Mass incident in Lufeng

[2952-0-0]

For a few weeks I've been passively following an incident in the village of Wukan in Guangdong, in southern China. Until today I shrugged it off as yet another of the brief incidents which flare up in China every so often. But things could be much more serious now.

Anyway it appears the local (not national) government was planning to grab farmland to a developer, and villagers reacted by ejecting the village Party functionaries. In the last few days, after someone was killed in suspicious circumstances, this has apparently escalated into a standoff with police, the usual statements from the local (not national) government about foreign involvement, and so forth. While the government is publicly reacting with force there is behind the scenes negotiation.

It is important to note the following:
1) The protesters are not opposing the Communist Party, at least not publicly. In fact they're carrying banners *supporting* the Party and demanding that it punish those responsible for the land grab. And in any case they'd be stupid to demand otherwise. From the first-hand witness of Yours Truly, all protests and demonstrations target local functionaries while expressing loyalty to the Imperial Court Party Central.

2) The protesters were not stopped from marching and "Occupying" a nearby town without any violence, indicating there's a disinclination to use force alone.

3) The big dog in the province, Wang Yang, is widely considered to be campaigning for more influence ahead of next fall's Party Congress. He has a relatively liberal reputation, though whether this is because of himself or because Guangdong has a liberal reputation anyways, is not as clear. Of course, he desperately wants to resolve this situation peacefully and face-savingly.

4) The town is only three hours drive east of Hong Kong and might be able to receive over the air Hong Kong TV signals. And even if they weren't, the sheer flow of connections makes censoring events much harder than if the town were in, say, Gansu or Hubei.

My prediction is that provincial and national bigwigs will remove the local officials and the property developer, and quite probably have them executed. But what happens later is very, very tricky. If Wang Yang orders provincially-controlled TV and newspapers to openly report the issue, it could start an obvious chain reaction which leads to the very top, putting his job prospects in jeopardy. But ordering silence from the media will seriously hurt his and the province's liberal reputation, which also damages his job prospects. The prospects for snowballing are quite big I must say.

And Trivia: Lufeng was the first county in China to be seized by the CCP and declared a Worker's Council/Soviet in 1927.

[Platypus]

Interesting to see the inner workings of the monolith. I know far too little about China, I must admit.

Just how tied in to HK (and Macau?) is Guangdong?

[2952-0-0]

Just as I have predicted, there have been major concessions by the provincial Party committee. They will release the three "hostages", release the body of the killed man, return the land to the villagers, and allow "democratic" elections for village leadership to be held.

In the meantime the People's Daily has written an editorial recognizing there are problems with land grabs which need to be addressed, and which have understandably led to riots. This can be interpreted as a sign of approval from the very top, and is perhaps sign that the incident won't negatively affect Wang Yang's job prospects. But the editorial concluded by citing a saying from Lenin, indicating they're not interested in letting this set a precedent for political changes.

Interesting to see the inner workings of the monolith. I know far too little about China, I must admit.

Just how tied in to HK (and Macau?) is Guangdong?

The real question is now how tied HK and Macau are to Guangdong. There's been plenty of anxiety in Hong Kong over marginalization, and efforts to meet the faster decision making process in the north haven't been popular. As for Macau, it's little more than a Las Vegas on steroids with a Portuguese old town as a sideshow.

[Foucaulf]

I should have posted in this thread earlier. Now that it's over, it is astounding how well the government handled this problem. Reports were allowed, but relegated to the back pages. Now the floodgates are opened again so the press can editorialize.

What this has done is to eliminate all the revolutionary fervour of this incident. There is little mention of the party establishment being evicted from the village, or much mention of police surrounding the encampment. The uninformed buy into the thought that Wukan is just a symptom of a wider disease. The informed sees Wukan as nothing better than a symptom of a wider disease. Ultimately the revolt is seen as no more than rabble-rousing, exaggerated by the foreign press.

That last paragraph could be totally wrong, but it encapsulates what I think is the gaping problem for any mass movement in China. Where and from whom does it start?