Perched in the cabin of a clunky Russian tractor, Li Chengbin, a 62-year-old peasant farmer from China, drove round and round in ever widening circles, plowing a field to get it ready for planting — and rejoicing at the opportunities offered by untamed lands in the Russian Far East almost empty of people. Back home in China, he said, he never had a plot anywhere near as big as the 82-acre spread that he and his son now farm in Russia. The vast majority of China’s 300 million peasants have barely two acres. Mr. Li’s family farm in China is even smaller. “In China, this much land would make me the biggest farmer in the country,” Mr. Li said, yanking a rusty lever to try to get his puffing tractor to go faster. He and his son had bought the tractor, along with other decrepit farming equipment, from the remnants of a defunct Soviet-era collective farm. Read more
