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http://cmp.hku.hk In Wukan, frustration and fatigue
In December 2011, a large-scale revolt in Wukan to protest a land grab by local officials catapulted this small, seaside village into world headlines. A rare negotiated settlement with provincial officials allowed Wukan villagers to hold democratic elections for a new village leadership on March 3, 2012 — what many called a new model for democracy in China. This month I went to the village to see for myself how the “Wukan model” had progressed in the year since village elections. What I found was frustration, disappointment and exhaustion. Villagers everywhere on Wukan’s streets echo the same refrain: “Still, our land has not been returned,” they say. Land issues top the village committee’s agenda today as they did during elections last year. But committee members say their hands are tied by political forces beyond the village. While they represent the villagers who elected them, they must rely on Party superiors up the line to accomplish many of the things they originally set out to do. Inside the village, division rankles. In October 2012, Zhuang Liehong, one of the elected committee members who had pledged most vocally to win back the village’s land, resigned his post, citing irreconcilable differences with Secretary Lin Zuluan and other committee members. “It wasn’t personal,” Zhuang tells me over cups of oolong in the village teahouse he opened after his resignation. “We think differently. Right now it’s just impossible [for us to work together].” In stark contrast to the unity Wukan showed the world in the midst of the protests, villagers now find it impossible to reach agreement even on how to use existing land. And evidence of the stalemate is everywhere. Surrounding the village, large stretches of land sit unused. Deserted factories, with smashed-out windows and rusty door frames, dot the village landscape. Posted outside an abandoned knitwear factory — “Fully (Asia) Development,” reads the sign at the gate — one security guard tells me he’s been keeping watch here ever since the factory’s boss absconded, after the village committee had demanded outstanding rent. “He had a Hong Kong ID card,” the guard explains. “So they were never able to find him.” Land disputes like Wukan’s have played out again and again in villages across China. According to a recent study, four million people each year in China have their rural land seized by the government. These land seizures drive an undercurrent of unrest. Sun Liping, a scholar from Tsinghua University, estimates that there were at least 180,000 land-related protests in China in 2012 alone. For many, Wukan offered a solution — a model of democratic reform that could stem the tide of mass rural protests. Inside Wukan, that hope is at best a distant thought, crowded out by the immediacy of concerns over land. When I spoke to one woman at a noodle shop about how things were going in Wukan, she talked at great length about how the village’s land still hadn’t been returned. When I asked her for her thoughts on democracy, she shrugged off the question: “I don’t really know about that,” she said. I know the headlines have been down on Wukan in recent months. “Freedom fizzles out in China’s rebel town of Wukan,” read a recent Reuters report. “Is Wukan a failure?” a recent online post asked. I’m not ready to say that democracy has failed in Wukan. There is positive progress, albeit small, towards a more open, transparent style of government. Locals told me they were happy they could now approach their local leaders, that they could voice their concerns and be taken seriously. On the wall of a local kindergarten in Wukan, I came across a notice announcing a renovation project. It listed the name of the committee representative responsible for the project, including his phone number. It mentioned the company contracted to handle the renovation and the budget involved. That may seem like a small achievement. But this level of transparency is unusual in China, whether at the local level or the national level. Behind the scenes, though, Wukan’s fragile experiment is exhausted. Yang Semao, the village committee member listed on the poster as being responsible for the renovation project, told me he is taking leave from the committee to deal with his failing health. The responsibilities and frustrations of the past year have left him physically and emotionally drained. He described himself as “near collapse.” A hand-written letter Yang shared with me, detailing the recent situation in Wukan and his reasons for taking leave, is a portrait of a village at an impasse. The frustration and fatigue are salient. But there is a thread of hope too. The village is trying to nurture its fledgling democracy, Yang says, educating its members about how to “express their demands rationally,” and preparing for elections down the road. As for the insoluble issue of land — that may take several administrations to solve. “The task is heavy,” Yang writes, “and the road is long.”
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