For three months, the rebellious village of Wukan in Guangdong Province seemed to hold out hope that all of the old rules regarding life under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) need no longer apply. Some suggested a Chinese Spring, a companion to the Arab Spring, was beginning to stir in the waning days of autumn in southern China.
The crisis came to a head in the third week of December. Wukan had planned a mass march of thousands of villagers that would break the blockade of the security forces and end with a protest outside the municipal building of Lufeng City. If the villagers’ three demands were met, they promised to cancel the march and protest.
The demands were, first, to release the arrested villagers; second, to return the body of Xue Jinbo; and third, to recognize the villagers’ elected temporary village committee.
Xue Jinbo had been the village’s freely elected representative. He was taken away by the local police and died two days later in the local police station. His family was allowed to see the body but not take it away. They described a corpse disfigured by torture.
The local authorities denied the accusation but refused to return Xue’s body to his family.
An agreement was reached on Dec. 20 between Lin Zuluan, the representative of the villagers, and Zhu Mingguo, the vice secretary of CCP Committee of Guangdong Province, that seemed to justify the optimism Wukan had inspired. Both sides seemed satisfied with the results.
The Internet censorship on the subject of Wukan was lifted, and the official media started to praise the Guangdong authorities’ wisdom in solving such a difficult issue. As usual, a few low-level officials were blamed for the misconduct. The Party and the provincial officials were portrayed as the good guys. And all of the villagers’ demands were said to have been met.
Collecting the Debt
Most Chinese people didn’t believe the whole situation would end like that so easily. The CCP has never negotiated with the Chinese people since it took power in 1949, not with any individual, not with any organization.
Once or twice, a single top leader has discussed matters with the other side, as when Li Peng, then the premier, met with the student representatives in 1989 before the Tiananmen Square massacre, or Zhu Rongji, also premier at the time, met with the Falun Gong practitioners on April 25, 1999, before the persecution of Falun Gong began.
But Li Peng didn’t make any promise during the meeting. Zhu Rongji agreed to the demands of the Falun Gong practitioners, but Jiang Zemin, then the head of the CCP, broke Zhu’s promise. In both cases, the meetings were followed by the retaliations ordered by the highest authority.
Every Chinese knows that the Party always retaliates against whomever it considers as a challenge or a threat. In Chinese, this kind of retaliation is called “collecting the debt after the autumn harvest.”
Continued next page ... New Village Committee
New Village Committee
What the villagers and activists worried about is happening now.
The first step the Party is taking is to replace the temporary village committee with a CCP-trusted, formal village committee.
The Wukan Working Group, sent by the CCP Guangdong Committee (not the Guangdong government), announced 130 candidates for the next village committee election. Since Zhu Mingguo admitted that the temporary village committee is legitimate, there seems to be no need to have another election.
One of the villagers, Mr. Xie, told The Epoch Times that the villagers don’t recognize the candidates on the list. He said Wukan’s 100-plus Party members, many of whom are on the list of candidates, are mostly the men of the corrupt, old Party secretary who had run the village. How many of them are clean?
Once this new committee of the Party forms, how will it interact with the real, elected temporary committee? Will it gradually disintegrate the temporary committee? Will there be self-rule by the villagers anymore?
In any case, the villagers fear what the Party may do. Li Zhen, over 60 years old, had a mental breakdown earlier when armed police entered the village to arrest the villagers. After the crisis was over, he, as well as many other villagers, received harassing and threatening phone calls from the Party and government officials. Under the impression that the donation he made to the temporary village committee when Wukan was under siege could cause him trouble, he killed himself on Dec. 29.
In the meantime, Xue Jinbo’s body still hasn’t been returned. The authorities insisted that Xue’s family sign a paper stating that Xue died of a heart attack. After that, compensation would be no problem. The family refused.
Intention to Retaliate
Actually, the Guangdong CCP Committee has not tried to hide its intention to retaliate. One day before meeting with the village representative Lin Zuluan, the Guangdong CCP Vice Secretary Zhu Mingguo gave a speech at Lufeng City’s gathering of the cadres.
His speech is posted on the Shantou Party and Government Information Network, the government’s official website.
It has six major points. Point 2 states: “Most people’s overreaction is understandable and forgivable; the Party and the government won’t hold them responsible. Whoever was involved in the vandalism can be extricated as long as he shows that he is repentant.”
But the authorities had earlier admitted that the whole protest was caused by the corruption and wrongdoing of the local officials. How could the Party and government “understand” and “forgive” the people for the officials’ wrongdoing?
Point 4 states that “the government promises that as long as the villagers no longer commit crimes, no longer organize activities to confront the government, are no longer used by hostile powers both at home and abroad, [the government] will not enter the village to arrest people.”
This point, which seems to promise the safety of the villagers, in fact reads more like a threat. It charges the villagers with a crime they have never committed: There was no “hostile power” the whole time, either domestic or foreign.
Point 6 targets the two organizers of the protests. It demands that Lin Zuluan and Yang Semao must do something to show their real regret and surrender themselves to the authorities. If they do so, the government will consider leniency and not arrest them. This is a presumption of guilt by the Party, not even by a court.
There were only six points in Zhu’s speech, and three of them, points 2, 4, and 6, were about “collecting the debt after the autumn harvest.”
The next day, when two newspapers reported the speech, point 6 was taken away, and the whole tone was much softened. But the message was clear.
Continued next page ... Shattering Myths
Shattering Myths
What has angered the Party so much is not the protest. Similar protests happen almost everyday in China against corruption, the forced seizure of land, and the demolition of houses.
What’s unique about Wukan is that the villagers ousted the Party secretary and the whole village committee that represents the communists’ power. They then elected their own temporary committee.
The temporary committee ran the village for three months. For those three months, Wukan was the first real self-ruled village since the CCP took power in 1949. The significance of this event has not been recognized by many people.
One of the myths that the CCP has created is that without it, China will fall into chaos, wars, famines, and so on.
When the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party came out in 2004 and the movement of the Chinese people renouncing any affiliation with the CCP started, some people—and not just Chinese—were worried and raised the question, what would happen if the CCP were gone? Some even claimed that Chinese people don’t have the qualities necessary for them to enjoy democracy and freedom.
The event at Wukan should put a stop to this talk. Wukan villagers proved that the Chinese people could live a better life without CCP. They have enough wisdom to manage their own lives as long as the Party is out. This is what scares the Party the most and this is one of the most important lessons we have learned.
On Dec. 27, villagers in neighboring Fujian Province protested on the streets for their lost land. One of the banners they carried reads “Learn from Wukan.”
