Turmoil In China : The Struggle for Power : Only a Glimmer of Interest Is Shown in Beijing News : For Chinese Farmers, the Harvest Comes First

TAILING, China —  As a topic of importance, reports about the recent power struggles and mayhem in Beijing, which is just 20 miles south of here, ranked well behind word on how the thresher is working, now that the harvest of winter wheat is at hand.

Still, some residents of Tailing, a small village in the shadows of the Ming Tombs, had heard about what went on in and around Tian An Men Square and were cautiously curious Sunday about the killings.

The younger ones even wondered which reports to believe--the ones on state-run television and radio that speak of a few civilian deaths and many military casualties, or those on the Voice of America, which tell of mostly civilian victims.

‘Stories Are So Different’

“We are confused. The stories are so different,” said one young man, taking a break from drying wheat on a country road. “Someone is not speaking the truth.”

His was a glimmer of interest among generally opaque attitudes toward the pro-democracy struggle in Beijing. Most residents of Tailing viewed the conflict over political reform as having little to do with them--unless it were to threaten the system of liberalized, free market agriculture built up during the past 10 years.

“We are farmers, and farmers want peace,” said an old man who seemed wary that foreigners should be asking questions about the conflict. “We have work to do.”

A group of men standing silently around him nodded in assent.

From this point of view, the turmoil in Beijing and other major Chinese cities is very much a minority affair. Farmers make up about 80% of China’s 1.1 billion people, and their interests have not been much in play during the crisis.

Students in the square, when they addressed democracy, usually did not take into consideration how it would apply to China’s great mass of peasantry.

No Sign of Unrest, Interest

Meanwhile, there is no sign of rural unrest, or even great interest in the student protests or in the competition for power within the Communist Party.

Wheat shipments into the city were blocked for a few days, but not enough to affect the countryside where it is grown. A few farmers even braved the disruptions on Beijing’s streets to sell vegetables at a time when regular stores were closed.

“My uncle in Changping went right in with tomatoes,” said a boy in Tailing. “He sold them quickly.”

Tailing is a place where children play jacks with apricot pits, where goods are moved by donkey cart and where the final threshing of wheat is done by hand.

‘13 Tombs Commune’

It was once lumped along with other nearby villages into a single “13 Tombs Commune,” named after the historic sites sprinkled around the valley.

Since the communal farms were dismantled as inefficient in the early 1980s, peasants have been given control of plots of land on which to make their living. The system has freed them to make money from activities such as raising pigs and tending vegetable gardens.

The increase in income resulted in a mild consumer boom that has contributed to what little the farmers in Tailing knew about the Beijing situation.

Many farmers in the village have their own television sets and sometimes own more than one radio.

In addition, with the reduced presence of political commissars after the breakup of the communes, farmers found that they could listen even to foreign broadcasts without necessarily risking political trouble.

Reserved for Confidential Chats

Still, getting clear opinions in Tailing is difficult. Often such topics as political unrest, if discussed at all, are reserved for confidential chats among families. A foreign presence is not reassuring.

“The American radio says the students were peaceful,” mused a lad wearing blue work pants and an undershirt. He remained cautious when asked what he believed. “It’s hard to say,” he responded in a murmur.

A friend ventured: “We support some things the students were saying. Like being against corruption. We support that.”

“They want freedom,” commented the first boy, emboldened. “We support that.”

Would they ever join a demonstration?

“Who would hold a demonstration in Tailing?” the friend answered. “People cannot even see our village from the road. If something happened here, no one would even know.”

Having expressed themselves in what for Tailing amounts to a rush of opinion, it seemed time to move to safer ground and conversation turned to whether American apples had thicker skins than Chinese ones.