Negotiating Debt: The Making of Puhan Rural Community in North China

In 2012, the above calligraphy painting was hung on the wall of Puhan Peasant Technological Training School. The calligrapher, Zhang Hongshu, was a local peasant from the Puhan Rural Community. Quoting Thomas Jefferson from the Chinese version of Drucker Sayings on Society, he maintained that “the banks and corporations that will grow around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property.” The painting reflected the local peasants’ perception of exploitation by financialization.

In 2012, after six years of working with Fuping Microfinance Company of Fuping Development Institute—a famous Chinese nonprofit founded and run by neoliberal economists and private entrepreneurs to alleviate poverty through rural microfinance and training programs of domestic helpers—the Puhan Rural Community, the first officially registered peasant association in China, broke with the organization.