MCLC: what Wukan means

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Nicky Harman <n.harmanic at gmail.com>
Subject: what Wukan means
***********************************************************

Source: Ou Ning's Blog (6/5/12):
http://www.alternativearchive.com/ouning/article.asp?id=864

What Wukan Means 
By Ou Ning

Essay for Asia Society's ChinaFile project.

It began, in the early stages, as a secret mobilization. Then came the
protests, marches of ever-larger numbers, direct confrontation,
occupations, blockades, anarchy, media exposure, a case of accidental
death, the involvement of higher levels of authority, negotiation … until,
finally, after two years and eleven months, on the 2nd of February 2012,
in Guangdong province, in the county of Lufeng, the village of Wukan at
last held a democratic election.

Given the evolution of events, what took place in Wukan could be called a
revolution. True, when compared to the waves of large-scale protests that
broke out around the world in 2011, it may look like just a minor case of
local unrest. It failed to spur a more widespread campaign. But it
deserves to be seen, at least, as a micro-revolution—one that has
particular significance for the politics of rural development in China
today.

The conflict had its origins in Wukan’s opaque system for transferring
property rights and its unfair compensation for those whose land rights
had been “transferred.” Initially, the protests were an expression of the
villagers’ financial interests, a quest for profit. But because the
financial interests involved were collective, as opposed to individual,
and because the quest began to run up against the endemic corruption of
the political system, inevitably, the movement began to express itself
through politics: demanding new elections became a necessary tactic for
the villagers’ defense of their self-interest.

Under [what China’s leaders like to call its] “unique national
conditions,” to claim one’s cause isn’t political is a crucial tactic
groups fighting for their collective interests must employ to protect
themselves from being labeled “anti-Party,” being accused of “subverting
state power,” or otherwise running afoul of the government’s imperative to
“safeguard social stability.” In China, avoiding politics is itself a form
of politics.

We need to update the way we think and talk about this word, “politics.”
Today we have citizens whose politics do not revolve around the Party or
ideology—their demands are based either on personal interests or
non-ideological community interests. Their participation in public affairs
already transcends the realm of traditional party politics. In recent
years, this new kind of politics has been on the rise in many spheres and
manifest in countless cases of “defending civil rights,” or weiquan. If
the authorities still construe such demands as attacks on the Party, they
will only produce more conflicts and generate more serious opposition.

In this context, Wukan was a turning point. The Guangdong government moved
beyond its habitual fixation with “maintaining stability” to recognize
that the appeals of the Wukan villagers arose out of concern for their
livelihoods, rather than out of some animus against the Party or China’s
political system. As a result, after a rational negotiation, they allowed
Wukan to hold a democratic election.

For the moment, a case of unrest had been put to rest. But that did not
mean that the long-simmering issues that caused the protests in the first
place had been resolved. The 2005 riots in the village of Taishi (also in
Guangdong province) broke out for the same reason. Rural protests arising
out of land confiscation and unfair compensation are already nothing new.
Rather, they reveal the extent to which, for a long time, China’s peasants
have been treated like dirt.

Prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it was
the promise of “land redistribution” that encouraged peasants to
participate in the revolution. Once the Communists were in charge, they
made good on their promise to the peasants. But over the next ten years,
temporary mutual aid teams, long-term mutual aid teams, elementary
cooperatives, and later advanced cooperatives took ownership of their
land, completing the transition from private to collective land ownership
and ushering in the era when, in the formulation of the day, “City land is
state-owned, rural land is collectively owned.” The People’s Communes of
1958 were not so much manifestations of Communist utopianism as an attempt
to support national industrialization by efficiently allotting land and
labor resources through administrative fiat and militarization. In order
to limit peasants’ social mobility and bind them to the land, that same
year the government promulgated the “Household Registration Ordinance,”
which set up a two-tiered system for the urban and rural populations that
ensured that the industrializing cities would be able to squeeze every
last drop out of the farm-bound countryside. In the three decades
following the founding of the PRC, the government used price
scissors—keeping the price of agricultural products extremely low—to
accumulate 600 billion RMB (approximately US$95 billion at 2012 exchange
rates) worth of GDP from the countryside and transfer it to industry. In
the 20 years after collectivization, about half of every hour of labor in
the Chinese countryside went unpaid, according to the estimates of
journalist Ling Zhijun and sociologist Xu Xinxin.

In 1978, eighteen peasants in the Anhui province village of Xiaogang grew
dissatisfied with the bare subsistence conditions in the People’s
Communes. Under heavy pressure to survive, they took the initiative to
sign a contract pledging each household to take responsibility for its own
agricultural production. Their audacious risk-taking quickly bore fruit,
and large numbers of other farmers followed their example until soon, it
gained the approval of the central government. So began the next era of
rural reform. Once again, land (which in the Chinese context is really
“land use”) was returned to the peasants. The Chinese peasantry, seizing
the moment to advance their interests, had changed the system from below.

But as the “household responsibility system” spread through the country’s
inland rural areas, the first wave of urbanization was also beginning
along China’s southern coast. And soon, the new cities’ appetite for rural
land began to eclipse enthusiasm for a revived rural economy based on the
household agricultural output.

The establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone transformed a
remote fishing village into a metropolis. At the beginning, what was known
as the “three supplies for processing and one compensation” system—in
which foreigners provided supplies, investment capital, and
management—attracted investment that transformed the vast rural areas of
the Pearl River Delta into an enormous workshop. In 1992, after Deng
Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, Shenzhen’s real estate market took off. The
effects radiated to inland China and spurred the country’s second great
wave of urbanization.

As this wave advanced, the land available for cities to develop grew
increasingly scarce and rural land was suddenly a coveted resource. The
government used administrative measures to amass collectively-owned rural
land on the cheap and then sell it to property developers. Expropriation
of land became a major source of government revenue and indeed the most
significant contributor to the country’s GDP. According to a 2011 article
by Huang Xiaohu in the Study Times, “the revenue from land expropriation
was 129.6 billion RMB (US$20 billion) in 2001, and soon increased to 1.6
trillion RMB (US$254 billion) in 2009. In 2010, the number leapt to 2.7
trillion RMB (US$429 billion).” “Of the enormous sums the central
government collected this way, only 20-30% were disbursed to township and
village governments and then only 5-10% of that returned to the peasants
as direct compensation for the loss of their land,” wrote Wang Ping in
2005. “During the past two decades,” observed rural development researcher
Yu Jianrong, “more than 100 million mu of rural land (or roughly 16
million acres) was requisitioned and the compensation to its former
occupants fell 2 trillion RMB (US$318 billion) short of its market value.
... Since 1978, at least 50-60 million peasants have lost their land
entirely.” “During the fifty years from 1952 to 2002, the revenue
generated from the land that peasants gave away for free totaled 5.1535
trillion RMB (US$819 billion),” according to Dang Guoying. But after the
implementation of the Law of Land Administration in 1986, “China’s total
payments in compensation for requisitioned land totaled less than 100
billion RMB (US$16 billion).”

During the era of urbanization, peasants donated their labor as well as
their land. The financial ruin of Chinese agriculture has meant that many
peasants have no choice but to move to cities to look for work. But
because of the still-inescapable household registration system, they are
unable to benefit from public services accorded their urban counterparts.
The group of people who make up the majority of China’s population, who
have made unceasing sacrifices through the eras of revolution,
industrialization, and urbanization, are nevertheless prevented from
claiming their fair share of their country’s success.

This is the historical context of the events in Wukan. Its residents had
already been exploited by the very design and policy orientation of
China’s political system; now the system’s corruption had made matters
even worse. After their rights had been violated so many times, the
peasants had no choice but to resort to protest and to stand for justice
and to secure their rights and interests by electing a new village
committee.

The ruling party has to face the fact that its “stability preservation”
strategies have short-term impact. What the country’s leaders ought to do
is try to launch political reforms, adjusting system and policy,
establishing effective organs for public supervision of the political
process eradicating the corruption. For if the Taishi protest sounded an
alarm, then Wukan was its even more resounding echo.

The Wukan protest demonstrated both the rationality of rural people and
their ability to organize effectively. This is a sign of progress. Travel
to cities has expanded the extent to which many peasants are aware of
their rights, and the Internet and social media have given them enhanced
ability to communicate and mobilize. More importantly, the increased
economic activity and social mobility peasants have experienced in recent
years have actually strengthened traditional village institutions centered
on family lineages. Since Reform and Opening, ancestor worship and
maintenance of ancestral halls—which had been devastated during the
Cultural Revolution—have enjoyed a revival. This is particularly
pronounced in Guangdong. The old patriarchal social structure in rural
areas is gradually turning into the social foundation for rural
self-governance.

The linchpin of the Wukan protests was a group of young people who had
left the village to do business or work as migrant laborers. They kept in
touch over the Chinese instant-message service QQ and through it formed a
group they called the Wukan Ardent Youth Corps. Corps members discussed
the unfairness of Wukan land transfers. They bemoaned the fact that its
village committee hadn’t held an election in forty-one years. They railed
against the lack of openness in government affairs and public finance. And
they planned to petition higher authorities to address their grievances.

When the conflicts in Wukan escalated, one by one the group’s members
returned home, where they became a core of strength for the protests. They
registered social media accounts to provide up-to-the-minute news of what
was happening in Wukan. They made videos and disseminated them widely
online. They talked to local and international journalists. When the
village was blockaded, they even spontaneously organized a team of
security guards to maintain order. These returnees were deeply connected
to their native soil, but the knowledge and skills they had gained while
away from home were what gave the Wukan protests coordination and power.
They made Wukan a model for organizing social movements at the village
level.

The man elected village head was the respected and trusted protest leader
Lin Zuluan. Lin, a 65-year-old Communist Party member and former soldier,
had served as a cadre in Wukan and the nearby township of Donghai before
leaving officialdom to go into business. In many ways he resembled a
member of the traditional rural gentry. His party membership and years as
an official ensured that he knew his way around China’s political system.
Although he’d returned home to retire, he still maintained a kind of
emotional connection to the regime. His years in business had given him a
web of social connections that kept his worldview from getting stale.
These are the qualities that tend to confer authority and build popular
support in today’s Chinese countryside, and they allowed Lin to keep the
protesters rational and their protests orderly. Lin’s participation
demonstrated the enormous role that gentry-like figures can play in
ensuring the success of attempts at rural self-governance.

By September 21, 2011, Wukan was in a state of anarchy. The village party
secretary had fled, and some 5000 people were engaged in direct
confrontation with the county government in Lufeng. It was Lin Zuluan who
proposed and organized a village election. First, each of the forty-seven
lineages in the village (each of which has its own surname) chose between
one and five representatives. Next, from out of this initial group of 117
“village representatives,” thirty-eight nominees for a temporary village
council were selected. Then the 117 voted to select thirteen from among
the thirty-eight, who would now serve a temporary village council that
could respond to Wukan’s most pressing immediate needs. That this kind of
multi-centered, multi-phased system of representation could grow
spontaneously out of the traditional local lineage system demonstrates the
power that lineage still holds to shape local society.

When, at long last, the conflict between Wukan’s villagers and government
reached an accommodation, the villagers were able to hold a legal and
binding election to choose a new village government. Their conduct ought
to spell the demise of the belief that Chinese peasants are incapable of
participating in democratic politics. This year, discussions of village
self-governance have been especially heated and the center of debate has
been whether village self-governance could become the basis for political
reform at the national level. From the perspective of population, if the
80% of China’s population that is classified as rural can successfully
govern itself that would make for quite a sturdy foundation for social
stability across the country. Beginning political reform in the
countryside has a very long history in China.

China’s system of prefectures and counties, which allowed the arm of the
central state to reach all the way to the village level, began in the Qin
Dynasty (221-208B.C.) During Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the
scholar-statesman Wang Anshi put into practice the baojia system, a
community-based form of law enforcement and civil control. Under this
system, imperial power reached only to the county level. The substance of
rural self-governance arose out of a mutually beneficial relationship
between the central state and the local gentry. Under the baojia,
responsibility for tax collection and law and order at the village level
was left to local gentry and lineages. This reduced costs for the central
government and at the same time allowed the local lineages to protect
their own interests. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Yongzheng
Emperor of the Qing Dynasty changed the tax code so that rural households
would be taxed by the size of their land-holdings rather than by the
number of people in their family. This lowered the tax burden on the
poorest Chinese farmers and gave them a new measure of freedom. The
termination of the imperial civil service examination system in 1905 was a
watershed moment in the history of China's countryside. It closed off the
channel through which people in rural villages could ascend to positions
of power in the imperial central government. Society had to reshuffle the
cards. Peasants would have to find another way to the center of history.

During the Republican Era (1912-1949) that followed the abdication of the
Qing emperor, both the Nationalist Party (KMT) and Communist Party (CCP)
realized that the situation of China’s peasantry was its most pressing
issue and a source of political power worth fighting over. The CCP
mobilized peasants to practice class struggle, while the KMT launched a
“Rural Reconstruction Movement,” in part to counter the influence of the
Communists, with more than 1200 pilot projects throughout the country,
including Huang Peiyan’s Kuanshan project in Jiangsu, Liang Sumin’s
Zouping project in Shandong, and James Y.C. Yen’s Dingxian project in
Hebei.

If you look back at the past hundred years of interventions in the Chinese
countryside, it’s impossible to deny that the CCP is unsurpassed in this
regard. It understood best what peasants wanted, it was the best at
mobilizing them, and it was, thus, the most successful at using and
controlling them. This was the most important reason for its victory over
the KMT.

Prior to their victory, the Communists had already dealt serious blows to
the power of clans and gentry families in the countryside. Once in power,
they used land reform, collectivization, and the establishment of the
People’s Communes to thoroughly destroy what remained of China’s
traditional rural social structure, and they replaced it with their own
apparatus of total political control, penetrating all the way down to the
village level.

But with the beginning of Reform and Opening (in 1978) and the first wave
of urbanization that followed it, this level of control became
problematic. Excessive urbanization, the government’s over-reliance on
land requisition, official corruption, and the lack of transparency in the
political process led to increasing numbers of rural protests. You could
say that Wukan just one such protest, but the nature of its resolution
demonstrates that the countryside possesses the resources to govern
itself. History demands that for China to progress, top down control in
the countryside ought to be replaced with direct democracy at the village
level.

It is also time for a new definition of “revolution.” Revolution doesn’t
need to mean seizing power. It doesn’t need to mean one political party
replacing another. It doesn’t need to mean violence. Revolution can mean
the melting away of conflict, a common search for a road through our
problems. It can mean sharing, rather than seizing. It can bring smiles
instead of terror. It can be a storm of ideas rather than a call to arms.
Revolution doesn’t need to mean the burying of a system; it can mean the
system’s renewal. Revolution doesn’t need to mean chaos; it can also mean
order. Wukan has already set the example. It is time for history to follow.

Translated from Chinese by Sun Yunfan.

References:

* Dang Guoying. “Tudi zhidu dui nongmin de boduo” (“The land system’s
expropriation of farmers’ property”).Zhongguo gaige (July 2005).
* Huang Xiaohu. “Tudi caizheng de libi ji weilai fazhan fangxiang” (“The
pros and cons of public land financing and paths for future development”).
Xuexi shibao (January 17, 2011).
* Ling Zhijun. Chenfu—Zhongguo jingji gaige beiwanglu (1989-1997) (Rising
and Falling: A Memorandum of Chinese Economic Reforms, 1989-1997).
Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 1998.
* Wang Ping. “Digen zhengzhi: quanmian jiepou Zhongguo tudi zhidu”
(“Grassroots government: A comprehensive analysis of China’s land
system”). Zhongguo gaige (July 2005).
* Xu Xinxin. Dangdai Zhongguo shehui jiegou bianqian yu liudong (Social
Change and Social Mobility in Contemporary China). Beijing: Shehui kexue
wenxian chubanshe, 2000.
* Yu Jianrong. “Quandi shi chengshi dui nongcun lüeduo” (“Enclosure is the
city’s plunder of the countryside”).Xin jing bao (November 5, 2010).