[Lu Yeqin, Villager]:
“Officials from the village sold land. This land originally belonged to the villagers. After it was sold, the [villagers] were not given any money for it. The villagers are upset, and after all, this land was passed down through their family business. They rely on the land for their livelihood, but now it has been sold.”

Police did not stop more than 3000 villagers from marching to the village committee, but neither have the villagers received a response from local officials.

Local resident Mrs. Ma says the turnout has been huge.

[Mrs. Ma, Villager]:
“Everyone from the village came out. Today we will march again, and the whole village should come. I have even seen kids coming out, passing by my building.”

The Chinese blogosphere is buzzing with chatter about the demonstrations in Panhe East and West, where tensions between local residents and officials have followed a Wukan-like trajectory. From Tea Leaf Nation, which also posted images that had surfaced on Sina Weibo yesterday:

As reported on the Internet portal China.com, the Panhe Village Committee spent the last several years selling off piece after piece of Panhe’s land, all without the villagers’ knowledge. On June 11, 2011, a Wenzhou copper company brought thugs and local police as it began to mine pieces of ancestral land, leading to a confrontation that saw villagers injured, including women and the elderly. The report further states that after villagers’ attempts to report the matter were ignored, they retaliated on October 16, 2011 by attacking the property of another local company. In response, the report continues, the local government arrested nine villagers, two of whom are still in custody.

World Journal, a popular Chinese-language newspaper in North America, reports that government officials and police fled the small village of approximately 5,000 in October of last year following a violent confrontation with villagers in which more than ten were arrested. The reports agree that villagers’ demands for compensation were substantially ignored by authorities.

According to World Journal, the Wukan uprising’s ultimate success inspired Panhe villagers to decide to hold widespread demonstrations starting February 1.  Since that time, the report continues, demonstrators have circled the village unmolested. The street demonstrations shown in photographic accounts include demonstrators waving banners with slogans such as, “Denounce the Local Panhe Government’s Deceit Of The Masses,” “Down With Corrupt Officials,” and “Reselling Land And Destroying Fertile Farmland Is A Heinous Crime.”

See also CDT coverage of a new survey in which 43% of farmers reported being victims of land grabs. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Elizabeth Economy wrote Tuesday that “more Wukans are on China’s horizon” unless China creates a real system of official accountability or enforces the rule of law.

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Post tags: chinese communist party, corruption, Guangdong, land grab protests, Panhe, sina weibo, social media, Wukan, Zhejiang
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“According to information, because of long-term overwork, vice mayor Wang Lijun is highly stressed and in poor health. He is now accepting vacation-style treatment,” Chongqing’s information office posted in a message on its microblog account on Wednesday.

Statements of that kind are extremely rare in China. This one – retweeted tens of thousands of times by microblog users – came hours after large numbers of police surrounded the US consulate in Chengdu on Tuesday evening, blocking off roads around the building.

Chinese microblog users began to circulate pictures of the scene and rumours of a high-profile attempted defection. They claimed a car with what appeared to be official number plates was seen outside the building but was subsequently removed by Chinese police.

Both the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and local Chengdu officials declined to comment on the events at the consulate, but the situation reinforces recent speculation that Wang had fallen out of favor with Bo. Last week, the Chongqing government announced that it had moved Wang from his public security post to take charge of certain economic, political and other affairs. Netizens jeered at the official statement on Sina Weibo today and speculated that Wang had faced a corruption probe, according to Reuters, a situation which could potentially embarrass Bo Xilai and threaten his political aspirations:

“This will be a big blow to Bo Xilai, because Wang was instrumental in his anti-organized crime campaign, and that was instrumental in building Bo’s appeal in public opinion and even among officials,” said Chen Ziming, an independent scholar who studies party politics.

“Now the hero of that campaign has turned into a scandal, so at the least that’s a blow to Bo’s public prestige,” said Chen, a former political prisoner who lives in Beijing.

ChinaGeeks’ Charles Custer wrote that Sina has been censoring searches for “Wang Lijun” on and off today, adding later that some versions of the story claim Wang “may have divulged significant amounts of privileged information to US diplomats,” and discussed the political implications of the situation:

On the international side, the implications of a high-level official defecting or attempting to defect just before soon-to-be-president Xi Jinping makes his visit to the US could be huge. If the US were to grant Wang asylum, that would be….well, awkward probably doesn’t even begin to cover it.

On the domestic side, with China’s leadership transition fast approaching and Wang being high in Bo Xilai’s Chongqing administration, a defection or even just a rumored defection on Wang’s part could seriously damage Bo’s position. Certainly, there are forces within the Party who are very opposed to Bo’s rise, and it’s hard to think of what better ammunition they could have against him than something like this. On Twitter, @niubi theorized that Sina could be allowing some of the posts about Wang Lijun to go through on purpose to damage Bo Xilai’s reputation, and that certainly seems possible.

Assessing the likelihood that any of this (beyond the facts) is real is very difficult. On the one hand, the US generally doesn’t grant asylum from in-country embassies, precisely because those embassies are easy to surround with police. A year or so ago, I was asked by a Chinese friend to research this process, and found that generally speaking, it’s much easier to be granted political asylum if you’re outside the country you want asylum from. It strikes me that if Wang Lijun really did flee to the Chengdu embassy to request asylum, he must have been in a rather desperate situation. Otherwise, presumably, he could have waited for an opportunity to travel abroad and had a much greater chance of success.

See also previous CDT coverage of Wang Lijun’s role in Bo Xilai’s 2009 anti-corruption campaign, including reports late last year on the possibility of a new mafia movie based on Wang’s story.

Update: Shanghaiist has posted pictures from Sina Weibo of police surrounding the U.S. consulate in Chengdu last night, adding that the unsubstantiated rumors of Wang’s defection were largely spread by overseas Chinese news site Boxun. The Wednesday morning post on Chongqing’s official microblog quickly attracted a wave of comments about the “vacation-style treatment” (休假式治疗) it prescribed for Wang, according to The Wall Street Journal:

As if often the case when rumors about top officials begin to circulate, Sina’s censors went a bit schizophrenic with the Wang case. Mr. Wang’s name was blocked and then unblocked in searches on the site and appeared briefly on Sina Weibo’s list of trending topics before disappearing. Likewise, the original Chongqing government announcement of Mr. Wang’s vacation was taken down and then reposted in the early afternoon, erasing all comments that had amassed to that point.

Still, the Chinese Internet meme machine powered on. Among those rolling with the vacation theme Wednesday afternoon was the automotive section of the Chengdu Business Daily newspaper, which asked Weibo users which car they would choose if forced to take treatment similar to Mr. Wang’s.

“I’d take a Lamborghini,” responded one reader. “That way if you crash and die at least you die with face.”

The New York Times has more on the rumors surfacing about Wang’s fate:

A Chinese reporter with the newspaper Southern Metropolis said that he had learned from police sources that Mr. Wang had tried to enter the consulate, but had been arrested and that he had since been flown to Beijing for questioning. The post was later deleted from the Sina Weibo microblog.

…

Given the secretive nature of Chinese politics, the fact that the rumors were so widespread suggested that something was amiss. Because Chinese leaders put such a priority on presenting a united front, at least in public, the rumors are seen as hurting Mr. Bo.

“For Bo Xilai it’s not good news,” said Jin Zhong, chief editor of the China-watching magazine Kaifang in Hong Kong. “The Communist Party has always had a lot of internal factions. We don’t know what most of them are but when things like this come up to the top it shows that something is going on.”

ChinaGeeks’ Charles Custer relayed a report from the Oriental Daily News which claims that rumors of Wang’s attempt at asylum are true. He also notes that McClatchy Newspapers’ Tom Lasseter is in Chengdu and Tweeting that “there’s nothing apparently out of the ordinary in front of the Consulate.” Lasseter reported from Chengdu on Wednesday:

Interviews with shopkeepers in the area suggested the police presence there Tuesday evening might have been less overwhelming than presented by Internet reports. A clerk at a nearby drug store, who did not want her name published because it wasn’t clear what had happened, said that while there were police cars parked on the street outside the consulate, the road was not closed to traffic.

A saleswoman at a clothing shop a few doors down gave a similar account.

It wasn’t possible to verify their version of events, however.

Translation: The building sign says: American Consulate, Chengdu
Sign with arrow pointing left says, “Vacation-style Treatment Center”
The figure on the left (Wang Lijun) says: “Boss, my stress is too great!”
The figure on the right (Bo Xilai): “Bastard! Let the leaders escape first!”

Update 3: The United States has confirmed that Wang Lijun visited the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, but did not speak to rumors that he requested asylum, according to Voice of America:

A spokeswoman for the State Department, Victoria Nuland, told reporters Wednesday that Deputy Mayor of Chongqing Wang Lijun had a scheduled meeting at the U.S. consulate in the city of Chengdu. She said the meeting probably took place Monday and that Wang left the consulate of his own volition.

She did not provide information on what the meeting was about.

“Well, I think you’re referring to reports about the vice mayor of Chongqing – right – City. So his name is Wang Lijun. Wang Lijun did request a meeting at the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu earlier this week in his capacity as vice mayor. The meeting was scheduled, our folks met with him, he did visit the consulate and he later left the consulate of his own volition. So – and obviously, we don’t talk about issues having to do with refugee status, asylum, et cetera.”

See also a video of Wednesday’s State Department Press Briefing (beginning at 3:22), in which Nuland addresses questions about Wang Lijun. China’s Vice Foreign Minister called Wang’s visit to the consulate an “isolated incident” and said it would not affect Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to the United States next week, according to Reuters. But the Sydney Morning Herald’s John Garnaut writes that several of Wang Lijun’s close associates in Dalian have also been taken into custody, according to Chongqing sources, and adds fuel to the rumor mill surrounding a potential corruption probe against Chongqing’s leadership:

Speculation was swirling last night that Mr Bo himself was a target of the central investigation, after he had unsettled senior figures in the Party, and that Mr Wang sought refuge in the US consulate after turning witness against him.

…

Two close political watchers, with connections with Party and military investigators respectively, speculated that the Chongqing corruption probe might involve a degree of payback from a separate probe initiated by Mr Bo’s close friend and “princeling” ally, Liu Yuan, inside the People’s Liberation Army.

On January 19 the Herald/Age first reported that General Liu Yuan had staked his career on a “do-or-die” corruption campaign.

He told officers he would pursue his investigation to the end regardless of “how high one’s position is or how powerful the background”.

The official Chongqing Daily ran a front page article heralding “Peaceful Chongqing” on Thursday, though China Media Project’s David Bandurski writes that “all is not well on Chongqing’s political scene” ahead of this year’s CCP leadership transition:

In light of the breaking Wang Lijun story, the front-page article in Chongqing Daily looks like a concerted effort — even possibly a desperate one — to burnish and defend Bo Xilai’s legacy. Chongqing’s fight against crime from 2008 to 2010 is probably the most important feather in Bo Xilai’s cap as he pushes ahead with his bid for promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee.

Given Wang Lijun’s status as a crime-busting bigshot, his name nearly synonymous with Chongqing’s anti-vice campaign, questions that encircle Wang are questions that encircle Bo Xilai.

Update 4: ChinaGeeks’ Charles Custer has the latest on the censorship – or lack thereof – of certain discussions about Wang Lijun and his “vacation-style medical treatment” on Sina Weibo as of early Thursday evening:

At the moment, Wang is back on the Sina Weibo trending topics list twice. “王力军” (an intentional mistyping of his name is #2 on the trending topics list, and the phrase “vacation-style medical treatment” is #7. Searches for “Wang Lijun” (typed correctly) remain uncensored. It’s quite clear that Sina is not trying to suppress this story at all, which begs the question: is someone at Sina trying to damage Bo Xilai?

Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Thursday that any conclusions about the fate of Bo Xilai may be premature:

“I think Bo Xilai is a bit like the Chinese version of Newt Gingrich — he’s so battle-scarred that does this really add or take away from a guy who is controversial?” said Kerry Brown, head of the Asia Programme at Chatham House, a London foreign policy institute, referring to the Republican aspirant to the White House.

“If he’s known for being a controversial character, I don’t think these things have a big impact,” Brown said of Bo. “It may just as well work to his advantage.”

…

Chinese citizens can’t vote for their leaders. But an informal poll on the city’s steep streets suggested it was too early to count out Bo, whose ill-concealed ambition and privileged background have attracted naysayers.

“From almost every perspective, Chongqing is better since Bo came,” said Wu Jun, 25, when asked about Bo, a previous mayor of Dalian, a port city in eastern China.

“Look at Dalian too. When Bo was there, they also were developing well. So there is something to the man. I think a lot of people my age like him because he seems real,” he said, adding that he wasn’t concerned about the rumors swirling around Wang.

Update 4 (Feb. 9, 1:30 PST):

Through a brief Xinhua dispatch, the Chinese government today acknowledged that Wang had spent time at the U.S. Consulate and said he was under investigation. From the Guardian:

The terse, one-line statement about Wang Lijun from official news agency Xinhua – issued at around 11pm Beijing time on Thursday– came one day after the announcement that he was receiving “vacation-style treatment” owing to stress.

The fall from grace of Chongqing’s vice-mayor and former police boss has triggered intense speculation of a political struggle because of his close ties to the city’s ambitious party secretary, Bo Xilai, who had been tipped for promotion when a new generation of leaders takes power this year.

Wang’s transfer to non-police duties last week led to suggestions that the two men had fallen out amid a possible corruption investigation.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, CCP 5th generation, censorship, Chengdu, Chongqing, corruption, defection, microblog, netizens, online public opinion, Politburo, sina weibo, u.s.-china relations, Wang Lijun, Xi Jinping
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Wednesday’s voting will result in the selection of an independent election committee to supervise upcoming rounds of voting for villagers’ representatives and a new village committee, according to election procedures.

Eleven villagers who will make up the election committee will not be permitted to run for the village committee.

“This is to ensure fairness in the coming village committee election,” said Lin Zulian, the village’s Communist Party of China (CPC) secretary. Lin was appointed secretary following last year’s protests.

The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore, the first foreign reporter to breach the December police blockade of Wukan and report from within the village, reported today that the election went smoothly other than a “small scuffle at the beginning over access for Hong Kong journalists.” Even though today’s vote only serves as the prelude to the main election in March, its symbolism was evident:

“We had to make a big thing, a big show, out of it to underline its importance and to guarantee that it was all fair and transparent,” said Yang Semao, one of the chief organisers.

“Wukan has been in the dark for so many years; its elections always manipulated. It is the first time we have done this so we want to do a good job,” he added. In the past few days, several academics and students have also arrived in Wukan, partly to observe the proceedings, and partly to offer advice to the villagers.

“This is very meaningful,” said Chen Liangshan, 61, who used to work in one of the village’s temples. “I have already got the list of people I will vote for in my mind. I am glad to get the chance to choose people who will actually do something. This is the first time we have ever seen a ballot and we are excited about it.”

Mr Chen filled in his ballot, a sheet of A4 paper, at a table covered by a bright red tablecloth and deposited it in one of seven shiny aluminium ballot boxes. According to an official press release, he was one of 7688 eligible voters, with 1043 voting by proxy.

Villagers believe the election is China’s first fully transparent and democratic vote, Moore wrote yesterday, though Voice of America reported skepticism from some that corrupt officials would ultimately regain power. Today represents “a small step towards grassroots rights,” according to Reuters:

At the end of polling, villagers burned unused ballot papers and clapped in jubilation at a largely orderly and trouble-free poll with turnout well over 80 percent.

“This far exceeded our expectations,” said Yang Semao, a village elder who helped officiate. “It shows our passion for democracy.”

Earlier, Xue Jianwan, daughter of village protest organizer Xue Jinbo, who died in police custody last year sparking further protests, visited her father’s memorial in the village square before voting. His body, which family members said bore marks of torture, has yet to be returned by authorities.

“This is something my father would have hoped for,” she said, bursting into tears after casting her ballot. “We just want to do our best to fulfill his final wishes.”

BBC News published a brief photo series with several shots from today’s election, including one of newly-installed village chief Lin Zulian, a leader of the protest movement who has taken charge of organizing the elections. The voting “marked the peaceful denouement” of the December standoff between villagers and armed police, according to the New York Times, which reported differing expectations among two Chinese observers:

Li Fan, an election expert at the World and China Institute in Beijing, thought the best one could hope for was an uncompromised election in Wukan. “It should be better given that all the media is watching,” he said. “If it is a good election, that will be unusual for China.”

But Lin Jiang, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, said he hoped that the once-belligerent fishing village could serve as a high-profile counterpoint to those who argue that democracy is ill-suited for China’s rural citizenry. “Peasants in China may be undereducated but the election in Wukan shows that just because you don’t have a good education, doesn’t mean you can’t elect officials to represent your interests,” he said.

One expert called today’s election a “paradigm shift” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. While the Chinese government censored nearly all information from the Internet amid the protests in December, The WSJ’s China Real Time Report noted the “unusually open-and borderline euphoric” dialogue about Wukan now permeating the Chinese blogosphere:

“This is a model,” Chinese real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang said Wednesday via the popular microblogging service Sina Weibo, where searches for Wukan were producing nearly a million posts.

“The start of something new,” observed another user of the service.

…

For many, the election brought to mind one of Mao Zedong’s favorite revolutionary slogans/sayings: “If you want freedom and democracy, you have to fight for it yourself,” wrote one Internet user in the popular discussion forum Maoyan Kanren. “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”

Others saw in the elections a rebuke of people, like martial-arts star Jackie Chan, who’ve questioned whether Chinese culture is compatible with democratic government.

“After this, whoever says Chinese people aren’t good enough for democracy, I’ll sue the bastard,” one particularly excited blogger promised on Sina Weibo.

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Post tags: corruption, democracy, Jackie Chan, land grab, Lin Zuluan, microblogging, online public opinion, protests, sina weibo, village elections, Wukan, Xue Jinbo
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In the latest protest, around 1,000 people from Wanggang village gathered in front of a government building in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, Tuesday in protest against Li Zhihang, their allegedly corrupt Communist Party secretary.

They waited there until the early hours of Wednesday, when they were told officials would probe their case and would announce the result of the investigation by February 19, Li Zhikai, a local villager, told AFP.

“They will dispatch a working team to our village to investigate property and financial records and have promised we can elect new members of a party committee,” he said by phone.

…

According to a petition posted online by the villagers, they had tried to petition the government on several occasions but to no avail, and so decided to protest peacefully.

One observer told AFP that the Guangdong authorities had to give into the demands of the Wanggang protestors in order to both validate their approach in Wukan and avoid more demonstrations. The Diplomat’s Jiang Xueqin digs into China’s land grab issue in light of incidents in Wukan and elsewhere, asking why the practice is so prevalent despite the risks it poses to the Communist Party regime:

The Party’s authority and legitimacy are predicated on guaranteeing at least 8 percent GDP growth a year, and economic growth is the mandate of all Party officials. If you’re Ningbo or Yantai or any large Chinese urban center with an entrepreneurial population and large resources then that’s not a problem. But if you’re a rural township of subsistence farmers then your best shot at producing the numbers you need to win praise and promotion is to grab that worthless land and put a factory or a condo on it. The magic of economic statistics is that, even if the factory or condo is empty, the value of land shoots up, and so does your career prospects.

Land grabbing is the Chinese equivalent of alchemy, and this quick immediate economic fix is just too addictive for local officials to say no to. This is a problem not just commonplace in the villages, but everywhere in China.

Consider the Chinese public school system, which focuses on test scores and college enrollment statistics. The system destroys students’ creativity and curiosity, independence and imagination, but as long as you get eighty percent of your students into tier one colleges you’re promoted and rewarded as a brilliant educator – just like magic!

No official was arrested because of the Wukan uprising. That’s because, as everyone knows in China, those officials were just doing their job.

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Post tags: chinese communist party, corruption, economic growth, GDP, Guangdong, Guangzhou, land grab, protests, Wanggang, Wukan
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With inflation running high and stock markets depressed, it is no wonder that Moutai, China’s most famous brand of the infamously potent baijiu liquor, has been elevated to the status of investment-grade luxury item in recent years. But according to one unexpectedly straight-talking communist party official [Shenzhen CCP Secretary Wang Rong], the sky-rocketing price of Moutai is also emblematic of another Chinese trend: rising corruption.

[...]“Moutai is so expensive. If there were no such consumption using public funds, it wouldn’t have reached its current price,” Mr. Wang said.

The most expensive category of Moutai, which is made in the southwestern province of Guizhou, now fetches a retail price of 2,000 yuan per bottle, up from around 1,500 yuan last year, the equivalent of many blue-collar Chinese workers’ monthly salary.

Mr. Wang’s tirade comes at a time of widespread public anger over the so-called “three publics” phenomenon, a reference to government officials’ use of public funds to travel abroad, buy cars for personal use, and eat and drink.

AFP covers President Hu’s recent remarks about the importance of combatting corruption. The article outlines the latest and most highly publicized cases of corruption in China:

[...]The most high-profile corruption scandal in recent years involved railway minister Liu Zhijun, who was sacked last February for “serious disciplinary violations”, wording that typically refers to corruption.

State media reports have alleged Liu took more than 800 million yuan (about $127 million) in kickbacks over several years on contracts linked to China’s high-speed network.

The public is increasingly intolerant of perceived official corruption, with a growing number of people taking to the streets and social networking sites to criticise the government and protest against pollution and graft.

Last month villagers in the southern province of Guangdong lived under police blockade for more than a week after driving out Communist Party leaders they said had been stealing their land for years.

A Xinhua article relays the rhetoric from a recent press release that came out of a plenary session of the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI):

[...]The communique said China’s current fight against corruption comes while the international environment is severe and complicated, and the domestic economic system and social structure are undergoing significant changes.

The war on corruption has scored evident achievements, but prominent problems still exist, and although anti-corruption efforts have been intensified, corruption still occurs, it said.

The general situation also features people’s higher expectations for anti-corruption achievements coexisting with the fact that corruption cannot be eradicated in the short term, it said.

And for some video coverage, see New Tang Dynasty TV’s report on corruption in China:

According to official data, 140-thousand officials were investigated for corruption in China in 2011. Professor Hu Xingdou from the Beijing Institute of Technology says that based on the world’s average corruption level, 99 percent of the corruption in China goes unreported.

[...]Liu Kaiming from the Shenzhen Institute of Contemporary Observation says there are ways the Chinese regime could combat corruption if it really wanted to.

[...]Corruption is an endemic problem in China, with public officials and managers of state-owned enterprises having stolen an estimated $123-billion since 1990.

Also see previous coverage of Chinese corruption and the campaign against it, via CDT.

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Post tags: anti-corruption, baijiu, corruption, moutai
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A police statement said the two were involved in a dispute after Mr Huang allegedly embezzled money from Mr Long.

Mr Huang, an agriculture official in Bajia, took Mr Long, who ran a forestry company, to visit a piece of woodland on 23 December, said the statement.

Afterwards, the two went to a local restaurant to share a local delicacy, slow-boiled cat-meat stew. A friend of Mr Long’s was also present.

Mr Huang is alleged to have added the plant Gelsemium elegans to the cat-meat dish.

Local media say Mr Long was taken to hospital after feeling dizzy and sick, and later suffered a cardiac arrest.

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Post tags: corruption, crime, local power
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In China, an extramarital love interest who comes between a happy couple is known pejoratively as “Little Three.” The expression appears in a joke about three kindergartners who want to play house.

“I’ll be the daddy,” the boy says.

“I’ll be the mommy,” one girl says.

Another girl frowns: “I guess I’ll have to be Little Three.”

If the law, the grievance process and stability maintenance were ever to play house, I think we’d see the following exchange:

“I’m the daddy,” Stability Maintenance says.

“I’m the mommy,” Grievance Process says.

The Law pouts. “Well, I’m Little Three.”

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Post tags: corruption, grievance system, judicial action, petitions, stability, Wukan
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Past the terrible details set at a drab spa on the edge of an industrial park in central China, the incident raised troubling questions in the minds of residents: Did government officials and their associates provide protection to the Water Cube? Were they among the customers who paid cash to rape local girls?

The Legal Daily carried allegations of some 10 instances of unnamed officials and well-known citizens in Chengguan paying for sex with young prostitutes at the Water Cube in the spring of 2010. The club, named for the Olympic aquatics center in Beijing, is one intersection away from a police station.

Hard feelings over local mandarins and their corrupt dealings are commonplace in China. But the fact that suspicions extend to something as grotesque as schoolgirl prostitution is the sort of development that causes concern in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s far from obvious, though, how the central leadership will manage such tensions amid complaints of privilege and cash trumping the law.

Read more about the unchecked power of local officials in China, via CDT.

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Post tags: corruption, local power, prostitution, rape
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“Because this matter has been achieved, we won’t persist in making noise,” village organiser, Yang Semao, told an assembly hall of village representatives and reporters, referring to the protests. He said protest banners would be taken down.

“They’ve agreed to our initial requests,” Yang told Reuters. But he added a caveat: “If the government doesn’t meet its commitments, we’ll protest again.”

Senior officials negotiating with villagers agreed to release three men held over land protests in September, when a government office was trashed, and to re-examine the cause of Xue’s death, a village organiser said earlier.

Villagers delayed plans to march to the nearby administrative center of Lufeng after initial signs of a potential compromise emerged yesterday. The two top lieutenants of Guangdong party secretary Wang Yang who joined today’s talks were the first high-level officials to intervene in the conflict for several months, an indication that Wang seized control of the situation from ineffective local officials with his political future hanging in the balance, according to The New York Times:

The meeting was the first with province-level officials, and it contrasted sharply with the denunciations and threats of arrest that have defined the official response to the protests since the standoff began.

The negotiations were led by the deputy chief of the provincial Communist Party committee, Zhu Mingguo, and the party secretary of the administrative region of Shanwei, Zheng Yanxiong. Mr. Zhu is a top lieutenant to the provincial party secretary, Wang Yang, one of China’s most prominent political leaders and an unspoken candidate for a spot on China’s ruling body, the standing committee of the Politburo, when membership in the body, which now has nine seats, turns over next year.

Wang sympathized with the villagers in an interview with the Chinese media on Wednesday, according to The Guardian:

“There was something accidental about the Wukan incident, but also something inevitable,” Wang said, according to the report.

“This is the outcome of conflicts that accumulated over a long time in the course of economic and social development,” said Wang, who analysts believe hopes for a position in China’s next central leadership.

The China Media Project surveyed the Chinese-language news landscape and observed that the constructive tone from Wang and other high-level officials “contrasts starkly with remarks made yesterday by the top leader of the city of Shanwei,” Zheng Yanxiong. A video of Zheng making an angry speech lambasting foreign media has circulated widely in Chinese cyberspace. Still, a sense of cautious optimism has filled Wukan. While villagers appear to have won a rare victory against the government in one of the highest profile “mass incidents” to strike China in recent years, The Telegraph assesses the movement’s broader impact on state-society relations in China:

Never before in recent history has violent unrest by peasant villagers in China been seen to force a compromise by high-ranking Party officials.

Wukan’s violent path to successful self-determination – however brief it might last – is thought to divide opinion in the Central Government.

The leadership in Beijing has been keen to crack down publicly on corrupt officials, the main source of much unrest among ordinary Chinese.

Some modernisers are keen to see how the rebellion plays out and if it can be used as a benchmark for political reform to catch up with the economic boom.

The Wall Street Journal added that the events in Wukan may change how the Communist Party deals with future incidents:

The significance of the authorities’ unusual concession in Wukan depends on how the details are played out, but it could affect the way other protests are handled, particularly in the corner of coastal southern China that has seen periodic unrest over the last few years. To Wukan’s northeast, the coastal town of Haimen saw a second day of protests Wednesday over a planned coal-fired power plant.

Conflicts over land disputes and other issues in much of Guangdong province have been intense because the area is among China’s most economically developed, pushing up land prices.

Underscoring the government’s concerns about public discontent, China’s security czar Zhou Yongkang met Wednesday with law and order officials and told them to improve the resolution of social conflicts and promote fair and honest law enforcement, state media reported.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chinese communist party, corruption, Guangdong, land grabs, mass incidents, Wang Yang, Wukan, Xue Jinbo
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Web photos show a large gathering of people and riot police in a public square, and it is reported about 30,000 people in the town have gone on strike

Demonstrators are claiming a 15-year-old boy had been killed and more than 100 others badly beaten by riot police, but this has yet to be confirmed.

Government officials in the town have so far refused to comment on the incident.

As the riots broke out in Haimen, the Chinese government pledged today to compensate victims of illegal land grabs in Wukan, where villagers have faced off against expelled local authorities since early last week over corrupt development deals and the death of a local resident while in police custody. From Bloomberg:

The government will reclaim 404 mu (26 acres) of land in the dispute and talk to villagers about the best way to develop it, according to an official who answered a hotline set up by the local government to handle inquiries about the protests. The official refused to give his name.

The deal, originally reported in the Southern Daily newspaper today, is separate from one announced on Dec. 16 in which the city of Shanwei announced it was suspending cooperation with a real estate developer, and would decide how to use local land with the villagers, the official said.

Villagers have been preparing to march to the nearby administrative town of Lufeng on Wednesday, after rebuffing attempts over the weekend by local Communist Party officials to discuss a resolution to the ongoing siege. On Monday, however, the center of Wukan played host to a unique sight within China’s authoritarian political system: Democratically elected village leaders holding court with visiting officials in a public meeting that, while perhaps more for show than substance, still indicated a willingness on both sides to discuss the conflict’s most gating issues. From The Wall Street Journal:

The visiting officials spoke with elected village leaders sitting on an open-air stage near Wukan’s center. Dozens of curious villagers looked on. Foreign journalists, more than a dozen of whom have entered the village in recent days, observed and shot video.

Nonetheless, Wukan’s leaders appeared to further dig in for a standoff of several more weeks or months. Speaking to reporters following the morning negotiations, the chairman of Wukan’s elected village committee, Yang Semao, reiterated calls for the government to return land that locals believe was illegally seized and sold as part of a property-development project. He and others have also called for the government to return the remains of Xue Jinbo, who authorities say died of a heart attack while in police custody, but many villagers believe was murdered.

The Wall Street Journal also posted a photoseries today with more images from Xue Jinbo’s funeral and Monday’s rallies, and a village organizer told Reuters that representatives would hold further talks with the government and lay out what it will take to cancel the march:

Yang Semao, a village representative, told Reuters that Wukan would send three representatives to talk to government officials in Lufeng, the nearby urban centre, and set conditions for calling off a protest march to Lufeng planned for Wednesday.

The government must remove police barricades around the village, allow more reporters to see Xue’s body, and set up an investigation panel into disputes in Wukan, said Yang.

“If they agree to it, then we’ll cancel the petition march tomorrow,” Yang said.

But Yang could have trouble persuading irate villagers to call off the march, even if those conditions are met. As he explained the demands, another villager chimed in: “We’ll still go ahead with the march. They will never agree to it today.”

In the same article, villagers expressed skepticism at the announcement of compensation for the land grab, with one claiming that “it’s all lies, he’s saying one thing but will do another.” McClatchy Newspapers’ Tom Lasseter Tweeted from Wukan today that there was “much discussion about whether or not the march will happen tomorrow,” relaying rumors of “last minute negotiation with provincial representatives” scheduled for tomorrow morning. He wrote on Monday that unease has set in as the villagers wait for intervention by the central government, and a resumption of their normal lives, but are left to negotiate with the same officials they curse in their daily demonstrations. From McClatchy:

“We’re afraid that if we go to Lufeng the police will shoot us, or detain people and beat them to death,” said Shen, a short man in baggy black pants who also didn’t want his first name used.

Organizers have painted a less dramatic picture: If the police don’t allow the procession to pass, they’ll just stage a sit-in.

Shen said that despite his misgivings he’d probably join the march.

“I used to go out to the sea and fish, and then come back at noon and tend my family’s land,” he said. “But now I can’t fish and our land has been taken away.”

Villagers echoed a sense of nervousness in interviews with Radio Free Asia on Monday, which reported mounting stress as villagers plan Wednesday’s march under the threat of force from a police blockade that now boasts several thousand armed officers:

Zhang said tensions were proving unbearable for many local residents caught up in the long-running dispute.

“A lot of local people are suffering from mental health problems now, as well as a lot of kids,” he said. “The authorities are calling us several times a day, telling us not to petition or complain, telling us how many police are waiting to enter the village.”

“These are terror tactics,” Zhang said.

The Hong Kong-based China Media Project, which has kept tabs on Chinese-language news and social media coverage of the Wukan situation, called out an article from one of China’s mainland newspapers – from the Guangdong provincial CCP mouthpiece Nanfang Daily – as the lone report in China’s press today about the ongoing standoff. The article, according to CMP, sends a message to other Party leaders around the country:

The report is essentially an announcement by the top Party leader in the prefectural-level city of Shanwei that the negotiations for an end to tensions will now be principally the business of Shanwei, not of Lufeng, the county in which Wukan Village is located. The bottom line: this hot potato has been bumped up a level on the Party power ladder.

The appearance of the article in Nanfang Daily is most likely meant to reflect to leaders around the country that Guangdong is prioritizing the handling of this crisis.

While onlookers await the unknown on Wednesday, Jacqueline N. Deal ponders the fallout from the movement in Huffington Post:

The consequences: Those responsible for maintaining social stability in China will now have to invest even more in local informants to stay abreast of nascent unrest. Already, estimates based on leaks from provincial security bureaus put the number of domestic spies in China at about 39 million, or three percent of the population. (By comparison, in East Germany under the Stasi, informants made up 2.5 percent of the population.) The Wukan precedent is also likely to inspire efforts to make sure that a town cannot survive for long without access to external supplies. Food, water, and medicine stocks in localities could now be regulated.

Even more troubling for the central government, the grievances of Wukan-ites are representative of a broader problem in China. CCP members readily confess that corruption is rampant. According to the former China bureau chief of the Financial Times, a local official who pays 300,000 yuan for a position can expect to pull in five million within a couple years of occupying his or her post. Most of this will be outside the salary attached to the position, make no mistake. Bribes, kickbacks, and the seizure of land for real estate development deals are part of a predatory system whose victims are ordinary Chinese people. It is the general population that suffers when shoddy materials are used in the construction of schools and roads, or even airports, in the case of the new terminal outside Beijing that recently collapsed. The general population is left homeless when they are evicted without compensation, or with payment insufficient to cover the cost of another residence.

These issues are at the forefront of internal party debates on future economic and social policy in the run-up to next year’s leadership transition. A rivalry between spokesmen for different approaches has been much reported. The populist, Mao-invoking leader of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, who launched a very public anti-corruption campaign, is said to be vying with Wang Yang, the leader of Guangdong province where Wukan is located, for a seat on the Politburo standing committee.

Update: Early news of the riots in Haimen did not contain an official government response, but more recent coverage does – Reuters is reporting that a government official who declined to give his name said the protesters had dispersed, while an Associated Press story cites a woman at the Haimen government office who hung up the phone after saying the protests were gone. A villager in Haimen also told The Associated Press that thousands of riot police confronted the protesters, though another villager estimated the size of the security force at 100 to 200 in an interview with AFP:

Another demonstrator told AFP that 10,000 residents had blocked a highway into the town to “get attention” after the local government refused to see them.

“We are protesting because we want the power plant to move away. Lots of local people have illnesses such as cancer,” a resident said.

State media reported last month that a 7.4-billion-yuan ($1.17-billion) expansion of a power plant in Haimen had failed environmental tests.

Toxic metals found in local waterways, such as lead, zinc and nickel, “exceeded the standard level”, Caixin said.

Global Voices has corralled a series of posts from Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo about the ongoing situation in Haimen, and pictures of today’s events have emerged on the Chinese Internet as well.

Meanwhile, in Wukan, McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter followed up earlier Tweets about a pre-march negotiation session planned for early tomorrow morning with word from the village’s senior leaders that “they’d be removing barricade from main road into village and that police agreed to do same.” The New York Times also reported that tomorrow morning’s negotiations would be led by two of provincial party secretary Wang Yang’s top lieutenants. Late this evening, according to Lasseter, the village leaders revealed that they had decided to give the negotiations another day and would not be marching tomorrow, according to Lasseter.

Sources:

- “Wukan: protests across South China as riot police take on demonstrators in Haimen” from The Telegraph

- “China Will Compensate Land Grab Victims in Blockaded Village” from Bloomberg Businessweek

- “Chinese Village Plots Taking Protest Wider” from The Wall Street Journal

- “More Photos from the Wukan Protests” from The Wall Street Journal

- “China rebel village sets conditions for calling off march” from Reuters

- “Fishing – and normal life – on hold in Wukan, China” from McClatchy Newspapers

- “Villagers Defy Threat of Force” from Radio Free Asia

- “Lone Wukan report in China’s press” from The China Media Project

- “After Wukan” from Huffington Post

- “China seeks rebel village concessions as new protest flares” from Reuters

- “Thousands protest China town’s planned coal plant” from The Associated Press

- “Chinese police ‘fire tear-gas and beat protesters’” from AFP

- “China: Guangdong Uprising, Now in Haimen” from Global Voices

- “Top Provincial Leaders to Meet With Protesting Chinese Villagers” from The New York Times

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, chinese communist party, corruption, Guangdong, land grabs, mass incidents, microblogging, police force, sina weibo, Wang Yang, Wukan, Xue Jinbo
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