Word: liu
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...June 27] offered a unique perspective on my country's political and social changes. "Small World, Big Stakes" made the point that instead of politicians and scholars, the most important figures for China's future and its relationship with the U.S. are people like the textile worker you highlighted, Liu Li. Today ordinary people like Liu do not fear uncertainty or economic and social instability. These very uncertainties have created opportunities for China's Lius to escape from their humble social and economic background and realize their hopes. There is a degree of freedom of speech here today...
...June 27] offered a unique perspective on my country's political and social changes. "Small World, Big Stakes" made the point that instead of politicians and scholars, the most important figures for China's future and its relationship with the U.S. are people like the textile worker you highlighted, Liu Li. Today, ordinary people like Liu do not fear uncertainty or economic and social instability. These very uncertainties have created opportunities for China's Lius to escape from their humble social and economic background and realize their hopes. There is a degree of freedom of speech here today...
With his nylon socks and cigarette pinched between index finger and thumb, Liu looks like any other small-fry entrepreneur in China's hinterland. Yet for two reasons, he is different. First, his business is oil. Second, he's running from the police. Liu, who declines to reveal his full name, changes his cell-phone number weekly and won't pass two nights in the same bed. His fugitive life is shared by dozens of other wildcat oilmen in northern China's Shaanxi province, where independent drillers are fighting for compensation after the government seized their wells and detained several...
...square kilometer. Entire villages often pooled their money to invest in rights and rigs. More than 6,000 wells were drilled, and soon the "pump worms," as derricks are known in the local dialect, yielded crude. "I saw people building new houses, hiring teachers for their children," says Liu, who in 1999 formed a company with four other people, borrowed heavily and drilled three wells...
...Wang denies that anybody is complaining about anything these days. "There was no conflict with private oil enterprises," says Wang, because "most were happy with the compensation." The city's Communist Party vice secretary told TIME that the reclaimed wells now provide one-third of the town's revenue. Liu, the former driller now in hiding, says his only hope is for top-level intervention: "If leaders in Beijing knew our side, maybe they would help...