Rural China Screaming for Funds as Demands for Social Services Mount
Giving birth at the "baby friendly hospital", a concrete box amid lush Chinese countryside, could mean a bill of more than 400 yuan (48 dollars), a steep price for farmers who make about 2,000 yuan a year.
"Of course, we'll pay," says her husband, Ling Kun, who is 24 but looks like he is in his late teens. "There's no alternative." The young couple, like 900 million other farmers, are at the receiving end as China looks for ways to fund basic rural services from healthcare and education to roadwork and dyke construction.
Only limited help will be coming from Beijing, 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) from Anhui, the eastern Inland Province where Liu will soon deliver her baby, AFP reported.
This is because the plight of the countryside is just one of several issues -- such as millions of laid-off workers in the cities -- that policy makers in the capital have to grapple with.
"If you want services, you have to provide funds," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the University of Michigan and a former Clinton administration official.
"The question is to set up the systems not only to collect money ... but also to decide what your priorities are," he said.
China's government is short of cash -- it expects a record deficit this year of 309.8 billion yuan (37 billion dollars) -- and one solution is to make more farmers take charge of their own lives.
Anhui, which has been a laboratory of reform for the past 20 years, now runs a pilot project in two townships offering locals the option to insure themselves against serious diseases.
The mixed fate of that project illustrates how attempts at reform collide both with endemic conservatism and shrunken government coffers.
Xie Zhengqing, a 54-year-old watermelon farmer in Feixi county's Wangying village, saved himself from a painful death -- or at least financial ruin -- when he paid the paltry 8.0 yuan (1.0 dollar) annual insurance premium, signing up for the scheme last year.
"I joined the system in September last year," he said with a smile. "Two months later I was diagnosed with appendicitis." The bill for having his appendix removed ran to 3,200 yuan (386 dollars), far beyond his meager means, and was affordable only because he had entered the government-sponsored insurance system.
Despite Xie's unusual luck -- which induced many of his neighbors to sign up -- only one in five farmers has been tempted to participate in the two townships as a whole.
"They don't see the future," said Zhang Xueping, vice mayor of Hefei city, one step up the administrative ladder from Feixi county.
"But it's never too late to join." However, if all people were to take part, local bureaucrats would suddenly encounter the alternative and more formidable challenge of financing the scheme, since they have to pay part of the premiums.
"We do have the money to pay if 100 percent of farmers agreed to participate, but it would be a little tough," said Li Wengui, a Hefei finance official.
It does not take an astute fiscal mind to imagine the trouble officials would be in if the project was expanded to Feixi county's 128 other townships, or to the entire country and its 1.3 billion people.
Squaring the fiscal circle only gets tougher in the case of Anhui's most famous recent experiment, often referred to as a "revolution" because of its wide-ranging implications.
It abolishes a confusing range of fees that local officials charge to fill budget shortfalls or, occasionally, their own pockets, and substitutes a standardized tax instead.
The reform has covered all of Anhui since 2000, and many appear to welcome it, including 59-year-old peasant Zhao Mingyao, who suddenly thinks his tax money is well spent.
"We do get something in return for the taxes we pay," said Zhao, who now hands in 500 yuan (60 dollars) a year to the local tax office, compared with 1,000 yuan before the reform.
"The government helps with flood prevention and with introducing new technology into our production," he said.