Bruce Dickson - The Party and the People - Chinese Politics in the 21st Century

In September 2011, the people of Wukana village in southeastern Chinarose up in protest. Their elected leaders, they alleged, had sold land to developers without adequate payment to those who had made their livelihoods farming it. They marched on the government headquarters in nearby Lufeng city, demanding both compensation and the right to new elections.

The leaders of Lufeng did not accede to their demands. Instead they sent riot police to Wukan to shut down the protests and occupy the village. Over the course of several months, the village endured a standoff with police, and a handful of protesters were arrested and charged with attacking officers. One of the protesters, Xue Jinbo, died in custody. According to Xues family, the body showed signs of torture, but the official cause of death was cardiac arrest. Tensions between police and the villagers escalated.

Situations like this are all too common in China: leaders ignore the legitimate demands of the people, and punish those who dare to push back against the unpopular and often illegal actions of leaders at all levels of the political system.

And then something extraordinary happened: the provincial leaders stepped in and agreed to the protesters demands. They offered to investigate the compensation the Wukan farmers had received, and they fired the Wukan leaders who sold the land, arranging for new elections to replace them. One of the leaders of the protest, Lu Zuluan, was elected the new village chief.

The protests and their resolution were hailed as a potentially new model of grassroots democracy in China. Provincial party chief Wang Yang, soon to be elevated to the Politburo in Beijing, said he intended to use his peaceful Wukan approach to reform local politics across the province.

But, as is so often the case in Chinese politics, there was more to the story than this. Like the deposed village chief, the newly elected leader was a party member. He had been approved by the provincial party committee, which had intervened to prevent the protests from escalating. The Wukan protests did not spread to other communities, in part because of a blackout on media coverage of the protests, and in part because of fear of arrest. What looked to be a prodemocratic triumph was actually the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reimposing its authority.

Lu, the new village chief, was himself charged with corruption several years later. Was this delayed retaliation for leading the original protest? Or a reminder that even protest leaders may fall prey to the same bad behaviors as those they once protested against? Its hard to say, because the domestic media blackout continued, and the people of Wukan were warned against speaking to foreign media. What originally seemed like the start of something big turned out to be just one more small-scale event thatwhile it did break out into global newswent unnoticed by most people in China. In the end, the Wukan approach did not spread.