The new houses were empty shells initially. Most peasants had to spend at least another 20,000 to 40,000 RMB for basic interior furnishings, including doors, windows, and tile floors. Although each household got compensation between roughly 30,000 RMB and 70,000 RMB, depending on the size of their land and farmhouse, they needed to spend at least 85,000 RMB to purchase a new home in the New Village with minimal furnishings. In other words, in order to move into the New Village, each household had to give back to the developer all compensation money they had just received, plus they had to give up much of their savings. Some families had to borrow additional money from relatives or friends. To makes matters worse, the new houses are likely to have little market value in the near future because they are not protected by current property laws, since the houses are built on rural land that is collectively owned by the villagers.21 Given these economic disadvantages, one wonders how Guoqiang managed to get 12,000 peasants to move out of their traditional villages and into the New Village in the first place. The two rounds of contracts with the peasants—in fact a result of the two phases of development at the Jinhu site as it was transformed from a speculative real estate venture into a model New Countryside site—proved quite effective at coaxing peasants off of their land. According to Jinhu residents that I interviewed, first, in early 2007, Guoqiang approached villagers with an offer to lease their agricultural land for 18 years in exchange for a lump sum of 5,760 RMB per mu. To motivate villagers to sign on, Guoqiang made a special effort to persuade village officials to take the lead.
When villagers saw that cadres had signed on and moved into the resettlement townhouses,macetas cultivo most villagers chose to follow suit. At this point, the villagers believed they could get back their land-use rights after the contracts expired if the land leases did not fulfill their expectations. The following year, the conglomerate began approaching farmers with another offer, this time of 4,320 RMB per mu in additional cash in return for a permanent transfer of land use rights. At this point, many peasants felt they had no choice but to accept the additional money. Among other concerns was the fact that the original contract would terminate the same year the peasants’ land use rights granted to them by the state came to an end. From their perspective, there was no guarantee they would get their land back after 2025, so they might as well get money out of the deal while they still could. In the end, only a very small number of villagers had to be removed from their old houses by force.The mass media had previously reported on violence that occurred during demolition of houses elsewhere in China. Thus, the threat of force if they refused to move, although normally only used as a last resort by real estate developers, was well understood by local peasants. By 2009, all the villagers had nullified their earlier leases and resigned new contracts giving up their land use rights in perpetuity. In the end, each peasant household had received a total compensation of 10,080 RMB per mu. This price was a true steal for Guoqiang Conglomerate, given that official land prices in the region were nearly three times greater, a point that—after it was realized by villagers— became a subject of contention, as documented in the Tianya online forum account and in petitions addressed to provincial and central government officials.
To be sure, Jinhu residents were not entirely passive in the process. They did manage to negotiate slightly higher compensations from Guoqiang. One strategy they used was based on the fact that compensation for demolished farmhouses at Jinhu was calculated according to the house’s floor space. A common practice was for villagers to enlarge square footage by adding one more story to their old house or by adding new annex rooms weeks or even days before selling their houses to the conglomerate.In addition, during construction of the New Village, the Jinhu villagers made a strong stand when they discovered that the first set of resettlement houses were being built with gray bricks. According to local people’s knowledge, red bricks are of higher quality and also keep houses warmer in winter and cooler in summer. In the end, Guoqiang agreed to use red bricks in all subsequent constructions, and even to rebuild the first set of houses with such bricks. The villagers were quite proud of themselves for standing up to the company. The successful strategies to extract higher compensations from Guoqiang and to negotiate for the use of red bricks made many peasants believe they had attained a fairly good deal. At this point, it is worth considering issues of culture and ideology, which provides a context for understanding the negotiations between the actors in the local arena. The pride the villagers felt at obtaining a better deal with Guoqiang, for example, can be partly understood by recognizing that Chinese peasants belong to a bargaining culture, where negotiation has always played an important role in any market transaction, as Liu Xin has noted in his study of change in rural China after economic reforms. To understand why the peasants agreed to an arrangement that was not ultimately to their economic advantage, it is also important to recognize the influence of an ideology of social justice commonly evoked in government propaganda. Although they sometimes feel that they have been cheated by Guoqiang Conglomerate, Jinhu residents seem to accept the government’s portrayal of the “New Countryside” as a form of social justice for peasants in the hinterland.
After two decades of economic reforms that have focused on coastal cities, the Chinese government is now using its great wealth to improve rural living standards, with the goal of putting peasants on par with urbanites in terms of the benefits received from economic development. Numerous state slogans articulate this idea—“cities to support villages” , “industry to feed agriculture” , and “take less and give more” , to give just a few examples. For example, peasant informants in Jinhu New Village told me that they appreciated the “good intentions” of the central government, though they felt that the government’s efforts were tantamount to “pulling on saplings to help them grow” before they had established firm roots. Although landless peasants now have trouble maintaining themselves due to the high cost of living in the New Village, many do, nevertheless, accept government rhetoric that it is trying to make things better for them. Perhaps more significantly, there is strong acceptance among both local officials and peasants of the principle of paternalistic governance. Jinhu is an acclaimed national-level experimental site for the “New Countryside,” meaning that it is more than simply a private business venture. It is perceived, instead,maceta de plastico cuadrada as the product of benevolent state planning. The origin of this commitment to paternalism might go back to China’s imperial history and/or might constitute a legacy of the recent socialist past. In any case, many people I interviewed held the conviction that, since the “New Countryside” is a central government policy, the government is responsible if things go wrong. When I brought up the hypothetical problem of future food shortages because New Countryside agribusiness often avoids growing grain crops in favor of more lucrative cash crops , peasants, business entrepreneurs, and local officials alike frequently uttered the same phrase—“When there is a problem, the government must take care of it .” Acceptance of the ideology of paternalism also helps explain why local officials often deploy the language of top-down rule—of receiving orders “from above,” even though the process of decision making was in fact far more complex, involving substantial negotiation. Claiming to have received an order from one’s bureaucratic superiors is always deemed a legitimate reason to implement a particular policy at the local level. Land dispossession and peasant displacement are commonly perceived by scholars studying China as evidence of authoritarian oppression. They overlook the fact that the peasants themselves frequently conceive central government policies as being based on the principles of social justice, even if local governments sometimes abuse these principles. In other words, they are far more suspicious of local than of central authority. In short, because of the multiple actors playing a role in the local arena, the process of implementation of the New Countryside is complex and at times messy, involving numerous acts of negotiation between the different participants. Among the multiple participating actors, business entrepreneurs probably play the greatest role in seeking to bridge the gaps between the concerns of the central government, the local government, peasants, and urban consumers. Although there is a significant power differential between the peasants and other actors, even the peasants are given some room to maneuver and obtain concessions to ameliorate their conditions. The negotiation between multiple participating actors is facilitated by a widespread ideological acceptance of paternalist governance and of the idea that the central government is committed to social equity and the balance of development in today’s China. To the extent that all actors, including peasants,are absorbed into the game of negotiation, the central government has in some sense succeeded in establishing its social hegemony over local society.
Extended human stay in space or upon the surface of alien worlds like Mars introduces new mission elements that require innovation ; among these are the biotechnological elements that support human health, reduce costs, and increase operational resilience. The potential for a Mars mission in the early 2030s underscores the urgency of developing a road map for advantageous space bio-technologies. The replicative capacity of biology reduces mission launch cost by producing good son-demand using in situ resources , recycling waste products , and interacting with other biological processes for stable ecosystem function . This trait not only lowers initial launch costs, but also minimizes the quantity and frequency of resupply missions that would otherwise be required due to limited food and pharmaceutical shelf-life on deep space missions. Biological systems also provide robust utility via genetic engineering, which can provide solutions to unforeseen problems and lower inherent risk . For example, organisms can be engineered on-site to produce a pharmaceutical to treat an unexpected medical condition when rapid supply from Earth would be infeasible . A so-called “bio-manufactory” for deep space missions based on in situ resource utilization and composed of integrated biologically-driven sub-units capable of producing food, pharmaceuticals, and bio-materials will greatly reduce launch and resupply cost, and is therefore critical to the future of human based space exploration .The standard specifications for Mars exploration from 2009 to 2019 are not bio-manufacturing-driven due to the novelty of space bioengineering. Here, we outline biotechnological support to produce food, medicine, and specialized construction materials on a long-term mission with six crew-members and surface operations for ∼ 500 sols flanked by two interplanetary transits of ∼ 210 days . We further assume predeployment cargo that includes in situ resource utilization hardware for Mars-ascent propellant production , which is to be launched from Earth to a mission site. Additional supplies such as habitat assemblies , photovoltaics , experimental equipment, and other non-living consumables will be included. The proposed bio-manufactory would augment processes for air generation and water and waste recycling and purification—typically associated with Environmental Control and Life Support Systems —since its needs overlap but are broader, and drive a wider development of an array of ISRU, in situ manufacturing , food and pharmaceutical synthesis , and loop closure technologies . Food, medicine, and gas exchange to sustain humans imposes important ECLSS feasibility constraints . These arise from a crew member physiological profile, with an upper-bound metabolic rate of ∼ 11–13 MJ/CM-sol that can be satisfied through prepackaged meals and potable water intake of 2.5 kg/CM-sol . Sustaining a CM also entails providing oxygen at 0.8 kg/CM-sol and recycling the 1.04 kg/CM-sol of CO2, 0.11 kg of fecal and urine solid, and 3.6 kg of water waste within a habitat kept at ∼ 294 K and ∼ 70 kPa. Proposed short duration missions lean heavily on chemical processes for life support with consumables sent from Earth .