After finishing my comment last week on the plight of Chinese peasants, I was challenged by one of my colleagues that industrialization has, ultimately, the potential to provide employment for an increasing number of labourers.

He cites the example of England's Industrial Revolution, which, according to him, more or less absorbed the displaced peasant population.

I replied that in England this procedure was accompanied by mass emigration to colonies.

In fact, during the 70 years from 1841 to 1911 the number of peasant emigrants from England equalled the natural increase in the peasant population in this period.

It is clear that China, as most other modern countries, can no longer resort to this outlet.

It is also observed that as China's once thriving township enterprises lose their momentum in general, high-tech development will make more labourers redundant. As Chinese peasants are among the least educated, they are certain to bear of brunt of this development.

Ironically, although Chinese peasants have been excluded from savouring the fruits of industrialization, they are singled out as the ones to make sacrifices in correcting the resultant evils of this process.

In July this year, in the space of five days, three peasants committed suicide, or tried to, (resulting in two deaths) in Yongquan Village, Xunyang County, Ankang, Shaanxi Province, when a team of cadres were sent to the village to assess the work of "Grain for Green" (a move aimed at restoring cultivated farmland to forestry or pasture to stem environmental degradation).

In CCTV interviews (aired on August 11) the one peasant who survived his suicide attempt, Li Liwen, said his annual family income was 200 yuan but he had found he had to pay 560 yuan in fines. In despair, he tried to take his life by drinking some pesticide (bought especially for this purpose on credit).

Although CCTV commented that the cadres had demonstrated cruelty and indifference towards their fellow peasants, this cruelty and indifference is, unwittingly, shared by many urban citizens.

One of the most common forms of ridicule directed against Chinese peasants is their high fertility rate. They are charged with thoughtlessly falling into a vicious cycle of increased-births-leading-to-deepening-poverty. In other words, they have been responsible for the deplorable state of their lives.

Critics fail to realize that this cycle conforms to the international fertility-poverty pattern. When poor people lose any hope for their future, the only hope left will be invested in their progeny.

In China this should also be considered in the context of the near total absence of any State-sponsored social welfare and traditional clan protection.

The current family planning policy of levying heavy fines (already an important source of revenue) on violators of the family planning policy will only make things worse.

It needs little imagination to observe another cycle no less vicious: the mass poverty will dampen domestic demand and worsen urban unemployment.

Although the life of a jobless urbanite is more tolerable than that of a well-off peasant, we should not forget there is another dimension.

It is reported that migrants are responsible for 50 per cent of crimes in major cities. In Guangzhou the rate goes up to 80 per cent.

We have no security to speak of without extending this security to the majority of the population.

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