ABSTRACT
When Fei Xiaotong died at 95 in 2005, China lost one of its last effective voices for democratic reform from within establishment ranks. Fei’s classic, Peasant Life in China, reminds us of how rural Chinese paid the price for change in the formative years of Chinese communism.1 Now, likewise, they are paying for Chinese capitalism. The difference is that the former gave them some actual benefits in return. They not only got minimal health care, but the psychological satisfaction of knowing that however bad things were, the hardship was broadly distributed. Anyone who thinks those are insignificant benefits should consider becoming a World Bank economist.
