Three hundred riot police armed with submachine guns and batons were sent in to put down the recent protest by residents of Haoji village, Gaoming city. The newspaper said 27 villagers were arrested after a standoff.

Gaoming city, in Foshan municipality, was told a year ago that it must take in 980 people displaced by the Three Gorges dam, which is being built roughly 1,500 kilometres away in Hubei province.

The local government, which plans to resettle 100 of the migrants in Haoji, wants to build temporary housing for the newcomers on land that villagers claim belongs to them.

Haoji was once home to about 500 people, but many villagers emigrated to Hong Kong or overseas in recent decades. About 100 people still live in the village.

Villagers say that during the land reform of the 1950s that followed the Chinese revolution, the authorities seized property owned by émigré families. A factory was built on the land, though that has since closed down, the newspaper said in its April 24 report.

Now the authorities want to clean up the abandoned factory and also put up two-storey dwellings in which to house the Three Gorges migrants temporarily. But to do so would mean demolishing several existing houses, as well as ancestral halls – small shrines where family members place offerings to honour their ancestors.

Villagers argue that the land – and the family shrines – should not be touched until the underlying property issue is resolved.