Word: lands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Party approved another set of rural reforms, liberating a billion peasants from the collectivized farming imposed by Mao Zedong and allowing them to farm their plots for a profit. That decision is widely regarded as marking the start of China's stunning economic boom. But ownership of the land remained with the state; farmers had to renew leases every 30 years and their sale was forbidden...
...faced by a yawning chasm between urban and rural incomes and rising unrest in the countryside, the Chinese leadership has taken a cautious middle road, stopping short of allowing outright sale and purchase of rural land and instead approving the trading of the peasants' leases and extending terms beyond 30 years. That amounts to the right to sell in all but name and potentially frees up hundreds of millions of rural Chinese - until now second-class citizens in their own country - to head for the big city. China's urban dwellers may well wonder how they will cope as hordes...
Fussell's more focused book limits itself to American beef, but somehow feels more expansive and ambitious. In puncturing mythology of the West, she pits The Cowboy against The Machine: On one side are the old-timers, so in love with nostalgic ideals of land and horizon and freedom that they fail to realize that the cattle industry is a rich man's game, made for those on the other side with the money, fuel and machinery that go into making cattle so profitable. Like Beef, and many books before it, Raising Steaks reminds us that as tasty as burgers...
Whether it's the dip in atmospheric pressure (said to increase orgasmic intensity), the cute flight crew uniforms or the excitement of jetting off to a strange land, air travel has been associated with romance ever since man learned...
Thaksin, who was ousted from power by the military in a 2006 bloodless coup, got the news in London, where he fled in August with his family after his wife, Pojaman, was found guilty of tax evasion by Thailand's Criminal Court. (As the buyer of the land, Pojaman was also charged in the Oct. 21 case, but she was found not guilty by the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Office because she was not a state official, and not liable to conflict of interest charges.) There was no immediate reaction from Thaksin or his lawyers...