The relations between village infrastructure and access to external

I have explained above that the existence of collective infrastructure and the help of external agencies were the two key factors shaping hamlets’ experiences of and responses to drought. Importantly, these two key factors were connected. First of all, hamlets whose leaders had guanxi with powerful figures outside the community were more likely to get access to both infrastructure and external drought relief aid. Secondly, there was a correlation between access to advanced infrastructure, in particular roads, and external help.

For example, aside from the practice of guanxi, another factor enabling Shijia to benefit from external help was the accessibility of the hamlet. To make sure that allocated funds are used for the designated purpose, officials from government bureaus, state-owned enterprises and public institutions are required to visit poverty alleviation program sites and monitor the implementation of the programs on a regular basis. This has become even more important since 2011, when the provincial government launched a campaign known as the Four Masses Education (siqun jiaoyu 四群教育) to reinforce and further develop the relationship between cadres and ordinary people.56 _{All government}

bureaus above the county level are required to work with the masses, especially rural residents, directly, and every year, cadres at all levels are required to “come down and practice in a village”

(zhucun shijian 驻 村 实 践) for a given period of time.57 _{Getting involved in}

anti-poverty or drought relief programs provides cadres with a good opportunity to fulfil their grassroots service requirements. Consequently, these external funding agencies intentionally avoid selecting villages that are difficult to access to launch a project, as convenient transport facilitates officials from the funding agencies to visit the program site regularly. This was one reason for the selection of Shijia. According to the village Party secretary, there were at least two hamlets more affected by the drought than Shijia.

56 _{The CCP Central Committee urges its members to adopt the “mass line” (doing everything for the} masses, relying on them in every task, carrying out the principle of “from the masses, to the masses”) as they did during the revolutionary times, in a move to improve ties with the public. Siqun jiaoyu is a local response to the call of the Central Committee.

57 _{This is determined by cadres’ position in the government hierarchy. Provincial-level cadres are} required to visit a village for three to 7 days per year. For county (district) level cadres the figure is 10 days, and for township level cadres 30 days.

“But because there are no motor vehicle roads to these localities, officials from upper levels of government are not able to come down to inspect the program. As a result, we cannot select them as program sites, despite their greater needs.”58

Although the road linking Shijia to the location of village committee is poorly paved, it is accessible by motor vehicle. Actually, before the construction of this road, residents of Shijia had difficulty travelling to nearby commercial centres. Before 2008, the nearest highway where villagers could get a lift to the county market was located on the other side of the mountain. Loaded with heavy produce, villagers spent hours trekking across the mountain to that main road. In 2007, the village committee was funded for a concrete road linking the village committee to the county. In order to get better access to the outside world, after the construction of that village committee-county road, residents in Shijia contributed funds to build a dirt vehicular access road to link their hamlet to the village committee. With limited funds, they had to take the shortest route. However, this route crossed several plots of arable land belonging to a neighbouring hamlet. To address this problem, the hamlet head persuaded households with arable land in Shijia to give up their land to compensate their neighbours, and then adjusted the landholdings of all households in Shijia, so that the loss of land would be spread more equitably across the hamlet. The construction of this road was also considered one of the achievements in the hamlet head’s career. He was later rewarded for this good work by the township government and was recognized as a very able village cadre. This was an important point enabling him to persuade the county cadres to choose Shijia as a desirable site for a poverty alleviation project.

Aside from facilitating project management, the reduced costs of transportation due to the availability of a road also made external relief provision more likely in some places than others.

Officials from the local police station in Chuxiong and Qujing reported that between 2010 and 2012, they were required by the county government to deliver drinking water to those severely affected villages within their jurisdiction. The aim of the program was to deliver water to every household in every affected village. However, in the two field site hamlets where villagers suffered a severe drinking water shortage, only residents in Shijia

reported that they had seen water trucks reaching their hamlet and had received water and tanks from police officers. Drought relief supplies never reached North Hamlet, the more affected location. Local police officers explained that because they used large vehicles such as fire engines and trucks, it was impossible for them to deliver water to villages and hamlets without motor vehicle roads. Where there were no such roads, they usually left water and other supplies with the village committee and let the committee distribute them. Village cadres in North Hamlet confirmed this, and said they asked villagers to use their tractors, motorcycles, or in most cases, mules to transport water to their households. Villagers in North Hamlet also confirmed that they were told by the village committee to go to the committee building to collect water delivered by the government. According to some informants, the government delivered water four or five times in the driest years, but they had never gone to the village committee to collect it. One villager explained, “The distance from my hamlet to the village committee office is similar to the distance from the hamlet to the nearest river. If I decide to go down the hill, I go to the river. The amount of water I can get from the village committee is very limited and honestly, not really much use. With the same transport expenses, I prefer to fetch more water from the river. Besides, the village cadres also encourage us to let old and disabled people, who have trouble fetching water from the river, claim the delivered water.”59