Following the central government's call last year to develop a new countryside, there has been no shortage of data and opinion from scholars and officials.

But strangely, farmers, the intended beneficiaries of the programme, seemed unable to have their voices heard.

"I searched the Internet and databases for days and found tens of thousands of essays in the field, but none was devoted to farmers' opinions on the massive campaign," said Ye Jingzhong, professor at the Humanities and Development School of China Agricultural University.

Ye added he was not surprised by the absence of the farmers' voices, as he has seen China's farmers taken for granted for decades.

He and his team conducted surveys in eight villages in four provinces in February and July, and the results are in a book recently published by the Social Sciences Academy Press, entitled "Construction of the New Countryside: Farmers' Perspective."

It might not be a commercial hit in a market increasingly inundated by leisure reading or money-making titles designed for urbanites, but has led to a strong media response with major news portals and newspapers reporting it.

"Ye's book is of great importance as it addresses the farmers' perspective on countryside development for the first time. If government bureaus, especially the local leadership, can draw lessons from the book, progress will be greatly facilitated," Wen Tiejun, an expert in agriculture and rural study with Renmin University of China, told China Daily.

The country began the campaign to build a harmonious socialist countryside this year, calling for increased productivity, relative affluence, a pleasant social environment and democratic administration.

But in their research, Ye and his team found a wide range of viewpoints considering what a new countryside should be like among different provinces.

For example, in East China's Jiangsu Province, the cradle of the country's township enterprises, farmers said they consider township factories with everyone having a stable job and a comfortable two-storey home as the symbol of a new, harmonious countryside.

But in Hunan, an agriculture province, the view is greatly different.

"Advanced agricultural production and better irrigation systems are vital for building a new countryside," a farmer said.

Ye said: "Opinions on the new socialist countryside are so diverse among people of different genders, ages, regions and levels of education.

"Therefore, authorities should avoid applying the same stereotypes to all villages and use the limited amount of money for the most urgent projects peculiar to that village."

To his dismay, Ye found some local officials had already made the mistake of blindly copying others' models.

For instance, a village in Fujian Province in East China borrowed about 1.6 million yuan (US$204,400) to build 50 villas for its villagers as local officials considered villas the basic symbol for the new countryside.

But if they had consulted the farmers, the money might have been used to improve the process, such as buying equipment and fertilizer, rather than beautiful houses. What's more, the farmers can't afford to pay back the loans for the villas, anyway.

According to Ye, the reason many village officials made beautiful houses their symbol for the new countryside is that they misinterpreted what TV programmes had broadcast.

"TV is the only information carrier for most villagers," Ye said. "What they saw as model villages on TV were exceptionally lined-up houses, broad roads and green forestry. This misled them."

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