Alternative China – with miracle grass, but without miracles out of poverty

The People’s Republic of China has declared that he has freed 800 million people from poverty. If Beijing had claimed that all Uighers – and there are about ten million of them in Chinese territory – would have to wear turban from now on, hosts from journalists would probably have opened up to check this on site. But the fact that as many Chinese as people in the United States and the EU live no longer have to suffer seems to suffer.

Yes, at least one was interested. But he is not a journalist, but a former logistician who has lived in China for 27 years and is driven unchanged by curiosity. Uwe Behrens asked himself the obvious questions: How did you do that? And: is that repeatable? After all, wars are being drowned, wars and climate catastrophes ensure that every tenth earthle does not have enough to eat. And there are more and more.

Behrens got into the car with his Chinese woman in Beijing and drove a few thousand kilometers through the country. He stopped in villages and quietly snapped in cities, visited remote places and nature reserves, tourist hotspots and museums. But above all: he spoke to people, asked about their conditions of existence, asked whether and what had changed in their lives. They are random encounters, not specifically selected interlocutors. A sociological examination of a different kind, quite representative even without a given key and fixed questionnaire.

In addition, the reader learns what fantastic nature reserves, excellent museums have arisen, and what excellent infrastructure since tourism has been discovered as an important economic factor in China. In two decades, jobs were created in a huge number around such facilities.

The struggle to overcome poverty took place according to the ancient Chinese wisdom: “If you want to help a family to be able to eat fish, then show her fishing.” The Chinese state at best provided the fishing rod, under certain circumstances a fishing teacher. Behrens documents the collective efforts that were made at all levels.

Poverty- and that makes the difference to the common poverty and hunger control measures elsewhere- was not perceived as an individually caused problem, but as a social. As a result, efforts to overcome the need were also needed to overcome. The People’s Republic had already committed itself when it was founded, and repeatedly experienced considerable setbacks through various campaigns (“big jump”, “cultural revolution”), but there was the decisive impulse in 1978. “Poverty is no socialism,” said Deng Xiaoping at the time. “Socialism means eliminating poverty.”

In the early 90s, the first seven -year program for targeted poverty control came, followed by several national conferences. Teams were sent to the villages and found the social situation of every family. With us we have certainly shouted that this is an inadmissible penetration into privacy – but how do you want to experience the specific situation if you have no data?

The rapidly growing economy created a variety of new industrial jobs in the cities. This in turn led to an income gap between the rural and the urban population. In particular, people in remote regions with difficult geological conditions such as in Guizhou, Xinjiang or Tibet were left behind, not participating in the economic upswing. The problems of migrant workers, the rural exodus and their consequences arose.

Nevertheless, a variety of measures to successfully counteract – starting with the breeding of more profitable rice varieties, to education and qualification to complete digitization, so that the last miner can also sell its products over the Internet. So poverty has been overcome in 128,000 of the villages designated as arm and in 832 counties. The limit defined by the UN is $ 2.15 per person per day. All residents themselves in the poorest regions of the People’s Republic are now the equivalent of $ 4.60.

Behrens found wonderful examples that illustrate this development. Around 20,000 families lived from mushroom cultivation in Ningxia, an autonomous area of ​​the Hui. The mushrooms for consumption and medical use grew on old tree trunks in clay caves. The farmers beat the wood in the already thinned outer forests in the transition to the Mongolian steppe and desert land and did not become rich. However, this was not due to the forest authorities and environmentalists who made the front of the pick -up.

Help approached the agricultural and forest university in the province of Fujian on the southeast coast. They had bred something that offered them as an alternative substrate. Juncao means that this means up to five meters up to five meters, a high -quality feed that harvested several times a year, can be used as a biomass for energy generation and as a raw material in industry. It also serves to contain the deserts, as wind protection and to renovate contaminated soils. And just as a substrate for mushroom breeding. That means: a quantum leap through science. Juncao not only contributed to the raising of the living standards of the mushroom farmers – the miracle grass, this multifunctional crop, now also grows in many other developing countries.

With his lavishly illustrated, now third book, Uwe Behrens presents a multifunctional travel report in which you can find out many things that have not been in any German newspaper so far. Why? See above.

Uwe Behrens: China’s counter -draft. A way to the future. Edition Ost, 256 S., Br., € 20.