(May 3, 2009)

With the dispute over the calcium-carbide factory now a thing of the past, the affected groups in Shanyang turned their attention to another major struggle: extracting compensation for fields eroded by the Dahe dam after 1978. The prefecture agreed to pay compensation for the 200 mu of farmland that it confirmed had been washed away, but refused to accept Feng the engineer’s calculation, worked out in March 1987, that an additional 111 mu had also been lost to the raging river. Officials from the district and township governments, and the prefecture hydropower bureau, had also estimated that a further 11.8 mu were eroded between April 1987 and June 1988.

With 10 years experience battling the authorities under their belt, the villagers now knew to look out for, and take advantage of, any cracks in the government structure or loopholes in policies, and a heaven-sent opportunity soon presented itself. On December 3, 1988, Wang Xiulan, newly appointed vice-commissioner in charge of the prefecture’s industrial affairs, undertook an inspection tour of the Dahe hydropower station. Staff from the township government leaked the news to the three downstream groups, which had been unhappy with the prefecture’s decision not to grant them a grain allowance. When Commissioner Wang arrived, she was soon surrounded by peasants from the three downstream groups clamouring for compensation for their losses caused by the dam. As soon as news of this commotion reached them, villagers from the five upstream groups and from Baiyang 16 also converged on the station to press their own case.

Commissioner Wang was new in her post and not all that familiar with the decade-old struggle between the governments and the local people affected by the dam. She also lacked experience in dealing with such a complex issue, and did not act in the conventional manner. Before announcing any decisions, she should have consulted with local governments and other officials in the prefecture government. Instead, surrounded by so many angry complainants, a flustered Commissioner Wang made several hasty decisions after only a brief discussion with one county official. She announced to the people that:

1. Compensation would be paid for the 11.8 muof farmland eroded in 1987-88. In view of the good quality of the soil that was lost, a grain allowance of 700 jin would be allotted on an annual basis for each of the 11.8 mu.
2. Engineer Feng Mingyue’s calculations of farmland lost to erosion between 1978 and 1987 could not be used as a basis for compensation claims. The district and township governments should remeasure the affected area, and submit a proposed compensation package to the county government for approval.
3. Baiyang 16 would be entitled to compensation of 42,600 yuan, calculated on the basis of the 1984 grain price, as well as an additional grain allowance from 1988 on.
4. To protect farmland in the river valley below the dam, 60,000 yuan would be budgeted for strengthening the flood-control dykes and dredging the river channel between Shanyang town and Baiyang 13.

The three downstream groups and the five upstream groups were delighted with these decisions. In fact, the announcement made everyone in Shanyang happy, apart from one person: Commissioner Dong. He was absolutely appalled, and vented his frustration to Feng the engineer: “In all my years of dealing with the problems related to the Dahe station, I have always been very careful and cautious in any decision-making on compensation and money issues. And now this promise of 60,000 yuan has been made all of a sudden!” In fact, that was an underestimation of the amount Commissioner Wang had just pledged. In addition to the 60,000 yuan for flood-control work below the dam, she had assured the villagers of Baiyang 16 that they would be entitled to a grain allowance from 1988 onward; confirmed the figure of 11.8 mu of newly eroded fields; and also accepted that 55.5 mu of farmland had been affected by the dam between 1978 and 1987. She arrived at that figure based on Feng’s calculation that 111 muof land had been eroded by the dam. She said that figure could not be confirmed, and because of the difficulty and complexity of remeasuring the area, the task could not be done again. But she said she would accept half his total – 55.5 mu – as being eligible for compensation.

Commissioner Wang’s promises put Commissioner Dong and the other officials who had been dealing with Dahe issues in an embarrassing position. She had not just “bent the rules” and let a little water through a hole in the dyke, but opened the floodgates, and the prefecture now risked being swamped with further appeals. If the prefecture honoured the commitments she had made, more requests and more trouble would follow. And if her decisions were reversed, the prefecture government would lose the trust of the masses. The prefecture government therefore decided the best course of action was to do nothing, and to take no further clear-cut stand on the issue.

The peasants, however, could not care less about how the prefecture leaders were feeling. They were just intent on getting what Commissioner Wang had promised, and they made repeated requests to local governments for the policies to be implemented. Unlike the factory issue, the governments at the district and township level sided with the people and backed their demands. They saw it this way: The funds to purchase the promised grain would come from the prefecture government, and this grain allowance would help improve relations between local governments and the people, and generally create an atmosphere of unity and stability in the region. And so the township, district and county governments all submitted requests to the prefecture government, asking it to clarify its position on the issue.

On November 16, 1989, after seeking instructions from Commissioner Dong, Zhang Liandao (Dong’s deputy) drafted a response to these requests from the lower levels of government. The prefecture agreed to pay compensation of 700 jin annually for each of the 11.8 mu at issue, but refused to make any assurances regarding the fields washed away between 1978 and 1987. The document also made it clear that the grain allowance for Baiyang 16 should commence in 1993 rather than 1988. But what local governments found most disappointing was that the document did not contain one word about the 60,000 yuan promised for flood-control improvements downstream of the dam.

Fearing that the peasants would cause disturbances if they learned the contents of the document, the government of Yunyang decided to keep it under wraps for the time being, certainly until after the conclusion of an impending county people’s congress.

But the peasants were losing patience, and after the county congress, the people of Baiyang 16 created two major disturbances at the Dahe hydropower station. After the second incident, the prefecture softened its stance and agreed to pay compensation for 55.5 mu of fields affected by the dam, as Commissioner Wang had promised. Through this action, the prefecture was able to divide the affected people: The five upstream groups, which governments at all levels had found particularly difficult to deal with, were now placated, while Baiyang 16 was left out in the cold.

Background to the unrest

How is that Baiyang 16 emerged as the big loser in the struggle? Earlier, in 1984, the peasants of Baiyang 16 had scored a major victory in their land dispute with the Dahe station when they received the compensation payment from the prefecture of 42,600 yuan. This was big money for a single group, and represented about 300 yuan for each villager. Satisfied, Baiyang 16 withdrew from further confrontation with the government.

But then, in 1986, Commissioner Dong came up with the new policy for the five upstream groups, in which resettlement compensation funds were distributed in the form of a grain allowance, bit by bit in a steady stream, rather than delivered as a “one lump sum” cash payment. The people of Baiyang 16 realized this was a much better deal than the one they had received. The five upstream groups were now guaranteed a grain allowance on a per capita and annual basis until the day the Dahe station ceased generating electricity. While that arrangement ensured those groups’ basic needs were met far off into the future, the peasants of Baiyang 16 could spend their windfall any way they liked, including on purchases not related to basic needs. They were now worried about what would happen when their “one lump sum” was all used up. And they had good reason to be concerned, given that most of the land they once farmed had been taken over by the Dahe station.

Baiyang 16 made repeated requests to higher authorities to be treated the same way as the five upstream groups. The good news was that the prefecture government agreed to their demands; the bad news was that it attached a condition. The 42,600 yuan compensation payment Baiyang 16 had received had to be “converted” into an equivalent grain allowance, and no actual grain allowance would be provided until that sum had run out. So the key issue for Baiyang 16 became how to calculate the grain-allowance equivalent of 42,600 yuan. The local governments, at the district and township levels, were happy to do Baiyang 16 a favour, which could be achieved at no cost to themselves. And so, according to their calculations, the 42,600 yuan would already have been exhausted, and Baiyang 16 was actually owed 6,000 yuan worth of grain. This would mean Baiyang 16 was entitled to a new compensation, commencing in 1989, in the form of a grain allowance.

Why were the local governments feeling so well disposed toward Baiyang 16? For one thing, officials at the local levels had closer personal ties to the group than was the case among higher-level authorities. But local governments also wanted to win the trust and support of the group. They had found it really difficult when nine groups from the affected zone banded together to lodge a joint complaint in 1984. The peasants’ united front created such a complex situation that the governments did everything in their power to divide the groups, and in fact did manage to split them into the five upstream groups, the three downstream groups and Baiyang 16. Local officials had also learned to tackle a complex situation with a carrot-and-stick strategy. Their tough line with the five upstream groups had been undermined by the prefecture’s “education first, punishment second” approach. So now, to balance their own relations with the masses, they wanted to draw other groups over to their side by extending a carrot.

The county government had no objection to the new compensation offer for Baiyang 16, but the prefecture could not go along with the township and district governments’ calculations. If a grain allowance had been distributed to Baiyang 16 according to prefecture policy, on a per capita and annual basis, then the 42,600 yuan should have been the equivalent of about 10 years of grain, in other words, covering the period from 1984 to 1993. The people of Baiyang 16 were furious with the prefecture’s proposal, which was far less generous than Commissioner Wang’s promise that a grain allowance could date from 1988, and than the calculations approved by the county, district and township governments.

Baiyang 16 had more accumulated grievances related to the Dahe project than other group, because of its location immediately downstream of the dam. Fishery was an important income source for the group, but it had been badly hit by the dam. Nets were frequently washed away when water was discharged from the dam without warning. And catches were declining because the dam blocked fish pathways to the downstream area, and silt was building up in the river. Baiyang 16 wanted an exemption from fishery fees, but this was refused. Tension was building when, on March 14, 1990, the head of Baiyang 16, Tan Shidao, and his son Tan Wanquan met to discuss the group’s predicament with Governor Wang during his inspection tour of Shanyang. “Just wait,” he urged them. But by this point the peasants were growing extremely restless and much more inclined to take immediate action.

The first action

Four days later, Tan Shidao, head of Baiyang 16, called a meeting attended by the heads of every household in the group to discuss issues related to the spring plowing. But the Dahe station and compensation package soon became the main topics of conversation, with many of those present expressing their displeasure with the prefecture’s reluctance to carry out the policy announced by Commissioner Wang. Someone said that as the head of the group, Tan should take their problems to county officials. But Tan said he had no idea how to pursue the issues, given that Governor Wang had told him to “just wait.” Tan went on to say that he really wasn’t interested in acting as a representative, and that he was prepared to offer 1,000 yuan of the group’s funds to anyone who would take on the responsibilities of leading the appeals.

Another villager suggested: “We should go to the Dahe station and ask for food in order to call attention to our plight from higher authorities.” Thus, the decision was made to eat at the station. Ten representatives were chosen from among the five main family clans in the group, and Li Bi, a young party member and demobilized soldier, was selected as mission commander. The reward was increased to 1,600 yuan, with 160 yuan to be awarded to each of the representatives if their action was successful – in other words, if the Dahe station leaders acceded to their demands, which including a remeasuring of all the land requisitioned by the station and eroded by the dam. Li, the young commander, declared: “Any villager who refuses to go to the station to eat food will be fined five yuan and will not be allowed to share in the grain allowance.”

The difference in organizational level between Baiyang 16 and the five upstream groups was immediately apparent. In the case of Baiyang 16, the action was decided hastily in the absence of any prior careful arrangements. (By contrast, before taking their action three years previously, the elite of the five upstream groups had submitted “solemn statements” in advance to governments, and also lectured participants on the importance of maintaining discipline.) The people taking charge of the Baiyang action lacked experience, and no duties or responsibilities were explicitly assigned to individual representatives. The goal of the action was not well thought out; in particular, the demand to remeasure the lost farmland was unrealistic and unreasonable. Finally, the representatives focused on the prospect of a victory (as indeed the five upstream groups had managed to achieve through their well-organized actions) but had ignored the danger of a failure or the consequences of a confrontation with the government. The action was off to a bad start.

On March 19, Li, the young commander, and the nine other representatives set off for the Dahe station. Following behind were 80 villagers, who went to the station canteen and ate up the lunch that had been prepared for station staff. District and township officials responded to an emergency call from the Dahe station, arriving there at noon. The local cadres tried their best to persuade the villagers to leave, but to no avail. The Dahe protesters finally went home around 5 p.m.

Over the next two days, the Baiyang 16 villagers arrived at mealtime to eat the station-canteen food. When the kitchen staff stopped preparing meals, knowing the food would be carried off, the villagers went into the storeroom and found rice and vegetables to cook for themselves. To the villagers’ disappointment, no one from the prefecture or county showed up to meet with them, even after two days of protests. The representatives began to worry about the consequences of their actions, and so called a meeting both to lay some ground rules (no one should enter the station’s office or disturb its leaders) and to boost morale. Participants were reassured by their leaders that they were involved in a “peasant rebellion,” so need not fear a beating or imprisonment. Finally, a work team from the county did arrive on the third day of the incident and persuaded the peasants to return home by promising that the county would respond to Baiyang 16’s concerns within a month.

On the morning of March 26, Zhang Liandao, director of the prefecture office, called the county and stressed that no grain allowance would be available to Baiyang 16 before the 42,600 yuan compensation fund was exhausted. Zhang urged the county to bolster its propaganda work among the masses, and in the meantime to make sure that the protest ringleaders were dealt with in accordance with the law. The county, however, didn’t immediately follow the prefecture’s instructions, fearing that such a move would inflame the conflict between the villagers and the Dahe station. In fact, presuming that there would be no further trouble at the Dahe station, the county government stopped paying much attention to Baiyang 16.

The second action

On April 14, Li, the young commander, called a meeting to discuss the next action. At 3 p.m. that same day, more than 90 peasants, led by Li, once again occupied the station’s canteen and took away the evening meal that had been prepared for the staff. The 10 representatives vowed to occupy the canteen until the people’s problems were addressed.

The next morning, knowing that no more grain could be found at the canteen, Li ordered a group of about 20 women to ask for more rice from the steward in charge of the canteen. Disappointed at his refusal, the women surrounded the conference room where the station leaders had gathered for a meeting, preventing them from leaving the room. When the daughter-in-law of Feng Deqing, party secretary of the station, arrived to deliver lunch to her father-in-law, the peasant women would not let her go into the room and took the lunch box away. During a scuffle between petitioners and canteen staff, a villager’s hand was accidentally cut on a broken bowl. Someone cried out: “The station workers are killing someone with a knife!” Enraged, the villagers carried the injured man to the home of Secretary Feng. They pushed their way into his house and forced his daughter to tend the man’s cut and to give him some water and medicine. Then Li led a group of villagers to the canteen storeroom, where they broke in through a window and took everything out, declaring that now they were ready for a long-term battle of resistance.

A joint work team from the prefecture and county, headed by Zhang Liandao, director of the Wanxian resettlement office, and Wang Jintang, vice-governor of Yunyang county, arrived on the scene the following day. They went directly to the canteen, where they attempted to engage the petitioners in a dialogue. But the peasants became overwrought and emotional, and the discussion collapsed. In the evening, the work team tried to talk to Tan, the head of Baiyang 16, and other representatives and persuade them to withdraw from the canteen by promising to resolve the problems. In fact, this was an opportunity for the two parties to reach a compromise. The villagers could have achieved their goal of receiving a grain allowance if they had withdrawn from the station and dropped their other, unrealistic demands (such as, for the fields affected by the Dahe dam to be remeasured). And despite its reluctance to make any obvious concession, the government did want to bring the turmoil quickly under control. But the peasants failed to grab this chance for a compromise, and the representatives proclaimed: “We will not withdraw from the canteen until we win our demand for the land affected by the dam to be remeasured.”

The next morning, the prefecture government issued an order to resume normal operations at the hydropower station. Station staff, armed with wooden sticks, went to the canteen and ordered the villagers to leave. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, the villagers felt they had no choice but to abandon their occupation of the canteen. But they were angry and restless, and two groups of peasants went off on their own to try and disconnect pipes that transported water to the station’s hydropower turbines. Police who had just arrived from Shanyang managed to stop one group before they did any damage. But the other group did succeed in disconnecting a pipe and rendering the turbines unworkable.

Some of the villagers didn’t want to stop at that. Li, the young commander, assaulted Director Zhang, grabbing him by his clothes and pulling him, shouting: “Let’s go down to the river together!” He pulled Zhang to within a dozen metres of the water. Others joined in, kicking and hitting Zhang. During the scuffle, Zhang’s jacket was torn. “Stop beating me!” he screamed. “I’ve never been hit, even by own parents. I came here to help sort out your problems, but stop kicking me or I’ll call the police!” Police officers did finally arrive to rescue Zhang.

The villagers creating havoc at the station appealed for help from other groups across the river. And some villagers, particularly from Liuping, were ready to head for the station. But Teacher Xu managed to dissuade them: “Why do you want to get involved in this? Do you want to end up in jail? Zhang and Feng have gone to the station to address the people’s problems, so why do you want to get involved in the confrontation there?”

That afternoon, the work team called the prefecture commissioner to report on the situation and make suggestions on how to deal with it. These included asking the petitioners to withdraw from the canteen and the station, and to choose representatives who would hold discussions with the work team; organizing a team to guard the station; and implementing Commissioner Wang’s proposals. The commissioner approved the suggestions.

After emergency repairs to the water pipes, the hydropower station was up and running again by midnight that day. But electricity generation had been halted for 12 hours, resulting in an economic loss of 700,000 yuan. This was the first incident since the dam was built that a protest at the station had actually interfered with power generation.

Four representatives from Baiyang 16 met that night with the work team and put forward four demands:

1. The official figure of 39.6 muof farmland requisitioned by the station underestimated the true amount of land villagers had lost, and the area should be remeasured.
2. The additional grain allowance should be retroactive to 1984.
3. Villagers’ livelihood problems should be addressed
4. The Dahe station should build an irrigation and drainage pumping station to help Baiyang 16 irrigate its fields.

The work team demolished the representatives’ arguments, item by item, and turned down all their demands. The representatives, under heavy pressure from all sides, decided they had to accept reality and ask the villagers to withdraw from the station. The three days of tumult were finally over.

The peasants of Baiyang 16 were unaware that their protest at the station had coincided with an unfortunate date: the first anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15. Hu’s death had sparked the protest in Tiananmen Square the previous year, which culminated in the events of June 4. Although there was no link between the peasants’ collective at the Dahe station in 1990 and the student demonstration in Beijing in 1989, the state would never yield an inch at such a politically sensitive time. And so, as they prepared for a joint working conference to discuss the disturbances at the Dahe dam, local officials were in no mood for compromise and had every intention of laying down the law.

Chinese units of measurement:

Translation edited by Three Gorges Probe (English) editor Kelly Haggart. The on-line publication (in Chinese and English) and translation of this book have been made possible by the Open Society Institute.