of 35,000. The canal system is divided into main canals, branch canals, bucket canals, agricultural canals, and hairy canals, with a total of five layers.The issue of land occupation for the main canal has been resolved, but the Mao canal is in his own land, so there is no need to settle it, but the issue of land occupation for the branch canal and Douqu has to be negotiated.There is no authoritative organization, only bargaining, and the negotiation of these 132 households is a daunting task.Fortunately, I was a production team leader for two years when I jumped into the queue. I had three fights with commune members over the canal problem, and one of them reached the level of "physical conflict". Therefore, I have the courage to assert that every village has awkward People, not to mention 132 households, there is no shortage of such people in 32 households. He wants to take you and make more money. He only relies on negotiations and lures with benefits, but he has no right to legally harm others. There is no hope of it being done.We know it's not a matter of one or two people quarreling, wanting a free ride, trying to take advantage of everyone, and there's no shortage of people anywhere who want to take advantage of this.Cooperation without the backing of coercive power is inherently fragile. How can it withstand this sense of fairness?Can't hold back this kind of tearing, how to deal with the ensuing comparisons?Is there anyone willing to take the risk of a fight, in order to reduce the loss of three to five thousand yuan, to do this kind of thing that costs tens of thousands of round trips more than a hundred times? Even if this hurdle is successfully passed, the last question is: Can this channel that has been opened through so much painstaking efforts continue to run smoothly?Old Li, a villager who accompanied Mr. Cao, thought it was impossible.He said: "Even if we pay for water, they will open gates there to steal water. What can you do?" Cao said: "When the water is released, you can send someone to guard it. The whole canal is only a few hundred meters long. Send a People can solve it." Lao Li said: "That's not okay. They will say, your water passes through our land, and I use a little water from you, so why bother?" I don't know whether these words can convince Mr. Cao Jinqing, and I don't know what these words mean to him.However, Lao Li's words aroused several memories in me, and these words can go straight to the bottom of my heart.I can even follow him to tell the story: the person sent to guard the canal met the water picker, who was from another village, and the man who guarded the canal did not represent any authority. If you stop him, he will refute you. What about after the mouth?What can you do?No matter what you say, there is only one last solution: do it.You push, I block, you push, I block, and in the midst of stumbling, things get serious.Just imagine, as a canal patroller, how much water do I have here?Am I willing to start a vendetta?But the party that picks up the water is more willing to make trouble, because the water he picks up is 100% his.Only by looking at this account, the outcome can be predicted. Last year, I went back to the place where I jumped in the queue and heard a story told to me by a fellow villager.The fellow raised funds to open a quarry, repaired roads, bought a car, invested nearly 200,000 yuan, and finally started working.At this time, the family who had contracted a road passing by the edge of the field suddenly raised an issue and sent an old lady to lie in the middle of the road to block the vehicles and demand compensation.How much to make up?The quarry can earn about 100,000 a year, and he wants 80,000.This side is not willing, and even less, for fear of setting a precedent and attracting more old ladies.So he began to reason, first in the village, then in the township, and finally in the county to file a lawsuit.Everyone knows the high cost of judicial intervention and the long time to solve the problem.The most serious thing is that when my fellow countryman won the case, the old lady was still lying on the road, and the court's sentence was in vain.This is the implementation difficulty we are all familiar with.In desperation, the method he used was a bit black. What I mean is: If you can't reason, the courts are not effective, and you don't want to use force for a few hundred yuan, and you don't want to play tricks, the future of this channel is not optimistic.Passing five stages and killing six generals still has to face an unoptimistic channel. Who else is willing to pick this head?At this time, the person concerned will be content with the status quo and even find reasons for self-comfort.This kind of mentality is what Lao Li expressed: "Anyway, the whole village can't get water, and everyone depends on the sky for food. Everyone has nothing to say." mentality. Under that abandoned channel, there are so many calculations of interests and risks buried.Because the accounts do not work out, the channels do not work.It is unnecessary to raise the issue to the height of the natural weakness of Chinese farmers and the comparison of Eastern and Western cultures. The construction, charging and management of water conservancy facilities have a distinct color of public goods. Therefore, taxation or administrative fees backed by coercive force show the advantages of high efficiency and low cost.There is no need for so many negotiations, and the internal relationship problem is half resolved with the leader's determination.If you encounter resistance, you can't reach an agreement anyway, and you can use other threats, not granting him a homestead, not giving him a letter of introduction for going out to work, in short, let him lose more than he gains.Of course, if the conflict is minor, economic means can also be used to manage the charges after the completion of the water conservancy facilities. However, at the start-up stage, the intervention of political power and the intervention of coercive force are really cheap and efficient. There are also some other alternatives in history, such as a large family taking the lead, or a few big gentry taking the lead, which inevitably has some public welfare color, and it is inevitable that small households will take a free ride and take advantage of it.There are some principles of "smart pig game" here. Even if the big family allows the small family to take advantage of it, it is still cost-effective on its own side, and it is not cost-effective not to take the lead.After all, their land area is much larger.If the current contracted land of my family is not four or five mu, but forty or fifty mu or even one hundred and eighty mu, and the annual loss is not seven or eight hundred yuan, but seven or eight thousand yuan or even ten thousand or twenty thousand yuan, of course I have a strong sense of responsibility. Motivation negotiated with several other large households and took the lead in building water conservancy projects, showing another tradition of Chinese farmers: the tradition of being good at cooperation and even being enthusiastic about public welfare.Since my 180 mu of land can support my children to study for a few more years, my family probably belongs to the landlords and squires.Are landlords and gentry considered peasants?If counted, the traditional behavior of Chinese farmers is even more complicated. There are differences between landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants and poor peasants.Several major canal systems in Hongdong County, Shanxi Province have been opened since the Tang and Song Dynasties. They have mainly relied on private forces to allocate water and the rights and obligations of canal repairs in a nuanced manner. There are many injustices and conflicts. After all, the gentry, landlords, small farmers and the government have cooperated for thousands of years. The continuous flow of water for thousands of years is the historical evidence of "good cooperation".Nowadays, every household's land is evenly distributed, and each household is only a few acres, so it is difficult for large households with the motivation to take the lead.Even if it does appear, it will take several generations to develop a cooperative order in water conservancy. Another alternative is to let the big family take the lead.There are other calculations for the accounts within the family, and the degree of haggling between each other is weaker; when sharing expenses, the head of the family also has some kind of coercive power that everyone recognizes.This type of family partnership has a deep and long tradition in China.However, I don't know what the prospect of this kind of problem solving is in China, so I have to leave it alone. It should be said that under the current land distribution pattern, the mainstream method is the intervention of heroes who hold political power.Here, political heroes or moral heroes have replaced the functions of big landowners. They don’t count their own land income accounts, but political accounts, moral accounts, and even life meaning accounts. They appreciate the joy of fighting with others more, so they compare It is easy to cross the threshold where the cost of cooperation or organization is too high.The rewards given to them by Chinese social and cultural traditions are not limited to material benefits.From Mr. Cao's description, we can see the rural society's incentive mechanism for the individual who undertakes this function: giving him special worship, gratitude and obedience.However, people who respond to such stimuli are not the usual ones.We really shouldn't pin our hopes of solving routine problems on unborn heroes. Is there any general solution?Can the so-called village-level elections and grassroots democracy produce a regular mechanism for exchanging reasonable fees and public goods?This is something that is being tested. It is too early to say that it is "a layer of oil that floats on the water", just as it is too early to declare that it is a cure-all. Applying the above story to continue, we can at least expect village-level democracy to pick out for the villagers those who are both capable and willing to build water conservancy projects in their villages.If I have such ability and desire, I can also openly run for the village head, without taking root in association, gathering people to form associations without authorization, taking additional political risks to engage in "non-organizational activities", and will not encounter the legality of "establishing another central government" question.This reduces the organizational cost of building water conservancy, that is, reduces the cost of cooperation.Once the person who promised to build water conservancy projects is elected, village-level democracy can still put pressure on the village chief. Don’t talk about it, what should we do?” At that time, the villagers had a routine way to replace cadres at low cost.In short, farmers' cooperation costs are reduced, and the possibility of cooperation is increased.Even if you have the right not to use it, you can change people without changing people, and it is easy to cooperate but not to cooperate, then it should not be asserted that they are natural.Anyone needs a learning process to adapt to the new system.Since they think it is cost-effective to maintain the status quo, they might as well go on like this. When they feel strongly that it is not cost-effective, they will soon graduate from the course of democracy. In real life, the above logic cannot be fully developed.Due to the excessive financial pressure of the county and township governments, the village-level regime is responsible for extracting high taxes and fees for the superior regime, and the superior regime dare not relax its control over the village-level regime. Therefore, village elections are often a mere formality.In other words, the test has not officially started, and it is not yet time to write the test report. Assuming that the names and facts of the village elections are in line with reality, there are reasons to be pessimistic.Democracy is essentially an exchange mechanism for public goods. Some things cannot be done by oneself, and a public servant is needed to do it for everyone. Therefore, it is necessary to command and supervise the public servant while giving him fair remuneration.The self-sufficiency of the small-scale peasant economy is strong, with little contact with the outside world and little dependence on the outside world, so they are less willing to pay this fee.Therefore, it is difficult for the small-scale peasant economy to spontaneously produce super-family cooperative organizations.The cost of maintaining this kind of organization is too high, the cost of negotiation is too high, the cost of supervision is too high, and the cost of collecting fees from scattered farmers after the organization is established is also too high.Therefore, it is difficult for such an organization to appear in history, and it may not be able to be maintained for a long time when it appears. It is often maintained by relying on hegemony, and it will inevitably deteriorate, with gradually lower efficiency and higher cost.The water conservancy organization in Hongdong County, Shanxi Province, although the intervention of the gentry and big households has exceeded the level of small farmers being scattered, it is still difficult to avoid such problems.As a result, for more than two thousand years, what we have seen above the small peasant economy is often a coercive and arbitrary administrative power, and rarely see any federation established through negotiation.Now that the smallholder economy has not grown, how much can the willingness and ability to pay for transaction costs be improved?That's reason for pessimism. Then again, the dependence of farmers on the outside world has increased after all, the self-sufficient pattern of men farming and women weaving has long been destroyed, and the commodity rate is not what it used to be.The services provided by the village-level government are closely related to them. It is also reckless to assert that the experiment of village-level democracy must fail, and it must not last long. In fact, looking at the problem over a longer period of time, no matter whether the experiment is successful or not, the resulting state is not a stable state.Because China's small-scale peasant economy itself is no longer a long-term stable mode of production, and the relationship between the peasant group and the rapidly expanding bureaucratic group is not a long-term stable equilibrium state. China is in the process of urbanization, and agriculture, as an industry, is being over-extracted from its little surplus, which has reached the point where it is difficult to maintain simple reproduction.Under such circumstances, even if village-level democracy is perfect, village-level leaders elected in this way may not be able to achieve the functions that everyone expects.Things are too difficult to do.It is too difficult to find capable people to do it.The elected people themselves face multiple choices of going to the city, working or entering industry and commerce. This makes their life choices as village officials have a high opportunity cost, and it also greatly reduces the choice of talents in rural areas.No matter how reasonable the system is, facing the depression of the whole industry and the outflow and shortage of talents in this industry, it can only lament that a clever woman can't cook without rice.This state of affairs means that the experiments we see are but those of a shrinking industry and social group on the way to a declining overall status. If this kind of experiment fails completely, other social groups rising on the basis of a high degree of division of labor, their willingness to fight for their own rights and their ability to pay, may still support a harmonious democratic system.This is probably helpless, because for these social groups that live by exchanging products, the rise and fall of transaction costs is already a matter of life and death, and they cannot and dare not free ride.Of course, they also need a learning process, and they need to invent and create in reducing the cost of cooperation.However, in this objective and solid calculation of income and expenditure, the basis for the claim of "Chinese radical intellectuals" has been established. This basis is not easy to calculate clearly only by counting the accounts of peasant households.