HAIKOUZI, China - Bent under a load of corn stalks that weighs as much as he does, 61-year-old Xu Rongsheng trudges up a mountain road to the farmhouse where he was born and raised five children.

Xu gets by on what he can grow on a few acres, meat and eggs from ducks, chickens and sheep in his backyard and occasional gifts from friends and relatives. He wishes he could pass the house on to his children, but they've left for jobs in the city.

The story is the same throughout much of China's poor countryside, home to 800 million people. Farmers like Xu have just managed to make ends meet while eastern cities have ridden to prosperity on an export-driven economic boom.

As China's legislature meets this week, making life better for farm families is a critical issue for the Communist government, which worries that rising anger at rural poverty could threaten political stability.

"Solving the problems facing agriculture, rural areas and farmers remains a top priority of our work," Premier Wen Jiabao said Saturday on the legislature's opening day. "There are more than a few factors threatening social stability."

Wen promised to scrap farm taxes and said that by 2007, the government will see to it that every Chinese child gets nine years of schooling, with free textbooks for the poorest.

Rising taxes have sparked violence between farmers and local authorities, causing embarrassment for leaders of a Communist Party that was founded on improving the lot of peasants.

In his mountain village two hours north of Beijing, Xu already has benefited from pilot programs that eliminated agricultural taxes a few years ago. He gets government-supplied rice and flour and subsidized medical care.

But even with that help, he scrapes by. The area offers no livelihood to pass on to his children, who have left for factory jobs and to work in construction in nearby cities.

By the millions, other poor farmers have flooded into China's cities looking for work over the past two decades.

The economic reasons are stark: Annual incomes for city dwellers average more than $1,000, the government says, while farmers made an average of just $355 last year.

With a deeply lined face and a toothless smile under a salt-and-pepper brush cut, Xu sits in his ramshackle farmhouse with his wife, chain-smoking cigarettes and offering persimmons and tea to a visiting reporter.

The couple work, eat and sleep in one room. Wilted cabbages used to make dumplings through the winter line the windowsill. Sacks of flour lie stacked in the corner.

Xu's wife, Wang Chunfeng, complains about "Green for Trees," an erosion-control campaign they have been forced to join that pays farmers to plant trees instead of more profitable crops.

Chinese leaders have eased some rules on land use, but still refuse to let farmers own their plots and often dictate what they grow.

Wang says that if her family grew corn, instead of government-ordered chestnut trees and soybeans, they could sell some and use the rest to feed their sheep. Instead, Xu walks to a nearby market several times a week and pays $3.40 for all the corn stalks and husks he can carry.

Many Chinese farmers like Xu have simply left their fields, opting for jobs in the city, leaving villages without able-bodied men and creating migrant shantytowns in urban centers.

In a neighboring village, Zhang Youhao, 41, trims branches in his small orchard of peach trees.

With a 7-year-old son at home, he can't rely on selling fruit alone, which brings in only about $230 a year. So Zhang works part time in a restaurant, which adds about $2,300 annually.

Zhang tends his orchard when he can but because has no contract for his land, which was passed down to him from his parents, he fears corrupt officials will seize the land and sell someone else the right to use it.

A key source of anger in China's heartland in recent years has been such seizures of farmland for real estate development, with little or no compensation for farmers.

Zhang laughs when asked whether his son will one day prune the trees and sell their peaches.

"My wife hopes he will graduate from high school," says Zhang, who himself only completed middle school. "We hope he will go to the city to work."