Middle Kingdom tries to shun global village

THE small-minded peasant is scared of the global village. The dog in Sichuan barks at the sun. The foolish old man wants to move the mountain.

By their own accounts, the thrust of the past 15 years of reform by Chinese leaders is to retool the mentality - or to use patriarch Deng Xiaoping's more graphic expression, to ''change the brains'' - of the xiaonong.

A xiaonong is a small-time farmer. Because of factors including a minimal education, being tied to the earth for life and a parochialism that is a product of remnant feudalism and lack of exposure to the outside world, the xiaonong thinks small.

Very much in Chairman Mao's autarkist mode, the peasant cultivates his own plot; his only pleasure comes from his wife and children. He wouldn't think of selling products in areas where he might enjoy a comparative advantage. He does not even read the People's Daily. But especially after Deng's nanxun, or ''imperial tour to the south'', in early 1992, the xiaonong seems to be becoming an endangered species.

Farmers who could barely add up on their fingers are buying cheap in Guangdong and selling dear in Heilongjiang. Karaoke bars are the rage even in the remotest towns in mountainous provinces. And then there are satellite broadcasts.

In the past two years, dishes have sprung up like bamboo shoots in the spring. Satellite-receiving facilities jostle the skylines even in the most unimaginable places, like the barracks of the People's Liberation Army, where soldiers are theoretically not encouraged to croon a la Ronnie Yip or Andy Lau.