Qipan

— “I have met old people who held my hands and told me tearfully that they preferred to die early,” wrote a township Party secretary, Li Changping, “and I have seen the sad sight of children kneeling before me saying they want to attend school.” In Li’s Qipan, also in Jianli County, society is failing because of the decline of agriculture. Li wrote a direct plea to Zhu Rongji about conditions in his area. That was futile because the well-intentioned Zhu has little power in Qipan and most other places in the countryside.