To get a better sense of [Xi Jinping] and the challenges he is inheriting, I began compiling a list of stories I wanted to follow – economic, environmental and political – in far-flung parts of the country, including Liangjiahe.

One afternoon, I plotted them on a map and an unexpected pattern emerged: You could draw an extended arc through those dots and trace a course not too different from that of the fabled Long March that Mao Zedong and his Red Armies had taken more than seven decades earlier.

[…] By the time we arrived at the gate of Mr. Xi’s former cave-house, we had seen progress everywhere our trains had stopped: apartment buildings rising from the ground, dirt roads being paved, high-speed railway lines coming into service, mobile phone networks spreading to the remotest corners of the country.

But we also heard again and again how little China has changed when it comes to the rule of law. As in Mao’s time, the Communist Party can still demolish your home, declare that you are a “subversive” element, and send you to prison or a labour camp without any proof or chance to defend yourself.

[…] My trip convinced me that China is going to change dramatically over the coming decade. It is up to the Communist Party – especially Mr. Xi – to decide whether it wants to lead that change or dig in for an existential crisis.

For more from the voyage, see the China Diaries series at The Globe and Mail and photojournalist John Lehmann’s images from the trip.

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Post tags: Chongqing, Cultural Revolution, high-speed rail, Lanzhou, long march, Mao Zedong, nailhouse, trains, Wukan, Xi Jinping
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Reuters visited Wukan six times over the last year-and-a-half, chronicling the early protests, the uprising, its eventual triumph and now its disillusionment.

The events in Wukan focused keen attention in Beijing over a problem the central government had long underplayed – rampant land seizures across China. The government is drafting revised land management legislation for the annual parliament session in March that would require farmers – an estimated 650 million of them in China – to be adequately compensated and relocated before officials can expropriate any land.

But Wukan’s failure to overcome entrenched corruption shows how difficult it is for grassroots protest to spur lasting change in China. Towering above Wukan is a vast local, regional and national edifice of Party control and vested interests. Indeed, even the Xi administration’s push to overhaul the land seizure law faces opposition from developers, businesses and local governments that depend on property sales.

“For Wukan, amongst all the villages in China, to be able to rise up and protect their interests, then to conduct a democratic election and to become a kind of experimental ground, is significant,” said Peng Peng, a senior researcher with the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences. But the inexperience of the new leaders and their halting progress over the land issues has exposed the teething problems of nurturing village democracy in China, he added. “There can’t just be democracy, there needs to be solid administration, too.”

Resentment has simmered among Wukan villagers at their leaders’ inability to secure the return of their land, but the Financial Times reports that deputy village chief Yang Semao believes critical villagers “are not reasonable:”

In its year in office, the committee has succeeded in returning 200 hectares of land sold off by the previous village chief, Mr Yang says. But many villagers are still determined to seize property for which the deeds were transferred to factory owners and businessmen several years ago.

Confronted with persistent criticism – in painful contrast to the adulation they once enjoyed of a once remarkably united village – Mr Lin and many committee members have contemplated resigning.

“I am afraid of seeing people, afraid of hearing my doorbell ring,” Mr Lin told a Shanghai television station last month. “Why? Because whatever I do or say now, people are able to find a way to blame me.”

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Post tags: democracy, land grabs, local politics, mass incidents, political reform, protests, Wukan
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At the main entrance of the village of 3,000 people, 40 police and officials stood guard, barring outside vehicles from entering. Not far away, a cloth banner read: “Strongly request legal, democratic elections.”

Shangpu’s two-storey houses, typical of the region, and low-slung family-run workshops are surrounded by fields awaiting spring planting. But the main street is lined with the wrecks of cars damaged in the clash, with glass and metal littering the ground.

Residents said they should have the right to vote both for the leader who represents them and on whether to approve a controversial proposal to transform rice fields into an industrial zone.

“This should be decided by a vote by villagers,” said one of the protest leaders, adding: “The village chief should represent our interests, but he doesn’t.”

Residents told AFP that the village chief and party head fraudulently collected signatures to facilitate the transfer of farmland to a local businessman for industrial use, and they fear they will not be properly compensated. China’s state-run Global Times reported on Monday that the county-level public security bureau arrested the village leader and eight others it claims were hired by the village leader to attack the Shangpu residents:

County authorities said that on the morning of February 22, village committee director, Li Baoyu, called police to report he was attacked in his office and injured by six masked thugs. Less than an hour later, police say, Li hired his own thugs from other villages and ordered them to attack residents of Shangpu village, said the newspaper.

According to county police the fight injured four residents and damaged at least 26 vehicles, two of which were burned. Police earlier arrested Li, and on Friday eight other assailants were detained. The police are still hunting for 10 other men.

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Post tags: corruption, democracy, Guangdong, land grab protests, mass incidents, Shangpu, village elections, Wukan
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…Last week, an interview by iFeng with a few villagers and their newly elected leaders showed that local people may see the “Wukan model” as a completed failed attempt of democracy.

Many of the new leaders of Wukan’s village committee are leaders of the anti-government protests two years ago. For example, the 70-something Lin Zhulian is the new director of village committee elected by his fellow villagers. Two year ago, it was him who often held public speeches and called for villagers to stand up against local government and get their illegally seized lands back.

One year after being elected, Lin told journalists that he regretted leading the protests.

“I’m afraid of receiving phone calls, afraid of seeing people, afraid of hearing my own door bell ring. Why? Because whatever I do or say now, people are able to find a way to blame me. I can neither speak the truth nor tell lies. Things are complicated. I need to pay attention to every single bit of detail to guard against potential harms.”

Tea Leaf Nation has more on other problems now confronting Wukan:

Some of Wukan’s problems are not news. In September, 2012, several Western media outlets revisited Wukan and reported on the slow progress of its democratic experiment. Then, areas of dissatisfaction included villagers’ “expectations gap” between the promise of democracy and its messy reality, meddling by county-level governments, and suspicions that the whole enterprise was simply a political move by Wang Yang, the former Guangdong province Communist Party chief who was known to eye a seat on China’s elite Politburo Standing Committee.

Additional obstacles have now begun to emerge. Wukan is dealing with a dearth of outside investment due to concerns over its political stability, a village leadership that lacks governing experience, and in-fighting within the village administration itself. As one villager told a reporter, “All of Wukan is dissatisfied. First, we villagers overthrew the corrupt officials, but the new administration has done nothing [to get land back]; they got nothing back and have not given us an answer…We’ll take anything [at this point].”

Surveying unbought luxury residences whose bare porches had begun to sprout grass, reporter Jin Song concluded that “currently many investors do not dare to invest in Wukan…because there is still no consensus about whether to lease the recovered land or to transfer it, the village committee is unable to monetize it.”

[...] Meanwhile, infighting is worsening between elected village leaders and those activists left on the outside. According to Yang Semao, deputy director of the governing village committee, “The village committee only has seven people…, [but] there are dozens of influential activists and it’s impossible for everyone to join the committee. Now they’re going all out to attack, defame, and stymie us.”

Some observers on weibo have blamed China’s political system for the failures of democracy in Wukan to thrive. From Tea Leaf Nation:

User @玻璃罐子里的苍蝇 echoed this view, writing, “What Wukan villagers really want is money. Using democracy to solve the Wukan problem sounds great, but actually it is not the right prescription … Wukan’s follow-ups are reflections of the embarrassing situation of democracy in China. Democracy is still a luxury for us, just someone’s talking point. ”

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Post tags: democracy, grassroots democracy, political reform, village elections, Wukan
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“We are not satisfied,” said one villager. “We removed corrupt officials to get our land back, but have received nothing, and the new village committee has not given us an explanation.”

[...]Lin Zuluan , 69, was elected head of the village committee. But now he says that, while democratic governance was worth trying, he regrets taking part in the campaign, because villagers have unrealistic expectations of their leaders.

“I am old,” Lin said. “I can’t stand the pressure and fulfil all of their expectations. I’ve gained nothing from the whole campaign; I should not have taken part in it. Democracy is something that all people should pursue, but the implementation of it should be gradual, and there should be an environment that is conducive to it. We can’t let it happen overnight.”

Lin also said the villagers were not clear about their rights and had raised “unreasonable” demands, such as asking the committee to publicly release every detail of contracts it signs.

For more on Wukan, land-grabs, or democratic reform, see prior CDT coverage.

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Post tags: democracy, land grabs, local politics, mass incidents, political reform, protests, Wukan
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What we found was a hardscrabble village – Wukan is home to rice farmers and fishermen – whose leaders are struggling to deliver on the promises they made to their electorate. The electorate, meanwhile, is beginning to wonder if choosing their own leaders has made things any better.

The Wukan uprising has been declared (by the academic who advised China’s new leader Xi Jinping on his doctoral thesis) to have “historic significance” because it showed democracy and social stability could coexist in China. But the new village council remains just a tiny brick at the bottom of a vast, corrupt and authoritarian power structure. And that power structure is obsessively monitoring the democrats of Wukan.

Shortly after we met Mr. Zhang for tea to discuss the events of the last year, a thin man in dark jacket walked in through the teahouse’s open door. “Who are you? Give me your business card,” he shouted, grabbing my shoulder. When I asked him to give me his own card first, he released his grip on me, handed Mr. Zhang a handwritten note and walked out without getting my name. “He’s a police informant,” Mr. Zhang said with the shrug of someone who sees such people every day.

The system is pushing back against Wukan’s uprising in subtler ways, too. Members of the seven-person village committee (only the village chief, Lin Zuluan, is a Communist Party member) say they’ve hit a wall in their efforts to reclaim villagers’ land that was illegally sold to real estate developers by the previous committee.

The shine has reportedly worn off for the members of Wukan’s village committee, who were elected after villagers engaged in a standoff with police and provincial officials over illegal land grabs in late 2011. Villagers held a small demonstration in September, and one village official resigned in October 2012 over the lack of progress in resolving the grievances which had sparked the protests.

MacKinnon and photographer John Lehmann have chosen Wukan as the start of The China Diaries, “a journey of discovery overland through China by the Globe and Mail,” where they will seek to roughly retrace Mao’s Long March by rail over the next few weeks.

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Post tags: democracy, Guangdong, land grabs, mass incidents, village elections, Wukan
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Hu Chunhua has been appointed secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), replacing Wang Yang, the CPC Central Committee announced Tuesday.

Wang Jun will replace Hu as secretary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC, according to the announcement.

Hu, born in April 1963, is currently a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Wang Yang is also a Political Bureau member.

Hu previously served as deputy secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC, first secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League of China Central Committee and governor of north China’s Hebei Province.

At the South China Morning Post, Mimi Lau described a range of views on Hu’s appointment and prospects:

Liu Kaiming, director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a labour rights NGO in Shenzhen, said Hu lacked the track record of outstanding political achievements necessary to impress Guangdong officials.

“After spending extensive time in remote inland areas, Hu might find it hard to fit in at first in Guangdong, especially when dealing with vested interests,” Liu said. “I’m not very sure about officials from remote regions because they often appear very conservative and arrogant, but Hu might be different because he’s young.”

[…] Dr Peng Peng, a researcher with the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said Hu would have to hunker down after arriving in Guangdong because it was unlike any other mainland region.

“The press here is outspoken and the public can often complain directly to leaders,” Peng said. “In order to do a good job in Guangdong, Hu needs to be even more open-minded than Wang Yang.

“Wang Yang laid a solid foundation. Hu is much younger than Wang. I’m guessing Hu is more likely to flow with the open atmosphere in Guangdong.”

But at The Diplomat, David Cohen sounded a cautious note on the prospects for bold reform:

A Guangdong posting will give “Little Hu” a chance to burnish his reformist credentials, like Wang Yang before him. If Xi follows through on his talk of reform, that may prove to be a valuable skill. Guangdong is China’s most liberal province and frequently given to experimentation — if Xi is looking for models for national reform the leader of Guangdong may get some chances to influence the direction of national policy with some inventive provincial initiatives, such as Wang Yang’s much-ballyhooed “Wukan model.”

This trend should also give us some pause before rooting for Wang or Hu as reformers — neither of their records shows particularly bold action before traveling to Guangdong, so to some extent Wang’s liberal policies in the southern province may simply reflect institutional momentum. In fact, besides his time in Tibet, Little Hu initiated a harsh crackdown at the first signs of protests in Inner Mongolia in the spring of 2011. Some felt Hu had overreacted but he did not shirk from his decision, recently telling the Financial Times, “When we deal with mass incidents, there is no question we will take compulsory measures . . . We will be tough when we need to be tough, and we will be soft when we need to be soft.”

Reuters’ Sui-Lee Wee outlined Hu’s earlier career:

In Inner Mongolia, Hu Chunhua, also known as “Little Hu”, has been referred to as a future president. While there, Hu Chunhua oversaw rapid economic growth and dealt successfully with protests last year by ethnic Mongols.

Hu Chunhua came to Inner Mongolia following a brief stint in Hebei, the arid province which surrounds Beijing, where he was rapidly moved after a scandal over tainted milk in which at least six children died and thousands became ill.

Hu Chunhua remains something of an enigma, even in China. He has given few clues about his deeper policy beliefs. One of the best known things about him is that he does not appear to dye his hair jet black like many politicians.

In meetings with the public, Hu Chunhua comes across as low key and self effacing, in line with an image of a loyal, humble Communist Party member. People who have met him describe him as relaxed, easy-going and spontaneous, unlike stiffer party leaders.

Hu and newly appointed Chongqing Party chief Sun Zhengcai were both elevated to the Politburo last month, and are likely to rise further to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2017 and the presidency and premiership in 2022. (See Cheng Li’s profiles of the two men at the Brookings Institution.) None of this can be taken for granted, however: neither of their predecessors, Wang Yang and Bo Xilai, has followed the trajectory widely anticipated even at the start of this year. The Associated Press’ Didi Tang focused on Wang Yang, Guangdong’s previous Party chief, whose next assignment has not yet been revealed:

Xinhua gave no indication of Wang’s next job, but China watchers said he is likely to be named a vice premier when China’s legislature meets in the spring.

Wang, 57, is seen as a politically liberal figure. He failed to win a seat on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee when new leaders were installed last month but was named to the lower-ranking Politburo.

[…] Wang was seen at Xi’s side when the general secretary visited Guangdong in early December. Li Cheng, an expert on China’s elite politics at Washington-based think tank Brookings Institute, said the appearance of the two together was to show the solidarity of the party leadership, because Wang is not considered to be in Xi’s camp in China’s factional politics.

“It’s a symbol of unity,” Li said.

Hu’s replacement in Inner Mongolia, Wang Jun, has extensive experience related to the autonomous region’s heavy mining industry. Wang was appointed governor of coal-rich Shanxi province following an accident which claimed more than 270 lives at an iron mine in 2008, and had previously headed the national work safety agency. His acting replacement in Shanxi is Li Xiaopeng, son of former premier Li Peng. New Party chiefs for Zhejiang, Shaanxi and Jilin were also announced on Tuesday, with appointments for Fujian and Guangxi following the next day. The blizzard of new posts sent a “subtle message”, according to a Global Times editorial, which hailed the new provincial leaders as offering the public a fresh start.

The Party secretary is the very top leader in a province. The prominence of this position differs from Western systems and is the key to ensuring that the Party rules the country’s political system.

[…] The population and economic scale of many provinces exceed those of middle-sized countries. As China is undergoing rapid development and social conflicts, the difficulties in managing a province can be much greater than managing a global power.

[…] Party secretaries should make efforts to improve communication with the public. We are looking forward to those who are outspoken and can interact with the public.

A new political style has been showcased by the Party’s top leadership. These new provincial leaders are expected to emulate it in solving local problems.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Communist Youth League, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, hebei, Hu Chunhua, Hu Jintao, Inner Mongolia, jilin, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, Shaanxi, Shanxi, tainted food, Tibet, Wang Yang, Wukan, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang
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In a little-noticed move, a meeting of China’s State Council, the top government decision-making body, last week backed an amendment to the land-management law. Details remain sketchy, and the law is still to be approved by China’s National People’s Congress. But experts say that the change will make it more difficult for local officials to requisition land, and raise the level of compensation farmers receive when land is taken in the public interest.

Li Ping, an expert on China’s land law at rural-development institute Landesa, said this was a significant move. “China has abusive land takings every day; protests in the countryside are common, some of them putting lives at risk. The revision will strengthen farmers land tenure and help improve the situation.”

The shift is seen as a priority for China’s departing Premier Wen Jiabao, who headed up the State Council meeting. Mr. Wen has tried to give rural-development policies a stronger emphasis, and has enjoyed some success—including the abolishment of agricultural taxes, though past gestures on land reform have done little to change the system.

Land grabs have long been a source of social angst and the cause of many of the growing number of “mass incidents” in China, but the issue came to the fore following a late 2011 standoff between upset villagers and security forces in the Guangdong village of Wukan. Reuters reported the move by China’s cabinet last week, quoting a Xinhua News report claiming that “rural land has been expropriated too much and too fast” and that “the government must make efforts to beef up support for farmers and place rural development in a more important position.”

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Post tags: corruption, farmers, land grabs, land rights, State Council, Wen Jiabao, Wukan
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China has permitted village-level elections since the 1980s, and they usually are closely supervised affairs. At the committee building at Raolefu, there was a red banner hanging with the Communist Party slogan “always adhere to the party’s basic line,” and some 100 local officials and staff were on hand. But after the villagers blocked the doors, they were in control. The guardrails buffering the leadership from the public suddenly made them look penned inside.

A man in the crowd shouted, “How much money did Wei Jiandong give you?”

Another turned to one of the police officers guarding the officials and asked, “Don’t you have a guilty conscience?” and used an obscenity.

Locals had been filing petitions in recent years at higher-level government offices, alleging that Wei used his positions to broker illegal real estate deals.

As one of their documents put it: “During the eight years of Party Secretary Wei’s time in office, the land in our village was lost…Most farmers in the village became poorer and poorer.”

See also recent CDT coverage of grassroots movements in China’s rural areas, including the democratic experiment in Wukan and other village elections in China.

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Post tags: CCP, corruption, grassroots democracy, land grabs, Raolefu, social stability, Wukan
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Large-scale protests have increased in China, reflecting anger over corruption and the lack of government accountability and transparency – the kind of unrest that experiments in grassroots democracy, like the one Hua Youjuan participated in, were meant to help short-circuit.

Instead, Hua said democracy in her home village of Huangshan, in eastern Zhejiang province, was never allowed to fully succeed, thwarted by senior party officials who she accused of resisting her campaign to root out corruption.

[…] Hua’s frustrations are shared in other villages that have been to the ballot box, including China’s most famous testing ground for greater democracy, the southern fishing village of Wukan where a violent standoff over government land seizures led last year to the sacking of local leaders and elections.

[…E]ven in Wukan the new officials have had a tough time achieving their goals – partly, some say, for the same reason Hua is frustrated: higher-ranking party officials are opposed.

[…] ”If after the 18th party congress there isn’t further progress in getting back our land, more will quit,” said Zhang Jiancheng, another democratically elected member of the new Wukan village administration.

See more on Wukan and village elections in China via CDT.

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Post tags: CCP 5th generation, civil society, democracy, grassroots democracy, Guangdong, leadership transition, mass incidents, village elections, Wukan, Zhejiang
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An outspoken youth leader during protests in Wukan last year over corruption and land grabs by local officials, Zhuang Liehong was detained on December 3, 2011, and held for 20 days. The standoff between villagers and local authorities worsened through December, until provincial officials finally intervened to broker a compromise resulting in free and transparent elections in March this year.

…

According to today’s Weibo post by Zhang Jianxing, Zhuang submitted his resignation to the village committee on October 21 because he felt he was “unable to handle the wishes of the villagers from within the village committee.” Zhang added:

“Lately, the upheaval in Wukan is quite serious. Lin Zuluan (林祖銮) [the leader of the revolt, now the elected Party chief] avoids going to work. . . Is change happening all over again in Wukan?

Bandurski also included a photo of Zhuang’s resignation letter, which had emerged on the Weibo account of Wukan resident Zhang Jianxing. Zhuang specifically calls out Lin Zuluan, the man who led last year’s protests and was selected as both Wukan party chief and then head of the village committee in the March elections.

Zhuang Liehong had been one of the more vocal activists in Wukan, both during the protests and as a participant in the village’s democracy experiment. Bandurski cites a March article in the Sydney Morning Herald which mentions Zhuang:

”I will retrieve the land that rightfully belongs to Wukan villagers!” said Zhuang Liehong, 28, in a speech punctuated with fist-pumps that whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Mr Zhuang, who was also involved in the protests, told The Saturday Age that he was detained by police for 20 days, and threatened with being ”hung up in the air and beaten half to death” for failing to co-operate.

Radio Free Asia also quoted Zhuang in April, after Guangdong vice provincial secretary Zhu Mingguo promised to return some of their lost farmland by May 1, as saying that the committee had not received much help in reclaiming the land:

“It has been tough,” he said. “The land was sold off by people who were previously in charge here, so it’s a question of what evidence to show and what tactics to employ to get it back from the people [who bought it].”

He said the committee had received scant help from other officials. “Everything depends on us here at the village committee,” he said.

“We can’t get the land back, so we’ll have to see what the [provincial] government is made of.”

As recent frustrations indicate, the May 1 deadline came and went without the return of the villagers land. See also previous CDT coverage of last year’s Wukan protests.

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Post tags: democracy, Guangdong, land grab protests, Lin Zuluan, microblogs, sina weibo, Wukan, Zhuang Liehong
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In late September, just before the anniversary, the village’s new officials put up posters accusing “a few individuals with ulterior motives” of trying to foment “civil strife” in Wukan. One village leader, Hong Ruichao, says some of the protesters last month had common interests with the old administration. In their desperation for calm, the former rebels have adopted the conspiratorial language of those against whom they once struggled.

Yang Semao, a deputy village chief, says the “honeymoon is over” for his administration, which is responsible for the 8,000-odd permanent residents of Wukan as well as the land interests of another 3,000 or so who have moved elsewhere. He complains about the continuing influence in the village of the leaders he helped throw out (the top two were expelled from the party and fined, but to many villagers’ chagrin were not jailed). He also accuses unnamed higher-level officials “in cahoots with the mafia” of obstructing the village’s efforts to reclaim land that was sold off. Less than 60% of the nearly 450 hectares (1,100 acres) that the government says should be returned has been given back. Some villagers say higher levels of government have understated how much land should be handed over.

Residents are bitterly divided over what to do with the land they have recovered. On September 30th the new democratically elected village assembly met to vote on the issue. Twenty-five of the 80 or so representatives who turned up, including Mr Yang, who chaired the meeting, were in favour of keeping the returned land together in several large plots and sharing revenue from renting it out or developing it. Sixteen wanted to divide the land up among villagers. The rest abstained. A two-thirds majority of all the village’s 109 representatives is needed to pass a resolution, so no decision was reached. Mr Yang says the assembly will meet again later this year or early next to have another go.

See also previous CDT coverage of last year’s Wukan protests and the challenges now facing the village leaders:

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Post tags: democracy, Guangdong, land grab protests, land grabs, village elections, Wukan
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Defenders of the Wukan experiment have explained the anniversary protests as the product of impatience – or what the Atlantic’s Brian Fung called an “expectations gap.” Having fought so hard and won, the argument goes, some villagers are holding their new leaders to unrealistic standards. After all, the new government has been in power for only six months.

Hong Kong University legal scholar Fu Hualing thinks the problem runs deeper.

Mr. Fu, one of a handful of scholars and activists who gathered in Hong Kong earlier this year in an effort to evaluate what had happened in Wukan, says he thinks the frustrations evident in the village last week highlighted the limited impact of bottom-up democracy in A political system like China’s.

“You have an election within the village, but the problem is not within the village itself. It’s how the local government handles issues affecting the village,” he says. In the case of Wukan, real power to decide land issues continues to reside with government officials at the county level and higher, he says.

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“We still haven’t got our land back,” shouted Liu Hancai, a retired 62-year-old party member, one of many villagers fighting to win back land that was seized by Wukan’s previous administration and illegally sold off for development.

The small crowd, many on motorbikes, was kept under tight surveillance by plain-clothed officials fearful of any broader unrest breaking out. Police cars were patrolling the streets.

“There would be more people here, but many people are afraid of trouble and won’t come out,” Liu told Reuters.

…

Friday’s demonstration was far less heated than the protests that earned Wukan headlines around the world last September. But the small rally reveals how early optimism over the ground-breaking adoption of local-level democracy has soured for some.

The Financial Times reports that while some villagers have argued for more patience, others prefer action:

Cai Yifeng, a local restaurant owner, says the problem is that the Lufeng city government, which oversees Wukan, has not changed its ways. He says several of its officials are allied with Xue Chang, the former Wukan party chief. Xue was fined and disciplined this year for his role in the illegal land sales but not arrested, which village leaders say has emboldened his supporters.

“The Lufeng government tells lies to the committee,” Cai said. “The dissatisfaction among the villagers will only continue to rise.”

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post reports that Guangdong party chief Wang Yang, who earned praise for his progressive handling of the Wukan incident, has made a fresh call for reform as he continues to maneuver for a seat on the next Politburo Standing Committee. But while The New York Times’ Didi Kirsten Tatlow writes that Wang has positioned himself well as a reformer, The South China Morning Post’s Mimi Lau asks whether the party is ready for him:

Analysts believe promotion to chief of the central disciplinary inspection commission or party boss of Beijing would be logical next steps for Wang. But whether he can make it to the Standing Committee this time is uncertain.

The reported decision to cut the all-powerful panel to seven from nine seats means competition for spots will be all the more fierce.

At the moment, some observers believe Tianjin party secretary Zhang Gaoli, a Jiang Zemin ally, has the edge over Wang.

Also working against Wang is his relatively young age. At 57, If he was appointed to the Standing Committee this year, he could theoretically stay on until 2027 – an usually long period at the height of power.

“If [the Standing Committee] stays at nine, I would bet on him making it,” said Steve Tsang, of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. Otherwise, Wang’s chances of ascension were 50-50, Tsang said.

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Post tags: CCP 5th generation, democracy, Guangdong, land grab protests, land grabs, leadership transition, Politburo Standing Committee, village elections, Wang Yang, Wukan
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Wang Lijun, former right-hand man to the “King of Mountain City,” i.e. Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, ran to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu this February, exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s biggest public scandal in decades.

Toxins in baby formula, counterfeit pharmaceuticals and other food and drug safety issues are nothing new in China.

Rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng escaped from his illegal house arrest in April, making his way to the U.S. embassy in Beijing and eventually New York.

Villagers in the Wukan staged a revolt last December, driving local officials out and barricading themselves from the authorities. Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang dialogued with the villagers, leading to a peaceful end to the siege and local elections.

In July, residents of Shifang, Sichuan Province successfully protested the construction of a copper molybdenum power plant.

This could be a reference to the spate of Tibetan self-immolations in protest against Chinese rule. After two self-immolations in Lhasa this May, foreigners were briefly barred from visiting Tibet and security was tightened.

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Josh Rudolph.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, Chen Guangcheng, Chengdu, Chongqing, Cross-Talk Comics, drug safety, environmental protests, food safety, Guangdong, lhasa, local elections, Mountain City, politcal humor, political cartoons, protests, rights lawyers, self-immolations, Shifang, Sichuan, Tibet, Wang Lijun, Wang Yang, Wukan
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