Page 2 of 2 CHINA'S SORROW, CHINA'S
EMBARRASSMENT The great relocation that failed
By Peter Lee
The local government took the
20,000 hectares of land from the farms, but limited
the number of returning peasants to 75,000 and only gave them about 6,600
hectares of land, a considerable
portion of it marginal and floodplain land, and
far less than 0.13 hectares per capita on average.
Rights to farm the other 13,300 or so
hectares of land were apparently contracted to middlemen
on highly profitable terms.
The migrants' well-developed sense of injury was confirmed both by this land
grab and the ongoing abuses of the local government administering the
expenditure of hundreds of millions of yuan of funds allocated by the central
government for relief, resettlement and redevelopment of the reservoir area.
Starved of land, capital, aid and political influence by their local
government, the migrants now form a despised and impoverished underclass in
their own homeland.
As a result, for the past 25 years the government of Weinan - which administers
the seven counties in the reservoir area where most of the migrants reside -
has taken center-stage in the Sanmen Xia drama.
If the Yellow River is China's sorrow and the Sanmen Xia dam is China's burden,
then the city government of Weinan can be considered China's embarrassment.
Over the years, the Weinan city government has, by its own admission,
squandered millions of dollars of funds earmarked for the migrants on
unprofitable investments, a failed mineral water factory, unrecoverable loans,
fraudulent real-estate ventures, influence-buying, and what could be called
simple, honest graft. At the same time, it has ruled over the migrants with a
steely antagonism and high-handed security presence that, in terms of character
if not degree, would be easily recognized by residents of the occupied West
Bank.
To a certain extent, Weinan owes its relative impunity to the awareness - even
the self-fulfilling prophecy - that any attempt to bring the Weinan city
government to book for its corruption and mismanagement would provoke a
destabilizing explosion of outrage and activism by the aggrieved and organized
migrants.
As Xie Chaoping discovered during his research, even before his own detention,
the local government may be extremely lax in exercising its fiduciary
responsibility to the migrants, but it is fanatical about controlling the flow
of information to the central government and the media concerning its misdeeds.
In one instance, Xie reports the city government responded to the accidental
inclusion of an unfavorable reference in an article in the Weinan Daily by
immediately ordering the seizure of the offending issue from news stands and
the reprinting of an entire replacement issue with the offending article
sanitized.
The first article Xie Chaoping wrote concerning corruption and the migrants, in
2006, was spiked after a Weinan "firefighting team" visited Beijing and
deployed its assets at the Ministry of Propaganda to kill the story. Another
firefighting team allegedly stopped another story with a payment of 100,000
yuan (US$15,000).
Public knowledge of the shenanigans in Weinan can be credited largely to the
indefatigable whistle-blowing of one man - Li Wanmin.
While a functionary in the Relocation Affairs Bureau of the Weinan city
government, Li has written over 600 reports alleging malfeasance by the Weinan
government in its handling of migrant affairs and in allocating state funds
over the past three decades. He sent these reports to the Central Party
Procurorate in Beijing, the State Council, the Ministry of Hydrology (as
China's dam-building ministry it has jurisdiction over the reservoir area),
provincial government bureaus, and news outlets.
The central government, mindful of the responsibility for migrant welfare that
it had acknowledged since the 1950s and presumably appreciative of the services
of a local informant as enthusiastic, informed and heedless of consequences as
Li Wanmin, responded with investigations.
With remarkable tenacity, the Weinan government was able to endure these probes
and achieve whitewashes that, for the most part, acknowledged the
transgressions but excused them on the grounds that they were either
insignificant or understandable spasms of enthusiastic incompetence as China
lurched into the era of economic reform.
Reporting at the national level on abuses in Weinan had apparently turned into
something of a cottage industry by the early 1990s, albeit not publicly. In his
book, Xie reveals that leading Chinese newspapers, loath to wash China's dirty
linen in public, reserved these stories for their "nei can" or internal
reference editions, distributed only to government, military and party offices.
In late 1996, the dam broke, as it were, with the open publication of one of Li
Wanmin's broadsides in the Workers' Daily with an afterword by journalist Ding
Guoyuan.
Li - whose struggles with the local government had assumed the dimensions of a
Sicilian vendetta - purchased 4,000 copies of the relevant issue of Workers'
Daily, added a cover letter written under a pseudonym, and delivered it to the
legendary commander of the migrant movement, Liu Huairong. Liu called a mass
meeting, read the article and letter to his largely illiterate followers, and
proposed a mass letter-writing campaign to bring Weinan's abuses to the
attention of the powers that be.
The Weinan government, understandably terrified that these revelations would
provoke another round of debilitating and embarrassing confrontations with the
incensed immigrants, sent cadres and public security personnel into the migrant
areas at an expenditure of 370,000 yuan (per Li's information) in a quixotic
effort to seize all the Workers' Daily issues they could find.
Li Wanmin was also detained.
The circumstances surrounding Li's detention are described in detail in
chapters 40 and 41 of Xie's book. However, most versions available online
suppress these chapters, presumably because they show the local public security
apparatus in a distinctly unfavorable light, both in terms of extra-legal
abuses and bone-headed incompetence.
Weinan's anxiety concerning potential migrant militancy is indicated by its
decision to detain Li at a military base several dozen kilometers outside the
city, instead of a downtown office that could be surrounded by angry
demonstrators.
The public security interrogators, though apparently eager to do the bidding of
the Weinan city government in neutralizing Li, were unable to come up with an
offense with which they could charge him.
Apparently, there was no law that could be brought to bear against Li for
delivering newspapers that might incite a disruptive outburst of rage by
thousands of aggrieved peasants. After several days of inconclusive argument
that failed to establish any legal or evidentiary basis for his incarceration,
the public security interrogators shifted to a program of sleep deprivation,
psychological abuse, and physical deprivation. These tactics were perfected
during the "brainwashing" of American prisoners of war during the Korean War
and subsequently guided the development of post 9/11 US interrogation
techniques at Guantanamo and other overseas detention facilities - presumably
in an effort to break Li and get him to confess to something that would destroy
his credibility and legal and political standing.
Before these measures could achieve their inevitable result, the Spring
Festival holiday intervened and Public Security focus and discipline drifted.
One foggy night, with senior staff back in their comfortable homes celebrating
the New Year, Li's guards nonchalantly neglected to escort Li to the privy. Li
walked through the base, climbed a tree, hopped over the wall, eluded the
subsequent manhunt, and made it aboard a train to Beijing and the editorial
offices of Workers' Daily. Within a few hours, the Central Procuratorate had
telephoned instructions to Weinan that Li was not to be mistreated or
interfered with.
Indeed, Li is still employed in the Relocation Bureau to this day and still
sends out a steady stream of reports and letters.
Li Wanmin's case provided an interesting precedent for Xie Chaoping's own
incarceration.
Indeed, Xie seems to have modeled the distribution of his book on Li's
provocative example of distributing the Workers' Daily to the migrants.
After his release, Xie revealed to the Southern China Daily that it was
originally intended that a "financial big shot" had agreed to pay for printing
a copy of The Great Relocation for every migrant in the reservoir area
free of charge (by now, a not-inconsiderable 100,000 people). The big shot
subsequently backed out, stating that he needed the capital for his business
projects. [2]
Xie embarked on a lengthy effort to find a publisher for the book, but numerous
outfits, apparently feeling outside pressure, indicated they could not publish
the book either at all or in its present form. Suspecting that his cell phone
was tapped, Xie switched to using public phones and office phones in his
efforts related to the manuscript.
Finally, Xie was put in touch with the editor of a small magazine registered in
Shanxi (the other province, not Shaanxi), The Spark, who agreed to issue The
Great Relocation as a supplement with Xie personally bearing the
printing costs and arranging distribution.
Less than perfect cooperation and candor may have shadowed relations with The
Spark. In an open letter after the affair blew up, the editor indicates that he
thought Xie was printing 500 copies; it appears that as many as 20,000 copies
(reports differ) were printed.
When the book finally emerged in August, the printers shipped it to Weinan for
distribution. A batch was delivered to none other than the famous local gadfly
Li Wanmin, who planned to hold them for pickup by representatives of the
migrants.
Somehow, the local government got wind of the situation, seized Li's copies
and, in a reprise of the Workers' Daily sweep dispatched - in Li's words -
large numbers of public security cadres and officers, township cadres and staff
of the cultural inspection team - to enter the homes of migrants to seize their
copies of The Great Relocation. [3]
The inevitable justification for the seizure was that the book would "incite
the migrants to raise a rumpus" and "revealed state secrets".
Xie Chaoping had started his career writing for a publication of the Central
Procuratorate, a state organ that performs a function similar to a US grand
jury, determining if charges should be filed in criminal cases. Therefore, he
felt confident that he was not in legal jeopardy.
However, he had not fully reckoned with the political influence of Weinan, its
ability to extract cooperation from police and bureaucrats in other
jurisdictions, and its willingness to ignore the letter of the law to engage in
destructive harassment.
The Spark had apparently neglected to submit the supplement to the relevant
authorities in Shanxi for review prior to publication, an administrative lapse;
however it was charged with a criminal offence, "running an illegal printing
operation", and shut down.
The Weinan Public Security Bureau seems to enjoy a brotherly accommodation with
a police station in suburban Beijing and had no difficulty dispatching officers
on several occasions to the capital to confront and harass Spark editors and
take depositions.
On August 19, to everyone's shock, the Weinan "special case squad" was - with
the assistance of the suburban Beijing police station (which was happy to leave
its jurisdiction, enter the city and help arrest Xie and toss his apartment) -
able to enter Xie's apartment in Beijing, handcuff and detain him, transport
him back to Weinan, and accuse him of "illegal business activities". The squad
chose to construe receipts for delivery of books to migrant representatives
free of charge as evidence of improper book sales.
In dealing with the Weinan Public Security Bureau, Xie lawyered up and deployed
his knowledge of legal procedures, the precedent of Li Wanmin's interrogation
and, possibly, his ongoing relationships with the Procuratorate. He also
benefited from the energetic support of his wife and favorable attention in the
state media, which reported on his detention, another indication that the
central government continues to take a critical interest in Weinan and its
problems.
He was released on September 17, after almost a month in detention under
miserable and demoralizing conditions.
Presumably, the Weinan Public Security Bureau realized it had no case and would
have to release Xie sooner or later, but was happy to hang onto him for a month
to demonstrate its stubborn thuggishness to other potential critics.
The Spark, however, has suffered serious financial losses as a result of its
shutdown and may not survive.
It is difficult to come to a conclusion concerning Xie Chaoping's case.
Maybe the glass is half-full: his book is in wide circulation on the Internet,
albeit often in a truncated form; after a nasty, 30-day ordeal, Xie was able to
escape the clutches of the Weinan Public Security Bureau.
Maybe the glass is half-empty: 50 years after the Sanmen Xia dam was built -
and 25 years after the central government made a commitment to put things right
- the migrants are still impoverished, marginalized and voiceless, and Weinan
city seems to be a law unto itself.
Xie Chaoping still cries when he hears the words "steamed bun" - but not as
much as before.
PART 2: Damned to failure
Notes
1. In Xie Chaoping's Own
Words, EastSouthWestNorth, Sep 24, 2010.
2. Click
here for text (in Chinese).
3. Click here for
text (in Chinese)
Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection
with US foreign policy.
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