Basic

To many in the West, rural China is synonymous with poverty, hardship and backwardness. It’s an image that isn’t entirely conjured by the Occidental mind: The rural-urban divide is very much a real thing in China, helped along by decades of policies that have in turn devastated the countryside and encouraged the growth and prosperity of urban living.

But a new breed of rural influencers in China are set on turning that image on its head. These online “new farmers” are turning to popular social media platforms such as Weibo and Douyin, the Chinese TikTok, to showcase what the countryside has to offer. Short videos of people making traditional crafts, cultivating crops and pickling vegetables – among other idyllic pursuits – have racked up millions and millions of views.

Mitchell Gallagher, a scholar of Chinese culture, explains that the new farmer movement has the official stamp of approval from Beijing, which sees it in the context of its “rural revitalization strategy.” This raises questions over the authenticity of the viral videos. But as Mitchell notes: “For all the conceivable pitfalls, the new farmer trend is an opportunity to challenge the urban-centric narrative that has dominated China’s development story for decades and rethink whether progress always means high-rises and highways, or if there’s value in preserving ways of life that have sustained communities for centuries.”

Meanwhile, we are continuing to keep an eye on developments in the Middle East, in particular the likely consequences of the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and preview the upcoming trip by Joe Biden to Angola – the first by Biden to an African country during his tenure as U.S. president.