(May 3, 2009)

[quote]A crowing rooster (jiao ji gong) refers to 1) a person who deliberately makes trouble or 2) a person who is always keen to complain.
— Quoted from “A glossary of local dialects in Yunyang county,” Yunyang County Annals[/quote]

In April of 1998, I planned a special trip to the county education bureau to try to find out more about Teacher Xu’s activities in both the Cultural Revolution and the Dahe dam protests. I believed it would not be difficult for me to gather more information given that I had already discovered so much about Xu from township and district files, and that he was such a well-known figure in the county.

And so I was surprised, and disappointed, at what I found at the education bureau. Staff there told me that Xu Shaorong was a crowing rooster (jiao ji gong), but that his personnel records at the bureau were basically clean. It was true that he had participated enthusiastically in the Cultural Revolution, but he had done nothing significant. He also worked energetically on appeals related to the Dahe dam but again it appeared that he had done nothing wrong. Thus he had encountered no trouble on those two big issues. He had only been punished once, after his wife gave birth to an “extra” child in contravention of family-planning rules.

I was also told that Xu visited the education bureau many times on an issue related to his daughter’s employment. She had completed the course to become a primary school teacher, and the county had arranged a post for her. But Teacher Xu wanted the bureau to reassign his daughter to a school closer to his home so she could take care of him and his wife in their old age. The head of the bureau promised to do something eventually, but Xu wanted immediate action. For a while Xu visited the bureau almost every day. Each time, he came in and just smiled at the other staff members as he marched directly in to see the head of the bureau. He was very polite in talking to the bureau head as he stated his problem again and again. If you helped solve his problem, he’d say: “Thank you very much, you’re a great guy.” If you did nothing for him, he’d just come back, over and over again, to see you.

The head of the education bureau became extremely irritated with Xu, and would try to hide to avoid seeing him. In the end, there was no way to dodge him altogether, so Teacher Xu did eventually have his problem addressed. Xu was the sort of person who could get things done, and he was also smart about it: If he had a sense that he was about to run into serious trouble, he would pull back immediately. To pursue his personal interests, he would pay daily visits to leaders, but he would never take really drastic actions. So although he made a lot of trouble for officials at various levels, they always had difficulty finding an excuse to punish him.

I thought the official at the education bureau was rather biased against Teacher Xu in recording such observations. But in fact, the “confession” written and signed by Xu himself to some extent confirmed the above, particularly in terms of his character and personality:

[quote] “At the end of 1972, I was happy to receive notification that I had finally been made a regular teacher. However, I became upset when I read in the letter that I had been put only in salary grade 27. My application to become a regular teacher had once been turned down, and I thought that, even now, someone in the education bureau was giving me a hard time by placing me in a lower salary grade than expected. People who had graduated from high school in the same year as or even later than me were in salary grade 26, and primary-school teachers were also put in a higher salary grade than me, when I was teaching junior high school.

“With the notice in hand, I set off at once for the education bureau, where I asked to see the head of personnel, Zhou Yongan. Zhou was unhappy about my conduct and lectured me: ‘You ask too much so soon after becoming a regular teacher.’ I didn’t listen to him but spoke vehemently: ‘Just tell me the policy. I really don’t care what grade I’m in, as long as my salary is in line with the policy.’ I visited many other departments at the education bureau, asking to see the official documents outlining the salary policy. I visited the education bureau many times, besieging Zhou and the head of the bureau again and again. I even went to ask for help from the county governor, hoping he might intervene on my behalf. Finally, two years later, I was put in grade 25 based on an official document issued by the provincial government.”[/quote]

From Xu’s own account, it was clear that his usual practice was to pester incessantly to achieve a goal. Pestering is not as urgent as a collective action that leads to a disturbance or even a riot, but in some circumstances the governments still have to pay attention and deal with it. Local officials were well aware that Teacher Xu was a tough customer who was particularly skilled at the art of pestering. If Xu became involved in the appeals to higher authorities calling for investigations into the misuse of funds by local governments, he would attract many followers and stir up no end of trouble. So the local officials branded Teacher Xu “a pain the ass” who had to be put in his place at all costs.

The family-planning factor

Teacher Xu was adept at achieving his goals and protecting his personal interests by taking advantage of his knowledge of government policies. However, on one score he left himself vulnerable to punishment: He was determined to have several sons. Like his father before him, he longed for sons who would bear the family name and support him and his wife in their old age. He also had high expectations for his sons. He had always believed that he would be able to make something of humself by going to university, and he was bitterly disappointed when the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution shattered that dream. Now he invested all his hopes in the sons that he intended to have.

Xu’s wife gave birth to two girls in succession, and the second daughter suffered from a congenital abnormality. His wife then gave birth to a third child, a boy, in June of 1977, when the family-planning campaign was at an early stage and no compulsory policies were yet in place. Teacher Xu didn’t want to stop at just one son. But in March of 1980, when his wife was pregnant with their fourth child, the one-child policy was already in force. Fearing a heavy fine, Xu asked his wife to go away and give birth outside of their area. So their third daughter was born elsewhere, and then left with a relative. Half a year later, they took the girl back but didn’t identify her as their own. They told everyone they were taking care of the baby on behalf of a relative.

In April of 1981, when the Dahe hydropower station began disbursing the funds earmarked for people who had been affected by the erosion, Teacher Xu suddenly claimed the girl was his own daughter and asked for her share of the compensation. Later, he also claimed the girl was eligible for a share of the land redistributed by the village. After learning that that request would not be granted, he took over 0.2 mu of the village’s reserve land, giving rise to a disturbance in which many villagers followed his example and took over reserve land for themselves.

Officials at the production team, production brigade, commune and district levels visited Xu’s home many times to collect the family-planning fine and ask him to return the land he had occupied. But each time, the officials went away empty-handed after receiving a scolding. In the second half of 1982, Xu’s wife became pregnant again. This time, Xu sent his wife to hospital for an abortion.

The commune was still far from satisfied with Xu’s conduct and was ready to take tough action. Commune officials were now completely fed up with him, because his occupation of village land had set a bad example that others had followed. Even those villagers who had not taken over any of the reserve land felt aggrieved and began to complain bitterly. The problem of Xu and the land dispute had to be addressed. So the commune set up a special group to examine Xu’s case, which looked everywhere for evidence against him and completed its investigation in January of 1983. The party committee of Shanyang commune made several suggestions in a report it then submitted to higher levels:

1. Xu must be forced to pay a family-planning fine;
2. Compensation money given in the name of Xu’s third daughter must be returned to the commune;
3. Xu must give back the village land he took over;
4. Xu should be forced to have a vasectomy;
5. Xu should be discharged from public employment because he is not fit to be a teacher.

Attached to the report was a statement from Teacher Xu, dated January 31, 1983:

[quote] “I will try to persuade my wife to go to hospital for the [sterilization] operation. If she doesn’t agree to go, I’d like the commune to continue its ideological work with her. I will have a vasectomy before the Chinese New Year if my wife does not agree [to have her tubes tied]. P.S. I have tried to persuade my wife many times [to undergo the procedure], but she has not agreed to it. I agree to whatever the commune does to her if she continues to refuse to go.”[/quote]

Xu may have had no idea what he was agreeing to in signing that statement, or how serious the consequences of flouting the family-planning policy would be. By the second half of 1983, the commune had still not received a response from the county government to their suggestions on how to deal with Xu. And neither Xu nor his wife had gone to hospital to be sterilized; as time went by, they assumed they weren’t going to be forced to do so after all. What they didn’t know was that their situation had actually taken a turn for the worse. Officials at the district and commune levels were on the warpath, having realized that Teacher Xu was the person writing the appeals that accused local cadres of embezzling funds disbursed from the prefecture in 1980.

It was at this time that another flood hit the Shanyang area. Though not as severe as the 1982 disaster, it still prompted a new wave of requests for the land issue to be resolved and for the money from the prefecture for people affected by the erosion to be disbursed. Officials at the district and commune levels were feeling the heat from above and below. On the one hand, the county government was insisting on an investigation into the funding issue, while on the other hand, local people were pressing for the compensation owed. And what the district and commune officials most wanted to do was to strike hard against Teacher Xu, the troublemaker who seemed to be the source of all their problems.

They saw their chance to go after him when the central government launched a nationwide campaign against criminal elements who threatened social stability. People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, ran the following piece on the eve of the campaign:

[quote] “Xinhua news agency, August 30, 1983: The second session of the sixth National People’s Congress continued a discussion on issues related to social stability. Delegates pointed out the urgency of cracking down hard on criminal activities, which represent a political struggle between the enemy and the people. One after another, they made passionate speeches urging that tough measures should be taken, and criminals hit hard, with the full force of the law. It is imperative that severe punishment should be meted out to those who commit extremely serious crimes. In so doing, a stable social order can be maintained and a healthy social atmosphere fostered, in an effort to develop and strengthen political stability and unity, and ensure that socialist construction proceeds smoothly.”[/quote]

On the evening of the same day, Chen Anxian, party secretary of Shanyang commune, held a meeting attended by members of the commune party committee. The meeting focused on three issues:

1. How to disburse the funds earmarked for emergency relief after the 1982 flood;
2. How to develop town and village enterprises in the commune, with a debate on whether the calcium-carbide factory should be shut down; and
3. A study of the central government documents on fostering a healthy social atmosphere, while identifying people who should be targets of an anti-crime crackdown. (According to the central government, criminal gangs, criminals on the run, those who have committed murder or arson, and people engaged in prostitution or who have committed bigamy were to be severely punished.)

After a discussion, the commune party committee named 35 people to be targeted in the crackdown on crime, with charges against them including theft, violence, gambling and trafficking in women. It was no surprise that Teacher Xu’s name was also on the list, cited on a charge created specially for him: “Disturbing the household responsibility system, violating the family-planning policy and occupying land by force.”

On September 4, a People’s Daily editorial was headlined, “Criminal activities must be severely punished.” On September 16, He Zhaoting, the deputy party secretary of Shanyang, went to Liuping to investigate Xu’s case. After meeting with the head of the production team, Huang Guangfu, and other villagers, he went to Xu’s house. Xu was not home but his father was. Without knowing the purpose of He’s visit, Xu’s father talked to him about the land dispute and about how Huang Guangfu and his daughter-in-law had threatened Xu’s family at knifepoint, demanding that they return the occupied field to the production team.

He Zhaoting listened carefully and jotted down what he heard, but didn’t say a single word. At the end of the interview, he forced Xu’s father to affix his seal on the note he had made of their meeting. After He’s departure, Xu’s father realized something was amiss with that strange interview. Worried about what he had told the official, he hurried to the offices of the county government. The staff at the Letters and Visits Office tried to calm him down and reassure him, saying the masses should trust the government.

On September 20, Shanyang commune held a second meeting on the anti-crime campaign. Of the 40 names now on their list, 17 were chosen as “urgent cases,” and Xu Shaorong was one of these. The commune sent documents on Xu to the county government, but county officials thought the evidence gathered was insufficient to reach a decision on Xu’s case. Commune officials, however, were determined to go after Xu, so they decided to act on their own and ignore the county’s view.

Teaching Xu a lesson

One day in October, the special group formed by the commune to pursue the case against Teacher Xu went to the village on the pretext of inspecting the progress of family-planning programs. At that time, Xu’s wife, Du Huishun, had been fitted with an IUD. She suffered from severe anemia and also had psychological problems. Doctors at the county hospital had warned that she was so anemic it would be dangerous for her to undergo tubal ligation at that time, and that she should have a period of rest before the operation was attempted. But the officials paid no attention to the medical advice. They went to her home, handcuffed her and tied her with a rope, like an animal, and led her away.

Du was hauled off to the township hospital, where she was immediately put on an operating table. She struggled mightily, pleading not to have the operation because of her severe anemia, but the doctor told her it was pointless to protest: The deputy head of Shanyang district, Lin Qingshu, had given the hospital staff Du’s name and told them the operation must be done without fail, even with coercion and no matter how dangerous it might be. It took only eight minutes to finish the operation, and Du fell into a coma as a result of it.

Xu realized how dangerous his situation was, and wisely decided not to follow his wife to the hospital. Later, a family-planning official confided to him that he could have been killed for the crime of “disturbing the birth-control program” if he had attempted to prevent the operation. Armed officials, it was said, were hiding near the hospital. It’s impossible to know whether Xu really would have been shot if he had approached the hospital, but he certainly would have been beaten up if he had gone anywhere near it.

Afterward, the county still did not agree to regard Teacher Xu as a legitimate target of the anti-crime campaign. It did not even deem it appropriate to accuse him of violating the birth-control program, citing a lack of evidence. Responding to the county’s stance, the commune decided to hold another discussion, this time focusing on how to come up with more evidence against Xu. At the December 25 meeting, Pu Shaosong, the head of the commune, said the anti-crime campaign “provided us with a great opportunity to force Xu’s wife to have her tubes tied. But I think Xu deserves further harsh punishment.”

The officials decided that, to this end, a new report should be produced based on all the available evidence against Xu, while emphasizing the chaos his actions had caused in land redistribution. Finally, the county government did decide to act, ruling that Xu had contravened the family-planning policy by having a fourth child. A fine was imposed for this offence: For the next 14 years, Teacher Xu would have to forfeit 10 per cent of his monthly salary.

The forced sterilization of his wife in 1983 was a big blow to Teacher Xu, and devastated the whole family. Du Huixun, of course, suffered the most: Her weight dropped rapidly after the surgery, falling by about 40 pounds. She was so weak that she was unable to do any heavy labour for the next three years. When I interviewed Xu in 1997, he said he had felt deeply hurt by the commune’s cruelty and brutality, and that the incident had brought a great deal of suffering to him and his family. But it had not scared him off. I was struck by his tone of voice and facial expressions as he spoke with deep loathing about an event that had happened more than a dozen years earlier. He told me that it had hardened his heart, spurring him on to continue appealing to higher authorities and organizing protests. Although the incident had nothing to do with Dahe dam resettlement issues, the commune used his family-planning infraction as a pretext to punish him harshly. But from then on, Xu vowed to carry on the struggle on issues related to the Dahe dam, and to fight the commune to the end.

Xu also learned an invaluable lesson from this bitter experience. The reason he ran into such trouble and his family suffered such a disaster was not just because he had given the commune a reason to punish him. It also came about because he himself was isolated from the masses. They were not yet on his side, and so they did not feel inclined to lend him a helping hand when he was in trouble. The masses were certainly dissatisfied with both the district and commune officials, who had embezzled funds from the prefecture that were meant to go to erosion-affected families. But they were still unorganized, and had not yet begun to draw a distinction between “us” and “them” – in other words, between fellow farmers and the local authorities.

And so even as they turned to him to write their letters of appeal, local people still also kept reporting on him to the authorities. For example, two months after Xu’s wife underwent the forced sterilization, Huang Guangfu, the head of the production team, went to the county government to accuse Xu of not returning to the production team the field he had been given on account of his fourth child. Other villagers looked on with folded arms when he ran into trouble with the commune, even though they themselves were accusing the same officials of wrongdoing. Teacher Xu came to realize the importance of organizing the masses in a systematic way, and making it clear to them that the commune was the source of all their misfortune and suffering. The people, united and well organized, would become a powerful force, able to protect their interests and to win what was rightfully theirs.

Officials at the grassroots level were alarmed about the collective actions involving appeals to higher authorities that Teacher Xu and others were organizing. These appeals were addressed to the superiors of these grassroots officials – in other words, to people who had a direct say in their political careers. Little wonder, then, that the grassroots units were keen to go after the leaders who organized the appeals to higher levels – though that crackdown itself was likely to provoke a counterattack from an “elite” group of the affected people that would form in order to fight back.² In this way, “leftover problems” related to the resettlement operation were constantly reproduced.

Leftover problems multiply

In the space of three days in December of 1983, four production teams in the erosion zone sent three letters of appeal to the county party committee and government in the name of all five production teams in the Baiyang and Liuping brigades. From January to June of 1984, Liang Yongde, on behalf of the above four production teams plus Mingyue 16, sent dozens of letters to the prefecture party committee, the prefecture court, provincial party committee, provincial committee of discipline and inspection, and provincial people’s procuratorate, the Letters and Visits Office of the State Council, the Letters and Visits Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the central committee of discipline and inspection of the Communist Party, the supreme procuratorate and so forth. At least 20 of those petitions were put into the record. At the same time, three other production teams near the five above also began to send joint letters to higher authorities at various levels. All of these letters were covered in the bright red seals of the eight production teams. They represented the heartfelt wishes of more than 1,000 people, and put growing pressure on governments at all levels.

On February 13, 1984, five representatives of the eight production teams travelled to the county seat to lodge an appeal in person. They maintained that “nothing was achieved with the 300,000 yuan disbursed by the prefecture in 1981. We strongly disagree with the commune that this money was intended for the commune as a whole, and not just for the affected people. We request that the county send officials to conduct an investigation and act in accordance with the regulations set by the prefecture.” On February 28, the provincial procuratorate asked Shanyang commune to furnish details on this issue, and asked the county procuratorate to report on the matter.

An “elite” group of affected people, the main organizers of the petitions, was beginning to form, and two characteristics were apparent at this stage. First, the scale of the collective actions had greatly expanded. Before long, each production team would conduct its appeals individually, but at this stage all the production teams affected by the erosion problem were united in taking joint actions, which were putting heavy, unprecedented pressure on all levels of governments. Second, the protest organizers no longer confined their appeals to the prefecture level, but went higher up. They had become aware that authorities at lower levels would come under tremendous pressure if their superiors learned about social problems in their jurisdiction through these appeals. And the pressure would grow if the superiors then telephoned the lower-level authorities to inquire further about the problems. Thus, to get the lower-level officials to pay attention to their complaints, the protest leaders would let drop something along the lines of: “Your superiors are already aware of this situation.” In some cases, this could lead to action even on some old problems that local governments had already tried to address, but had not resolved to the satisfaction of the complainants.

The following letter is a good example of how grievances were vented at this stage. Titled “Request for an investigation into emergency-relief funds,” the letter was written on behalf of affected people in Liuping 4 and 5:

[quote] “With the construction of the Dahe dam, most of our farmland was requisitioned or washed away, which led to great hardship in our lives and livelihoods. The prefecture became aware of this problem and tried to solve it on a number of occasions. We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the prefecture and the county for all that they have done for us, all of which was a good indication that the party and government really do care about our interests.

“However, our problems have not been completely resolved. The calcium-carbide factory was set up to provide employment for local people affected by the dam and the erosion problem, but in fact we gained nothing from it. The prefecture and county allocated resettlement-related funds in timely fashion to Shanyang district and commune. But the leaders there misused tens thousands of yuan, putting them toward irrelevant ends. As a result, more than 100 affected people had nowhere to go, and those who were moved to other places had no access to replacement farmland or grain.

“Some leaders of Shanyang commune deceived their superiors and deluded their subordinates, and acted in defiance of the law and public opinion. We request that a thorough investigation be conducted into what happened to this funding and to emergency-relief grain allocated by the prefecture. We want to know how much of the funding was used for its intended purpose. And we ask that higher authorities supervise local governments’ implementation of resettlement policies, to ensure that our problems related to the relocation are resolved. At this time, we have no fields to plow, no crops to grow, no food to eat and no way to survive. We are burning with impatience and sincerely hope that you will be able to solve our problems.”[/quote]

Another letter, dated January 6, 1984, and submitted on behalf of peasants from eight production teams affected by the erosion problem, highlighted how ruthless, heartless and lawless the local officials were:

[quote] “Over the past four years, many peasants and heads of production teams have been beseeching district and commune officials to save our lives by releasing the emergency-relief funds and grain. But despite many bitter tears and tales of hardship and suffering, the officials cajoled us, cheated us and ultimately turned a deaf ear to our complaints. They also adopted the high-handed policy of coming down hard on those who dared to speak out.

“Recently, thousands of people pooled their money, 10 fen [cents] from each household, to send several representatives to the prefecture government. The prefecture commissioner and Zhu the engineer, an official at the prefecture construction commission, immediately wrote a letter asking district and commune officials to deal with the problems. But the commune still refused to act.”[/quote]

It is interesting to note that in both of these letters, the affected groups had no complaint with the prefecture, the level of government that had made the decision to build the dam. Instead, they stressed that the prefecture had been sympathetic to the plight of the affected people by earmarking a large sum of money for them. If officials at the district and commune had not misused and embezzled the funds, the needs of the affected people would have been met, their losses would have been compensated, and they would have felt no need to appeal to higher authorities for help.

There is another point worth noting about the two letters. The authors of the appeals identified the funds allocated by the prefecture as “emergency relief” and themselves as victims of a natural disaster, despite the fact that the prefecture actually disbursed the funds before the two floods occurred in 1982 and 1983. It was true that the floods, especially the big one in 1982, had made their situation much worse. However, the writers of the petitions no longer attributed their problems to natural disasters but to the wrongdoings of corrupt officials.

Identifying themselves as “victims of a natural disaster” or as “flood victims” would help the affected individuals feel a sense of solidarity, while also underscoring the severity of their problems. In this way, their collective actions would gain legitimacy and put increased pressure on governments that were always reluctant to deal with the masses’ problems and often resorted to delaying tactics to avoid them. But the government also saw it as a problem if official wrongdoing became so severe that the masses formed a low opinion of the government.³

‘Who cares about the election?’

1984 was an election year in Yunyang county. Although the election had nothing to do with the resettlement issue, the affected groups attempted to disrupt election activities, to try and force the government to pay more attention to the resettlement problems. Disrupting the election became an important part of the appeals process.

One day in early March, the county government sent work groups down to the district and commune level to mobilize participation in the election. In Shanyang commune, the work group was greeted by complaints from local people. Someone said: “Who cares about the election? Does it make any difference to our situation? Until our problems solved, I won’t go to an election meeting.” An old widow from Liuping 5 said angrily: “I have nothing to eat right now. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive on April 5 [election day].”

Liang Yongde, who was one of the most active participants in the appeals sent from Baiyang 14, bombarded the work group with rapid-fire demands: “We want you [the work group] to investigate what happened to the funds allocated from the prefecture in 1981! We want an accounting of those funds, and the results made public! We want an accounting of the funds earmarked for emergency relief after the 1982 and 1983 floods, and the results made public! We want the unemployment issue addressed! We want the problem of our eroded fields addressed! We want funds that were earmarked for maintenance of the power grid used for their intended purpose! We want an accounting of the calcium-carbide factory, and the results made public! We want our problems associated with our living conditions addressed! We want to know who is responsible for diverting the special fund [the 300,000 yuan disbursed by the prefecture and used by local governments to build the factory] to other uses! We want disciplinary action to be taken against those who pocketed the interest on the special fund! We want the production-brigade cadres who embezzled the public grain, selling it for money, to be punished!” Needless to say, the work group was unable to carry out their propaganda and preparatory work for the election. So the team had to change its agenda, and focus on investigating the Dahe dam resettlement issue and bring the results of that investigation to the county leaders.

In the report they submitted, head of the work team put what they saw in Shanyang that way in an astonishing tone, “Of 163 people who required resettlement because of the Dahe dam, 80 people never went through any formalities for resettlement; 54 did go through the formalities, but did not receive any farmland; only 29 people were settled properly. Of 178 people from 36 households at Liuping village, 44 people from eight households have no farmland, 10 households did not have a pig ready for slaughter in time for Chinese New Year, and nine households had not raised a pig at all.” He warned that if the “leftover problems” from the Dahe dam remained unresolved, the election would be plagued by problems and, more importantly, major unrest lay ahead. He suggested that the county send a special team to Shanyang to investigate the people’s grievances, and thoroughly check the financial issues so that the resettlement policies could be fully implemented. Otherwise, he predicted, endless troubles lay ahead.

Interestingly, his recommendations coincided with a decision taken by the county to send an investigative team to Shanyang. It had made this decision because the resettlement issue had become tied in with the election. Although the district and commune representatives who attend the county people’s congress were generally handpicked by county leaders, in theory they were supposed to be elected by voters at the grassroots level. But if participation in the election was too low, it would undermine the legitimacy of the representatives selected through this process.

This was a rare moment, when the government had to rely on ordinary peasants, who had it within their power to refuse to cast a vote. Of course, collective actions such as this – disrupting the election or staging a mass eat-in at the Dahe hydrostation canteen – carried political risks for the peasants. Generally speaking, however, during the meeting of the people’s congress and in the election period beforehand, the government was keen to foster “unity and stability,” and loath to exacerbate any conflict that had arisen with the peasants. At these times, the government usually behaved in an extremely tolerant, even soft-hearted manner. As long as any collective actions undertaken in this period did not get out of hand, the perpetrators would not be punished, but would be helped to push forward the process of seeking a resolution to their problems.

Encouraged by the upsurge of collective actions undertaken by the peasants in the erosion zone, people in other regions began to put increasing pressure on their local governments to address their own problems. In March of 1984, peasants in Baiyang 16 sent a message to the government that contained a warning: “If our problems remain unresolved for much longer, the consequences will be difficult to control.” Several production teams affected by the dam that earlier had distanced themselves from the petitions also began to take action by writing letters or sending representatives to appeal to higher authorities. Baiyang 7, for example, had not been involved in the early appeals, but now was participating eagerly and demanding the same compensation package being sought by other production teams. On April 19, 1984, three production teams (Baiyang 4, 8 and 12) submitted a joint letter asking the higher authorities to investigate the diversion of the emergency-relief funds disbursed by the prefecture in 1980. And Zhou Changfa, a peasant in Baiyang 16 who for a decade had conducted appeals on his own, firmly believed it was the head of the production team, Chen Yexue, who had pocketed money that was meant to compensate him for the loss of forest land. Together with two other households that had run into the same problem, Zhou Changfa decided to report Chen Yexue’s offence to the authorities.

The lonely ghosts

At the same time as all these appeals were mounting, many “lonely ghosts” were wandering around the nearby hills. This was the term used to describe people who had been accidentally electrocuted in Shanyang tonwship from 1976 to 1982.

The Shanyang township government submitted the above list to the prefecture, insisting that the township itself could not be held responsible for the accidents, which had claimed the lives of 14 people and a buffalo in Shanyang alone. The township maintained that mismanagement at the Dahe station and local people’s lack of familiarity with electricity had contributed to the deaths. Interestingly, there was no public weeping and wailing, or even complaints voiced, by those who had lost loved ones in these repeated accidents. This was especially odd, given that the appeals were nearing a crescendo at this time. Why, for example, did Teacher Xu and other leaders of the collective actions not speak out about these deaths, when they had been so upset even to see local people having to beg for a living?

Examining the list more closely, it became clear that the accidents occurred in various production teams attached to four production brigades in Shanyang over the course of seven years (1976-82). In other words, the accidents were dispersed in time and space. Local people viewed the events as personal tragedies, and did not feel a collective outrage or any common ground on the issue. The situation was very different in the case of the erosion problem, though both the electrocutions and the erosion were linked to the Dahe dam. In the latter case, local people easily saw the connection between the erosion and the dam, because the discharge of water could be seen to have washed away the soil, and it was not difficult to attribute the problem to its source. Local people all over the region were experiencing similar hardship as a result of the same problem, and thus were connected by a shared sense of suffering. But in the case of the electrocutions, individuals died as a result of faulty wiring indoors or because they touched a live wire outdoors. Although the power supplier could be blamed for flaws in constructing and maintaining the grid, those who lost loved ones saw the events as acts of God for which no one could be blamed.

I later learned from the archives that some of the protest leaders did try to link the accidents to local officials’ wrongdoings, especially at the township level. They saw it this way: The township government had embezzled so much of the funding earmarked for the construction and maintenance of the power grid that the work was done poorly due to a lack of financial resources, resulting in the frequent accidents and high death toll. But it turned out that this charge could not stick, because of the township government’s simple but indisputable claim: “Shanyang township did not take over the running of the hydropower station until 1982. Before then, the Dahe station was in charge of the power supply.”

And so the protest leaders no longer included the accidents in their petitions, though the issue did come up from time to time. Their quarrel was chiefly with the township government, and they wanted to retain that focus in their campaign, rather than broadening it to include the Dahe station.

Notes:

¹ Teacher Xu strove to protect his own interests within the bounds of state policy. When that policy was unclear, he would come up with his own interpretation. When the policy explicitly failed to address his concern, Xu would hold his tongue. However, when the policy did cover a particular issue, but local governments were reluctant to address it, or did not do so to his satisfaction, Xu would press his case vigorously, using unconventional tactics such as repeated, intense visits to officials.

Xu was particularly adept at employing different tactics, such as shuo (speaking out), nao (making trouble) and chan (pestering). Xu’s involvement was a major influence on peasant resistance in the Dahe area. It was Xu who instructed the peasants in how and when to use the various methods of petitioning officials, according to the particular situation. “Speaking out” was rather weak and ineffective without also “making trouble.” But one could easily run into real trouble when “making trouble” if one did not also “speak out.” Xu, a well-educated primary-school teacher who was well versed in state policy, was the right person to lead the petition activities, and he organized them well.

Li Lianjiang and Kevin O’Brien (“Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China,” Modern China, No. 22, 1996) have identified three main categories of peasant resistance to local power in rural China, according to the degree of the resistance: shun min (obedient, tractable, compliant people), ding zi hu (“nail-like” people who are recalcitrant and defiant) and diao min (shrewd and unyielding people who are difficult to govern). The main difference between the last two categories is that ding zi hu don’t care about the collective interests and ignore government policies and laws, while diao min are familiar with those laws and attempt to use them as levers to protect their interests. Li and O’Brien call diao min “policy-based resisters,” and argue that they pose the greatest challenge to local power and political stability.

² With the dismantling of the people’s commune system and the launch in 1978 of rural economic reforms, the state no longer intervened in every aspect of peasants’ everyday life. While placing an emphasis on economic development, the state also asked governments at the grassroots level to pay attention to the masses’ problems so as to relieve the growing tension in the relationship between the authorities and the peasants. At the same time, the state asked local governments to do everything possible to bring collective actions under control and, in particular, to reduce the number of petitions that bypassed the immediate authorities and were sent to higher officials.

But local governments at the township and district levels were hard pressed to respond to this request from the central government. They faced a huge challenge, because of a decline in local authority and their inability to cope with the economic problems the peasants faced after the collapse of the people’s commune system. Local cadres found it extremely difficult to “keep the petitions within the township and ensure that no such documents go to authorities higher than the county level.”

Appeals to higher levels are legal, but local governments will often make a move against the individuals who represent the affected people. Two main methods are usually employed: Dig out any past wrongdoing committed by the representatives and “discover” their heinous motives; then label the petition illegal and crack down on the representatives for “organizing an illegal petition.” Another tactic is to find some reason to punish the protest leader that has nothing at all to do with the petition. One of the best examples is the heavy-handed treatment of Teacher Xu and his wife for contravening the state family-planning policy. In some cases, peasant representatives suddenly had to pay more attention to their personal safety than to the masses’ problems they were working on. In many cases, a collective conflict between the authorities and the masses was transformed into a personal confrontation between individual officials and peasant representatives, which would lead to further intensification of the struggle.

In this book, I refer to “the elite group of the affected people,” especially after Teacher Xu became involved in the struggle. Here the term “elite” is used to convey a different meaning than the usual one. Generally speaking in the West, the power of an elite stems from its influence on society, rather than from its moral integrity and authority. By contrast, the reason the peasant organization that sprang up around the Dahe resettlement issue is called an “elite” group lies in its moral integrity and authority, rather than its power or capacity to organize the collective actions. Such moral integrity is demonstrated both through this group’s determination to plead the cause of the affected people and to fight corrupt local cadres to the bitter end.

³ The “disaster victims” label helped to unite the affected people, bringing together peasants from eight groups affected by the Dahe dam erosion problem. Suffering a common disaster made the affected groups realize it was vital to unite in solidarity as they pursued a common goal and put aside any internal differences of opinion.

The use of the term “disaster victims” helped to produce subtle changes in the affected people’s relationship with local governments at the township and district levels, and with higher authorities at the county and prefecture levels. On the one hand, the term could be used to highlight how greedy and despicable local cadres were: The disaster had been so serious and the victims had suffered so much, and yet local cadres had still embezzled the emergency-relief funds in a most uncaring manner. From the affected people’s point of view, it was the local governments that had taken funds that higher authorities had intended should go to them, so the peasants had good cause to try and get the money back. Thus, the previous relationship – between the humble ruled and the privileged ruler – had been transformed into a new relationship between creditor and debtor. At the same time, being accorded the special status of “disaster victims” allowed the affected people to take some actions in fighting for their interests that otherwise would not have been seen as proper. In other words, the government would in certain circumstances tolerate “inappropriate” actions from the affected people because of their status as “disaster victims.”

On the other hand, the “disaster victims” label was likely to worry authorities above the county level, who tended to be more concerned about the image of the government as a whole. The creation and maintenance of that image had been seen as a foundation for governing the country since 1949, and the ability to govern was likely to be weakened if that foundation was undermined. It is also true, however, that higher officials ran the risk of being accused of “sheltering corrupt behaviour” or “making bureaucratic mistakes” if they did not confront corrupt practices among their subordinates.

Chinese unit 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.