Five years after launching protests against officials’ seizure of public land that led to local elections, villagers in Wukan, Guangdong again took to the streets last weekend after elected village chief Lin Zuluan was detained and removed from office. Protesters have been demanding both the release of Lin, himself a leader of the 2011 protests, and long overdue resolve to their land dispute; Lin was reportedly detained the day before the village assembly had planned to petition central authorities about the land grabs. On Tuesday, state television aired Lin “confessing” to the crime of taking bribes, but villagers are largely unconvinced that his admission was made by his own accord. As the demonstrations in Wukan enter their fifth day, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn recalls the significance of the 2011 protests in Wukan, the democratic concessions they led to, and the lingering problems displayed by this new round of unrest:

Back in 2011, the events in Wukan were seen as a milestone, as a small Chinese community challenged local authorities and demanded democracy, at least at the village level. The villagers’ demonstrations, the government’s response and a resulting compromise between the two sides were considered models that might be copied and applied to the thousands of similar local disputes that erupt across the country every year.

But the resumption of protests now suggests that Wukan’s underlying problems were not fixed.

[…] A villager who spoke on condition of anonymity says that now, just like five years ago, protests were triggered by the actions of property developers, who took village land without compensating residents.

“Secretary Lin intervened with the authorities on our behalf, but the authorities took no action,” he said. “At the villagers’ request, Lin called a meeting and decided to keep protesting, and as a result, he was taken away.”Land grabs are a common problem in rural China, and especially in Guangdong province, where urbanization is rapidly swallowing up farmland. […] [Source]

While the democratic concessions reached in 2011 originally won wide public support, many Wukan villagers became disillusioned with the democratic experiment as former leaders regained their influence in local politics after many of those elected were forced from office. A post from Chinaworker.info explains how the allegedly “free” democratic experiment launched in Wukan had in reality been strategically managed by Party bureaucrats:

Elections were allowed to take place in Wukan in March 2012 but they were not as ‘free’ as widely presented. There were widespread complaints of police intimidation and threats against key activists, to block more ‘radical’ elements from standing. The substantive issue – reclaiming the stolen land – remained unresolved and has now erupted in the latest round of protests.

After the elections, through which Lin and other protest leaders took control of the village committee, the higher authorities pursued a twin strategy of persecution of the most radical layers of the Wukan movement, along with financial and administrative sabotage to deny Wukan’s elected leaders any possibility to resolve the land question.

The aim of the regional CCP bureaucrats has been to protect their own interests (which may well include hiding their own gains from illicit land deals) and at the same time to discredit Wukan’s experiment with village ‘democracy’. The net result is that almost five years after the original protests, the demands of the original Wukan movement are no closer to fulfilment. “It’s like being given a check for two million yuan, but it bounces when you go to the bank,” is how one villager described the promises that were made in 2011 by Wang Yang and Co to demobilise the mass protests. [Source]

The Economist has more on the disappointment of Wukan villagers and Chinese reformers at the failings of the “Wukan model”:

Marching by the thousands this week in stifling heat through their small coastal village, residents of Wukan carried Chinese flags and shouted out slogans in support of the Communist Party. That was just to protect themselves from retribution by the riot police, who watched them closely but did not intervene. Their real message was in other chants: “Give us back our land!” and “Free Secretary Lin!”

The secretary in question was their village chief, Lin Zulian, whom they elected in 2012 in what was widely hailed at the time as a breakthrough for grassroots democracy. Mr Lin had led Wukan in a months-long rebellion against local authorities. Villagers kicked out party officials and police from their offices in protest against the alleged seizure of some of Wukan’s land by corrupt officials who had lined their pockets with the proceeds of selling it. Police responded by blockading the village, turning it into a cause célèbre—including in some of the feistier of China’s heavily censored media. In the end the government backed down: it allowed Wukan to hold unusually free elections and it promised to sort out the land dispute. The “Wukan model” became Chinese reformists’ shorthand for what they hoped would be a new way of defusing unrest.

[…] They have been disappointed. Villagers did not get their land back, or the money some wanted in lieu of it. Mr Lin, who won another landslide victory in elections two years ago, announced plans on June 18th to launch a new campaign for the return of the land. That was clearly too much for the local government: Mr Lin was promptly arrested on charges of corruption. Angry residents took to the streets again. [Source]