HKU Bulletin May 2009 (Vol. 10 No. 2)

36 37 Latin America, Africa and other parts of the Third World.” Brown’s book created a tremendous impact, not only in the global community but also amongst top Chinese leaders. “So the Central Government wants to protect China’s farmland. But local and municipal governments have an interest in facilitating the conversion of rural land into industrial and commercial usage, primarily for the profit that can be made. This has become one of the main sources of municipal finance in recent years,” says Lin. In contrast to the existing literature, which focuses either on the rural or the urban landscape, Lin has discovered that it is precisely in the interface between urban and rural that massive development occurs and where social conflict has been so intense. Developing China: The Clash between Urban and Rural C hina’s rapid conversion of rural land into urban use has caused repeated social unrest in recent years. Now a new book looks at the underlying causes of these problems, and challenges the traditional view that uncontrolled, and inefficient, land use is the result of ambiguous property rights. Professor George Lin Chu Sheng, former Head of Department of Geography, claims this over simplifies the problem and goes on to trace the root causes of this massive uncontrolled land development. According to the constitution, China’s land includes two components – land in the city is owned by the state, while in the countryside it is owned by the collective. “Nobody actually knows who owns China’s rural land,” says Lin. “Even after economic reforms, land in the Chinese countryside is owned by the collective, not by individuals. But, in reality, who actually claims ownership of this rural land? It’s the local cadres. Let’s say you have a Hong Kong investor who wants to set up a factory in the Chinese countryside, where the land is relatively cheap, he needs to sign a contract to lease this land but the question is with whom? He negotiates with the local cadre. “There’s an ongoing battle between the central government, in Beijing, and municipal and local governments all over the country over land development. “The Central government is very concerned about food secur i ty,” he says. “In 1995, the well-known western scholar, Lester Brown, publ ished a book, entitled Who Will Feed China? His argument is that if China continues with this conversion of rural land into urban use then it will not have enough land to feed itself. If this happens China will have to buy food from the international market driving up demand and food prices, and exacerbating hunger and starvation in “From time to time you read news reports of social unrest and riots – and this is where they frequently occur because this is where urban extension encroaches upon rural land.” Surveys show that land taking has increased 15-fold in ten years with an estimated 40 million farmers displaced. “I think only when you are able to identify the root causes can you find an answer to the problems. Obviously, if you follow the previous perception that the problem lies in an ambiguous definition of land use then the answer is that you have to give a clearer definition. But if you feel that this is an oversimplification, then you need to take the changing political, fiscal and land system and find the answer in further reformulations of the system.” Developing China: Land, Politics and Social Conditions. George C.S. Lin The Pearl River Delta where rural meets urban. BOOKS Award-winning Poet Inspired by a Science Talk Poet and academic Agnes Lam Shun Ling has become the first Chinese to win a Special Mention in the prestigious Nosside International Poetry Prize. L am, an Associate Professor and Acting Director in the University’s Centre for Applied English Studies, impressed judges of the Italy-based prize with her poem, Vanilla in the Stars . It explores the relationship between cosmic dust and life on Earth and, owing to her heavy workload, was the only one she managed to write in the last academic year. “It was a busy time,” she says. “We were joining Arts and there was curriculum reform. So I could not sit down to write a poem apart from that particular one.” Despite this, she possesses the soft-spoken serenity of one who spends her days in far calmer pastures, and talks warmly of her inspiration for the prize-winning poem. It carries a line with reference to Professor Kwok Sun’s (the Dean of Science) book, Cosmic Butterflies , and was prompted, unusually, by a conference organized by the Faculty. “I was wondering about the connection between organic life in outer space and human life. Professor Kwok invited people from NASA to come to HKU in January 2008, and I had already been thinking about the poem for a few months. After attending the conference, I thought about it for another few months before I actually wrote it.” She also read two of Professor Kwok’s books to discover more about the life and death of a star. “If you ask me what inspires me,” she says, “it’s not just other people’s poetry. It’s also any knowledge. Any knowledge is eventually imagination. Poets take information and experiences from different sources and synthesize them into something that is meaningful. Writing is a way of making sense of human experience, making sense of my own life experience and of the experiences of people around me, and trying to learn something from all this, and trying to transcend that experience.” She says her greatest inspiration comes from the lives of the people around her, but adds, “I have been interested in different things at different times in my life. I don’t want to repeat myself because there isn’t that much time to repeat oneself and you don’t want your readers, or you yourself, to be bored.” She started writing in her teens and never planned to become a poet. “It just happened.” But to date she has produced two volumes – Woman to Woman and Other Poems and Water Wood Pure Splendour – and is currently working on a third. Her poetry is known for its accessibility and she says, “I think good poetry should be accessible. If it’s not, then it’s not reaching a wider audience. I do not believe in esoteric poetry. Maybe I feel that way because I am a learner of English myself, and I still feel that I’m learning the language even as I use it, and I really hope that my poems can be understood by anyone with a certain level of English. You shouldn’t need literary training.” Her advice for young poets is that they should be themselves. “That’s very important. If you try to be someone else, you will lose your own voice. To be yourself, you must find out what you are like, and writing may be part of that process. Reading is also part of that process. They should read as much as they can, and continue to be interested in many things because there is inspiration everywhere. “I feel that poetry, like most forms of literature, is not just for one group of people but for people everywhere.” PEOPLE The University’s School of English has launched a new Poetry Prize for unpublished writers with a winner’s award of HK$2,500 and the opportunity to have a collection of poems published by The Hong Kong University Press. Submissions are invited internationally and must be at least 48 pages in length. For more information go to www.hku.hk/english/hkupoetryprize.