Rural

While the party elite are launching their poverty alleviation program to curb China's worsening income disparity situation and to build a harmonious society, in about every two minutes there will have one person choose to end up his misery by committing suicide.

Among these 290,000 odd suicidal victims, 84% of them are peasants and 35% are illiterate. Pesticide is the medium they use most (58%) to end up their lives.

In 1995, during the 4th World Conference of Women in Beijing, the World Rural Women's Day was launched. Since then, October 15 is celebrated as World Rural Women's Day.

A decade after, who is celebrating?

Not the wives, mothers and daughters of those activists and community organizers who have been victims of political killings under the Arroyo government in the Philippines. Nor those women human rights defenders working in the communities who are living a life of uncertainty of when and where their own death would come.

Author/Qin Hui

The land problem has become intensified after local tax reform. The central government has paid a lot of effort in constraining land "enclosure". In the year of 2004, it initiated the reform in land expropriation, the so-called "new land policy", "land revolution" and "The deadline of August 31", and it has enormously constrained the collusion between government and business sector and protected the national interest. The reform has changed the interest distribution between developer and government. The system of negotiated leasehold is replaced by open auction. Now it is less possible for developers to offer bribe to local officials to get land at low price. This policy reduces the loss of land revenue to national financial income.