Zhang reluctantly quit tilling the soil last year. She now works in a paper factory, making five times her farming income. We won't know our neighbors, like real city people. We'll be modern. China's building boom is similar to the one the United States experienced in the 1950s and 1960s.
China needs to worry.
China began its campaign to protect farmland 15 years ago with a ban on the new golf courses and theme parks already eating away at fields of grain on China's nouveau riche east coast. The government also outlawed new home construction on arable land and required local and provincial approval for all large development. Also, the national government warned local leaders, who control land use in this communist country, not to participate in land speculation or sell communal farmland to their friends. And that means destroying farmland. Later that year the government instituted even more aggressive policies.