Word: ruralism
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...Central Committee of China's ruling Communist Party. After all, the world's newspapers are dominated by the homestretch of the U.S. presidential election, the ongoing global financial crisis and other momentous events. But the blandly titled "Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Advancement of Rural Reform and Development" will be studied by historians when the markets' latest gyrations and Sarah Palin's appearance on Saturday Night Live are long forgotten. Behind the document's clunky sentences constructed from boilerplate Party phraseology are changes that will vault China into the next, irrevocable stage of its evolution into a fully capitalist...
...Three decades ago, the 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...
...recent debate at the University of Mississippi, Childers agreed with Davis on just about every policy issue, from drilling in Alaska (for it) to the recent Wall Street bailout (against it); the only real contrast was that Childers is a proud country boy, a real estate agent from rural Booneville, while Davis is a more stilted suburbanite, the mayor of the bedroom community of Southaven. By recruiting candidates who depart from party orthodoxy but are more in line with conservative districts, Pelosi's team has expanded the Democrats' appeal in long-hostile territory. Childers actually runs strongest in rural towns...
...that Republicans convinced many Southerners that Democrats don't share their values because of hot-button culture issues like guns--he doesn't mention race--but he has an A rating from the NRA, and he considers himself the essence of Mississippi values. "I'm a mainstream Democrat, a rural Democrat, a middle-of-the-road Democrat," he says...