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Robert Weil reports on the conditions of Chinese workers and peasants from meetings held in 2004 around Beijing, in Jilin, and in Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. His argument is that the three decades after Mao's death dismantled the revolutionary socialist settlement and returned China to the capitalist road, and that one of the most egalitarian societies on earth is polarising rapidly between great wealth at the top and worsening conditions below. The workers he met were among the tens of millions thrown out of state-owned enterprises, losing with their jobs the housing, schooling, health care and pensions that came with the work unit; the peasants were coping with the dissolution of the communes and the household responsibility system.
Précis by Red Mole.
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