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China Insight
Modern-Day Yugong or Greedy Wolf? Critical Discussions after Ningxia Land Owner Goes Viral Begging for Water
Is Sun Guoyou the victim of bad coal mine practices or did he throw dust in netizens’ eyes? The viral Ningxia story is getting more complex.
This week, the story of Ningxia land owner Sun Guoyou (孙国友) went completely viral on Chinese social media.
Various Chinese media outlets, from Sina News to Beijing News and The Paper all covered the story of the old man who was seeing his enormous land destroyed because a nearby coal mine had cut off water supplies. Although they had allegedly promised Guo to resume water supplies on March 27, they did not follow through.
A video of Sun kneeling on the ground and begging for water went viral on Douyin and Weibo, where dozens of hashtags relating to the story received millions of views (read our earlier story here).
One crucial aspect of the story is how Sun Guoyou allegedly has been combating desertification and improving the soil conditions of the barren land through afforestation, by planting trees and irrigating the land.
This is one of the various reasons why netizens initially felt sorry for Sun and wanted to help him out. People were rooting for the underdog, supporting the seemingly weaker Sun against the more powerful coal mine company and local authorities.
He was also called the ‘modern-day Yugong’ by some, referring to the old Chinese fable about an old man who was called foolish for persistently trying to move a mountain, yet finally succeeded in doing so. The Chinese idiom about “the foolish old man moving a mountain” (愚公移山 yúgōng yíshān) is often used as a figure of speech for persisting despite hardship.
But the more viral Sun’s story went since March 29, the more people started doubting his story and called into question whether Sun was genuinely an underdog or just a business owner exploiting his land and, through the help of social media, manipulating the circumstances to his benefit.
On March 30, Weibo knowledge blogger ‘PYGZ’ (@平原公子赵胜) was among many other netizens accusing Sun of planting the wrong species of trees and raising cattle and sheep on his land, causing more soil erosion instead of improving soil quality. Rather than controlling desertification (“治沙”), Sun’s practices are creating sand dunes (“造沙”) instead, the blogger argued.
Why would Sun do such a thing? According to PYGZ, the state subsidizes windbreak forests that help prevent desertification (“防沙林”): 500-800 yuan ($72-$116) per Chinese “mu” (亩), which is about 666 square meters / 0.165 acre. With a land as big as Sun’s, the annual subsidy would be millions of yuan (or more than $1M per year).
“This is what combating desertification in Ningxia actually looks like,” charity blogger Sui Jiao (@碎叫) wrote, sharing photos of desert control work: “If you are concerned about desertification control, you can donate money to the China Green Foundation (中国绿化基金会) to plant trees.”
Desert control work in Ningxia, image via Weibo @碎叫
Desert control work in Ningxia, image via Weibo @碎叫
Another thing that came up in critical discussions on Sun’s case is how he previously received over seven million yuan (more than $1M) in compensation from the Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group (神华宁夏煤业集团) for economic losses caused by them occupying forest land (#孙国友此前727万判决书曝光#).
As more netizens are starting to dive deeper into the facts behind Sun’s desperate kneeling video, Sun’s family stated that they did not want to further escalate the issue and were just focused on saving their trees for now (#跪地求水林场主家属称不想事情升级#).
The nationalist Weibo blogger Ziwuxiashi (@子午侠士), who has over one million followers, posted an image of a wolf sneaking away, writing: “They want to get away, but I’m afraid it’s too late, the [wolf’s ] tail has already been exposed.” The blogger suggested that the Sun family might have enjoyed the spotlight, but do not want people to dig deeper.
Many others agreed, suggesting that Sun and his family staged the dramatic video to draw attention to their case, but now want to retreat before more details come out showing that Sun might not be the underdog he made himself out to be.
“Netizens are not like toilet paper that you can wipe your ass with and get rid of once no longer needed,” one Weibo user wrote.
Chinese political commentator Hu Xijin (@胡锡进) also commented on the issue – as he does whenever social stories go viral like this, – and wrote that he understood why netizens would doubt Guo’s sincerity or even say the entire video was staged.
At the same time, he reminded people that issues such as these are never black and white, arguing it is understandable that Guo earns income from his land and that it would only be right for the coal mine company to supply water to Guo if that is what they legally agreed on.
Hu suggested that, while many details in this story still have not come out, netizens might want to wait to make an absolute judgment in the case since issues such as these are usually not clear-cut and can be more complex than they initially seem.
More updates will follow.
By Manya Koetse
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China Environment
‘Modern-Day Yugong’: Desperate Chinese Land Owner Kneels and Begs for Water
A desperate Ningxia land owner is seeing his plantation getting destroyed because a coal mine cut off water supplies.
A video showing a Chinese land owner collapsing on the ground and begging for water has gone trending on Chinese social media.
The man in the video is Mr. Sun Guoyou (孙国友), a senior local resident who acquired a very large piece of dry, sandy land back in 2003 and has since been working hard to plant trees and grow plantations to enhance the soil conditions.
The land is located in Majiatan (马家滩镇), a small town with just over 5000 people in Lingwu, Ningxia, in the northwest of China.
Sun’s land covers about 3,294 acres (approximately 13 km2) in area, and about three quarter of the land has plantations and trees growing on it.
Earlier this year, a coal mine, located nearby Sun’s land, cut off the supplies of water to the area. This has devastating consequences since Sun depends on these water supplies for irrigation.
Without the water, Sun’s hard work of the past twenty years is going to waste and all of the plantations will die.
Although the coal mine previously promised Sun that they would restore the water supplies to his land, they have not done so yet. In an act of desperation, Sun threw himself to the ground and begged for water, shouting out: “They have not given me water, they did not give me water!”
That moment, which happened on March 27, was filmed by Sun’s daughter and then uploaded to social media, where it soon went viral on various social platforms including Douyin and Weibo, where different hashtags related to the incident received millions of views (some related hashtags received over 360 million views #市领导回应林场主跪地求供水#)
Different hashtags related to the incident became hot topics on Weibo. Screenshot by What’s on Weibo.
Since the video went viral, various Chinese media outlets have reached out to the 64-year-old Sun and his family. According to his daughter, who has grown up seeing her father planting trees and working on the sandy soils, this is the toughest situation the family has ever faced.
As reported by Sina News, the local water supply company is experiencing problems in providing water to Sun’s lands on time. The local mining activities have also impacted the quality of available water in the area; the water now has high salt concentrations and can not be used as irrigation water. The coal mine allegedly is the responsible party for not committing to their agreement and for disrupting the local water supplies.
Sina also reported that the state-owned mining & energy company Shenhua Group (中国神华), one of the largest coal-producing companies in the world, has been receiving many questions from investors following the incident. According to Shenhua, the mine in question is not related to them, and belongs to the China Energy Investment Group (国家能源集团), a mining and energy company administrated by the SASAC of China’s State Council.
The topic has partly received a lot of attention because it is not exactly clear who can be blamed for this situation and how to resolve it. It is just the coal mine that should take responsibility, what role is played by the local goverment, and what about the responsibilities of higher authorities?
Besides the legal discussions surrounding the topic, Sun has also touched the hearts of many netizens and is being called “a modern-day Yugong” (“当代愚公”).
Yugong refers to a well-known fable from Chinese mythology about “the Foolish Old Man who moved mountains.” The Chinese idiom (yúgōng yíshān 愚公移山) is about an old man whose family home in a remote village is blocked by mountains. To facilitate movement for himself and his (grand)children, the old man is determined to remove the mountains, shovel by shovel.
After years of hard work, the gods in heaven were so moved by the old man’s determination to move the mountain that they carried the mountain away. The story conveys the idea of strong faith being able to move mountains.
Determined to save his vast, sandy land – where he has manually planted trees over the past two decades, – Sun Guoyou is seen as someone who is also an image of perseverence and hard work.
For now, it seems that there is some light at the end of the tunnel for Sun and his family as the first local companies have arrived with huge water tank trucks to supply his land with water.
For this ‘modern-day Yugong,’ it may not be the gods in heaven but the helpers on social media that are trying to move mountains to save the hard-working man.
Update March 31: Modern-day Yugong or Greedy Wolf? Critical Discussions after Ningxia Land Owner Goes Viral Begging for Water
By Manya Koetse
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Modern-Day Yugong or Greedy Wolf? Critical Discussions after Ningxia Land Owner Goes Viral Begging for Water
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