The Rural Revolution

Everything is about to change for the sleepy White Horse Village.


In the last century China has experienced an astonishing number of social movements that have been classified "revolutions".

The Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution (Chinese: 辛亥革命; pinyin: Xīnhài Gémìng); also known as the Republican Revolution; 1911.

The Intellectual Revolution; 1917.

The Chinese (Communist) Revolution; 1949.

The Cultural Revolution; 1966-76.

The Industrial Revolution has been ongoing since the end of the Cultural, and now that this last one has caught on it's changing agrarian China at a revolutionary pace. One has to marvel at the philosophic disposition of a civilization, with more people and better historical records (as reliable as the best we have, at any rate) going back further than any other, which has allowed it to undergo such rapid transformations without coming apart at the seams. China's Rural Revolution has only just begun and promises to re-entrench the Sleeping Giant as the world's next, if not current, superpower. Of course, there are still several population-related problems, as well as the endemic rural ones. But what the hell--nobody's perfect, eh?

Newcomers to the cities are treated as an underclass (photo-AP)