Jehangir S. Pocha
June 19, 2005

Xiang Yuan, China: Eight years ago, Lu She Zhong and the other residents of Guan Yang, a hamlet in central Henan Province, were forced to move to this resettlement village about 40 miles away. They left behind their traditional homes and farmland to make way for the giant Xiao Langdi dam, China’s second-largest water management project after the mammoth Three Gorges dam in neighboring Hubei Province. Government planners said Xiao Langdi would be a testament to China’s progress and would bring water and electricity to the country’s impoverished interior regions. But people in this village said the dam has turned out to be yet another monument to the giant miscalculations and injustices of reform-era China, bringing them nothing but poverty and other troubles. Lu, a 55-year-old village leader in this cluster of unfinished redbrick houses, is one of the few Chinese who still wears a blue Mao suit. But he said it wasn’t out of any affection for the Communist Party. “It’s because I can’t afford any new clothes,” Lu complained to a visiting reporter, as dozens of people in this tiny village in central Henan Province set aside their daily chores to join in admonishing their government. “This is a thieving government that’s taken away our entire life.” Another neighbor was equally bitter. “They told us give up your small home in the interest of the big home [the country],” said Zhang Qiu Lau, 42, while feeding some pigs. He said the government had promised to pay the equivalent of 15 US cents per square foot for the expropriated land. “But up to now I’ve got nothing, no cash,” he said. “[And] our family, which had half an acre of good-quality farmland per person in Guan Yang, got just half as much of much poorer-quality land when we moved to Xiang Yuan.” Now, like thousands of other groups marginalized by the hard-nosed and arbitrary development initiatives of Chinese governments, Zhang and Lu said they are fighting back. “We’ve decided to sue the government,” Lu said. “People tell me, ‘How can you make your government your adversary?’ but I say it is the government that has made us its adversary. I know such projects are important, but why were we cheated in the bargain?” Lu’s words roused those who had gathered, and they began to shout and flail their arms in protest. He glanced around worriedly and shepherded everyone into the courtyard of a nearby house. Dissent is still a delicate business in China, and Lu said local police often send plainclothes officers into the area to try to track what the villagers are doing. The 20 families who have taken the local government to court in this village have been repeatedly threatened and intimidated by government officials and strangers who have roughed up several people, Lu said. He added that he had been detained several times by the local police. In Beijing, officials and academics such as Chen Xin say such situations are unavoidable as China grapples with housing and feeding more than 1.3 billion people, most of whom are rapidly demanding more and more of almost every commodity. “The government is trying its best, but sometimes it’s hard to respect rights to land, etcetera, when we are facing such massive irrigation and energy needs,” said Chen, a professor of sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. But public anger over such entrenched injustices is rising. China experienced more than 58,000 public protests in 2003, according to Ministry of Public Security reports. Most were ignited by property disputes between residents and authorities. In response, the government has been cracking down hard on displaced citizens who are demanding their property rights. This was most poignantly underlined in southwestern Sichuan Province last October, when police clashed with a crowd of about 40,000 people protesting the building of a new dam in the area. Lu said that is why “our village has chosen to pursue legal options instead.” And they have had some luck.