WSJ.com - Examining Asia
Even as China's economy booms, a crisis is brewing in the countryside. Some 800 million rural residents are being left behind. Their incomes are stagnating, or even shrinking when the takings of predatory local governments are taken into account. There is not enough work on the farms and in township enterprises, meaning as many as 200 million of rural people are unemployed. Their anger at corrupt and arbitrary officialdom is exacerbated by the feeling that there is little hope for the future.