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The Story of Hankantou (Part 1): Abused, betrayed, and angry
This story was first brought to the attention of the world amidst a sea of violent anti Japanese protests, and at first glance it might sound very familiar; but in this case the year wasn’t 1931, and ‘They’ didn’t mean the Japanese.
What follows is the first part of the story of Huankantou(Huaxi), a small and otherwise unremarkable village in Zhejiangs Dongyang country. It is a story of abuse, corruption and the betrayal of a village by the very people who were entrusted to protect it.
A Betrayal of Trust
This story, and the betrayal of Huankantou(Huaxi), began in 2001, when many of the village’s farmers woke up one morning to find that the land that they had been farming suddenly belonged to someone else; village committee signed a lucrative deal that handed 660,000m2 (0.67KM2) of the villages land over to authorities in Dongyang, a city close to the village.
When pressed on the issue, Chen Qixian, a spokesperson for authorities in Dongyang city, said that the land deal was completely above board, and indeed it was; In China, village committees have the right to act on behalf off the villagers and to act without their agreement of consent.
The deal left many villagers without the land that thy relied on for their livelihood, Chinese law left them with little or no recourse, and the betrayal left them very angry. However, worse was to come for Hankantou(Huaxi)..
The Chemical plants
Soon after the deal between the village committee and Dongyang city was sealed, developers moved in and began the construction of an industrial complex on what had once been farmland. The complex contained 13 chemical factories, some privately owned, other’s owned by the state.
Despite the value of the land, and the profitable factories that were built on it, villagers saw little in the way of compensation for the seizure.
It has been suggested that compensation for the villagers whose land was seized might have been siphoned off by corrupt local government officials in collusion with the village committee. Given the sate of corruption in China, this is more than likely.
The Curse of Hankantou
Though the seizure of land was a setback for the village, some believed that the factories might be beneficial to Hankantou(Hauxi), bringing with them jobs and infrastructure like the concrete roads needed to bring supplies into the area to feed the factories, but what benefits were brought by the factories were soon outweighed by the costs. The factories brought with them a heavy curse.
The chemical factories began operation in 2002 and it was not long before the first reports of problems began to arrive.
It began with the local plant life: trees, grass, and other vegetation in proximity to the chemical plant began to die, those plants that didn’t turned brown and withered. Later, farmers living further away from the factories found that their crops were either dieing in the fields or were becoming inedible. Industrial pollution was quickly blamed.
The effects of the chemical plants didn’t stop with vegetation and crops, next it was the turn of the village’s human and animal residents. Despite a denial of problems by local officials, villagers began to experience unusual or chronic health problems, ranging stinging eyes to unexplained illnesses.
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"Lots
of people started falling ill. Some days our eyes would sting? |
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Fears that the area had been contaminated by industrial pollutants from the chemical factories was confirmed when the local river changed color.
While other rivers in other villages run clear, the Huashui River in Huankantou(Huaxi) became become the color of low grade diesel, a sick and dirty brown. This was not only alarming from an environmental perspective, but also because Huashui was regularly used for watering animals, washing clothes, and to supply a significant proportion of Huankantou(Huaxi)’s irrigation water,
More alarmingly for the villagers, after the factories opened, babies began to be born with unusual birth defects, and others were stillborn.
Though no total figures are available for the period 2002-2005, nine stillbirths, and handicapped children have been reported in the Huankantou(Huaxi) during the last year alone.
Obstruction
Angry about the seizure of their land, and concerned about the increasingly common health complaint, villagers tried to raise their concerns with local authorities, but their concerns were dismissed and their requests for assistance came up against a brick wall.
In desperation, residents then sent a party to petition Beijing for assistance directly. Under normal circumstances, villagers would have expected that an official would normally been sent to investigate, that they would have expressed dissatisfaction over the factories conduct and compensation would have been arranged, however, their petition was unceremoniously ignored.
For the villagers, the final straw came in March 2005, when Tan Yong, the Mayor of Dongyang, barred them from attending a supposedly open ?meet-the-public? forum that would have allowed them to air their grievances in public, and to made their situation known.
On 24 March, not long after they were barred from attending the forum, villagers erected a blockade on the road leading up to the industrial compound that housed the offending factories, their aim: to starve the factories out of commission by preventing supplies from being delivered.
Around 200 villagers, mostly elderly women from the villager’s ‘old people’s association’ manned the blockade night and day.
Living in huts made from straw and bamboo that had been erected by the villagers, they turned back the lorries feeding the factories
In response to the protest, Wang Zhongfa, a key figure in the rallying of the village, was detained and accused of ‘inciting the overthrow of the government’, a politically motivated charge often used against journalists and activists who disagree with local or national authorities.
Despite Wang’s detention, the villagers continued their protest and the blockade went on for 2 weeks, chocking them of supplies and eventually forcing the closure of much of the industrial park, it was then that security forces arrived to ‘help’ the villagers.
A tale that is purportedly being recounted by a local man to outsiders tells us what happened next.
"The television in Dongyang told you all that the government sent people to the village to help us, yet you have come here to seen things for yourself today.
You can see here, I believe, that the government came in buses, with thousands of men, to help the people with cutlasses, clubs, and tear gas canisters."
Anger
Though quotes vary in the international media, some naming communists, others naming the police or the government, such is the extent of feelings in Huankantou(Huaxi) that four words were universal ‘Worse than the Japanese’. Few in China are ever angry enough to utter this phrase. It is the ultimate sign of anger.
If Huankantou(Huaxi) is anything to go by, then maybe protesters in Beijing have been throwing stones at the wrong embassy.
Village Committees?
In most Chinese villages, the village committee is the de facto authority.
A villages committee manages the affairs of the village and has authority to speak or act on behalf of villagers, with or without their consent. A committee can hand out judgments over minor local disputes and often handles local enforcement of edicts that are issued from regional or national offices.
In many cases, village committees are supposed to be democratically elected by village resident, indeed such grass roots democracy is often hailed by Beijing as being a sign of reform, in reality things are a little 'different'.
Village committees are communist controlled, only those approved by the party can stand for election as a village leader, and in most cases the party issues ‘advice’ on who to vote for. Ballets are also carried out secretly, as in the west, which means that if the right candidate isn’t elected by the villagers it is easy to say that they were.
Village committees also manage local land issues, stating what can be built where, and by whom. This, incidentally, places their members in a prime position to take a ‘gratuity’ from any deals that are ‘beneficial’ to the village.
Village committees usually follow the government line on all issues and act in ‘the greater interest’ key issues, like who is to be relocated for an industrial scheme.
Far from being a group aimed at addressing local problems, village committees are often primarily interested in maintaining the authority of the government in rural areas.
They are widely seen as being the Beijing’s eyes, ears.
They can also act as Beijing’s fists if need be.
Land Seizures?
While tragic, the story of Hankantou(Huaxi) is not unique. During 2003 alone, nearly 26,000 Km2 of farmland was lost to urban and industrial development.
There is also little or nothing that they can do to stop it because the Chinese system is weighed against them, and because corruption involving the redistribution of agricultural land is rampant.
While it is widely known that, after the communist takeover of China, agricultural land was taken from the so called landlord class and redistributed to peasant farmers, it is not so widely known that the arrangement is not permanent, or that land can be easily be redistributed away from farmers for other purposes.
In order to work redistributed land, Chinese farmers generally sign a 30 year lease agreement, with ownership of agricultural land remaining with the government, and the right to reclaim the land remaining with the government.
Originally this system was intended to allow the fair distribution and redistribution of land among farmers who were too poor to be land owners, and to allow farmers to have access to land even if they could not afford to rent it, but in recent years this system has increasingly left farmers vulnerable to abuse by local authorities, especially if they farm on the outskirts of a city that is seeking to expand, and particularly if the right to develop seized land can be sold at a premium.
Most seized farmland in China is used for non agricultural purposes, a problem that has grown steadily as China’s economy has grown. Many city officials see their right to expand as eclipsing the rights of farmers, and often have little or no regard for those who are displaced if the construction of new facilities will bring money or investment to the city.
It is not known exactly how much was paid to village officials in Hankantou(Hauxi), or to officials in Dongyang city, for farm land, but it would have been a considerable amount given the size of the seized land and the value of the industrial facilities constructed on it.
The two most common reasons for land seizures are through to be the construction of industrial facilities away from residential areas, and the construction of expensive apartment blocks in desirable areas. Road and dam building, and city beatification are also common reasons for the seizure of agricultural land.
The problem of land seizures has been heightened in many instances by the Chinese concept of face, often excess land is seized, in addition to that which is developed, to use for image building schemes that have no actually practical purpose.
It is not unknown for farmland to be confiscated to build four or six lane intestate quality highways with three meter sidewalk and three meter wide planted embankments, which lead to nowhere and carry almost no traffic, or for town authorities to confiscate additional farmland around new developments for city beatification programs including the building of ‘town squares’ at the entrance to new residential areas and the planting of ornate flowerbeds around industrial area.
Even by government estimates, which are often regarded as being conservative, the problem of illegal land seizures is vast. During 2003 there were 168,000 officially recognized illegal land seizures,
Many of these land seizures are illegal, and are fueled by corruption; selling land for industrial and residential purposes is a good source of revenue and city and village officials often receive large sums of money in return for land deals. It is also common for officials to take a cut of compensation offered to farmers.
In one instance in Fuzhou Province, farmers living around the town of Qingkou were offered $US4000 - $US5000 in compensation for land seized in 1998; after money was taken by local officials, most farmers received less than $US150.
In 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao declaired that Beijing would “put an end to illegal acquisition and use of farmland." and true to his word, the government has made some inroads in reducing instances of requisitioning of agricultural land. Disappointingly Beijing’s intercessions have largely been as a response to falling grain crops, and not as a move to protect farmers from abuse.
ACB,
Do you have something against paragraphs?
They are your friend :-P
Actually, it looks like blog-city screwed up your formatting when you went to publish.
Visit me @ http://thehorsesmouth.blog-city.com
The worst kind of domination and betrayal. Your story made me sick and
angry; the villagers have no recourse because of the way "the system" is
set up. I'm very sad.
Interesting what you say about the village elections. I teach in a
University in Dalian, where a lot of the students come from fairly rural
backgrounds, and the word 'election' came up in a crossword we were doing
in class. I was pretty surprised at the definition they came up with.
One of their clues was 'it's what happens in China when you want to have a new President'.
After a brief discussion it turned out that each one of the students firmly believes that they live in a democratic country and at the age of 18 they obtain the right to participate in elections, which they believe take place regularly.
Obviously I couldn't pursue the issue in class, but I presume they were referring both to the village elections and to the NPC in Beijing.
I used to know some Japanese in Dalian and I have been there a few times
(As in I sat on the beach in 星海 and looked longingly at the Cheese and
Bentou in the Carafor), It’s a nice city, I found the people there to be
rather westernized in their ideologies, but also rather naïve in their view
of China. People in Dalian tend to see themselves as being almost the west
because things look like the west on the outside, but underneath things are
the same old China. Ironically, Shanghai is probably the most democratic
place in China, because the municiple government has to bow to public
preasure more often than in other cities because many of Shanghai's
residents have been exposed to enough wester ideologies to know how things
should be.
Village elections are nothing like real elections. The party chooses who can stand, the party can throw the ballots out if they don’t like the way that people voted, and there is little or no oversight.
Village committees are basically a front to appease naïve people.
Fascinating article...certainly sheltered from this version of China in big
city Guangzhou. This situation is reminiscent of the troubles recently
faced by the rural poor in India regarding land reclaimation, problems
exposed so well by the writer Arundhati Roy in her book The Alegebra of
Infinite Justice.
ben [ben_paste@email.com]
That is an interesting story. I love the final sentence.
Nicely put.
Gordon
Visit me @ http://thehorsesmouth.blog-city.com
I guess I should have been more specific.
This sentence:
"If Huankantou(Huaxi) is anything to go by, then maybe protesters in Beijing have been throwing stones ate the wrong embassy."
Visit me @ http://thehorsesmouth.blog-city.com
We were just in New York for 11 days. Three stories about China made the
major headlines and lighted banner news on major streets. This, at least
the riots, was one of them. The other two were: Beijing demonstrations at
the Japanese embasy and revaluation of the yuan.
ACB, is this story original or did you piece together from other reports on
the same incident?
It's actually a bit of both. The writting and the conclusions are my own,
but I couldn't gather all of the facts myself.
I got several peices of information from journalists working in China who had visited the scene soon the riots, or who looked up background information, and I used them to back up what I already knew about the incident or used them to reach my conclusinos. The quote for example, I didn't personally collect that, and I didn't personally witness the riots because they happened in the middle of the night quite far from where I was living at the time.
If you don't count this as being original, then it isn't an original peice. It's not a word for word transcription of anybody else's work, but I didn't gather all of the facts myself and had to realy on third parties. I also re used material that I initially report this event.
When you can't get to a site until the event is over, you can't do mmuch more than this.
By this time I'd also read a lot of news stories and blog entries about the village, so I suppose, I must have ended sounding like at least one of them.
ACB