(May 3, 2009)

[quote] “Many problems have been solved to date but there are still problems left over from history. There is therefore a need to make every effort to address the masses’ problems according to central government policies and local conditions. When dealing with the problems, do whatever you can to fix them, by stages and in batches. When problems remain unresolved, the masses will persist in their appeals to higher authorities. And if the hole in the dyke becomes too big, the flood of appeals will cause the entire structure to collapse, swamping higher authorities. So the key lies in fulfilling our duties in a down-to-earth manner, and researching and investigating the issues carefully so we reach a good understanding of the situation.”

– Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s instructions to the third national conference on the work of the letters and visits offices (1982)[/quote]

Lifting the lid partway

On Jan. 13, 1984, the prefectural procuratorate forwarded to the county government the petition materials presented by the eight production teams in Shanyang affected by the Dahe dam. After examining the material, two of the county leaders wrote the following comments:

[quote] “These are vital issues. The Letters and Visits Office has no power or ability to deal with problems such as these on its own. I recommend that a joint investigation be launched to get to the bottom of the matter. The problems should then be addressed appropriately or the situation will become much worse. The county government should take charge of the investigation and several departments, including the Letters and Visits Office, should be invited to take part.” – Member of the county party standing committee and director of the county party committee office, January 22, 1984

“The county government office will assume responsibility for forming a work team consisting of staff from county departments such as the Letters and Visits Office, the planning commission, and the finance, civil affairs and grain bureaus. The work team’s task will be to go to Shanyang, investigate finances (including the grain issue) and expenses, write a report based on the investigation and submit it to the county for further discussion.” – Deputy governor of the county government, January 27, 1984[/quote]

As these comments reveal, the county government had finally come to view the problems related to the Dahe dam resettlement as urgent and, after a delay of seven or eight years, was pledging to take immediate steps to tackle them. At least three factors had combined to make the officials react quickly this time. First, the joint collective action taken by eight production teams affected by the dam, representing a population of more than 1,000 people – 1,156 to be exact – made the county authorities sit up and take notice. They were alarmed at the size of the protest, and realized that if the situation was allowed to persist, and the county government did nothing about it, the consequences were likely to be serious.

Second, the county itself had not built the Dahe dam but nevertheless was saddled with the responsibility of sorting out the resettlement operation’s “leftover problems.” The petitioners had asked higher authorities to send officials to investigate matters, and the county had no excuse to ignore the request. And finally, now that the elite group of the affected people had highlighted the issue of official corruption at the district and commune levels as a major issue in their appeals, the county had to try and clean up the mess to appease the disgruntled masses.

And so, on March 16, 1984, a work team set off for Shanyang to begin a 12-day special investigation. The team was headed by a member of the county party standing committee and director of the county party committee office, and included staff from the county auditing, finance and civil affairs bureaus, and from the Letters and Visits Office. The arrival of the work team seemed to signal a preliminary victory for the Shanyang petitioners. It appeared that the county government had doubts about the integrity of officials at the district and commune levels, and about their ability to resolve the problems. The event also sent a clear message to local cadres that they would be forced into the spotlight of the special investigation.

Ten days later, the work team submitted a report to the county on their findings. The report cleared up some facts related to the commune’s diversion to other uses of the resettlement funds from the prefecture, and to the cases of a number of peasants displaced by the dam who had not been properly resettled. The report also contained recommendations on how the county should deal with the problems:

1. recover the money diverted by the commune (about 100,000 yuan) and hand it over to the production teams affected by the Dahe dam;
2. be prepared to repay the bank loans owed by the calcium-carbide factory; and
3. ensure that the affected people are resettled properly, including those who were required to move but didn’t receive due compensation, and those who received the money but didn’t move.

In early April of 1984, the county party committee sent the county procuratorate, along with other relevant departments, to further investigate the financial irregularities reported by the Shanyang petitioners. The results of that inquiry were basically in line with the conclusions drawn in March by the joint work team of the county party committee and government. In its report, this second investigative team said it had not turned up any criminal activity, and no district or commune officials were to be charged with any offences. The team did, however, find that funding earmarked for the Dahe dam resettlement had been misused or diverted. The report suggested that local officials at the district and commune levels should be criticized and receive “ideological education” so they could learn lessons from the case and fulfill their duties more responsibly in future.

It is fair to say that it would have been impossible for the commune to build the calcium-carbide factory with only the 100,000 yuan the prefecture had earmarked for the project in 1978. The commune, fervently hoping the factory would become a profitable venture, tried various means to raise more funds to build it. Before they diverted another 200,000 yuan from the resettlement budget to build the factory, commune and district officials did pass the idea by the county and prefecture authorities. The request was not made in any formal way, but the county knew about it and did not raise any objections. In addition, a prefecture leader verbally agreed to the plan during an inspection trip to Shanyang in April of 1981.

Even with all the resettlement money being poured into it, and despite a number of trial runs, the calcium-carbide factory never did go into regular operation. At the end of 1983, the commune submitted a report to the prefecture, asking for guidance on whether the factory should be shut down. The prefecture made no response to this query. Later, the commune considered the possibility of turning the failed enterprise into a cement factory, but nothing came of that idea. And so the ambitious plan to construct a brand-new modern factory turned into a white elephant and a troublesome mess: All the resettlement money was used up, with nothing to show for it but mounting complaints from increasingly angry petitioners.

In these circumstances, neither the prefecture nor the county showed any sympathy for the awkward position that district and commune officials found themselves in. On March 26, Shanyang commune officials wrote a self-criticism about having diverted the resettlement funds to the factory. By the end of March, “Shanyang commune” had been redesignated “Shanyang township” as part of the administrative reorganization in rural China that accompanied the dismantling of the people’s commune system. And Shanyang commune officials apparently felt terrible that they had been at the centre of the serious investigation conducted by the county, which coincided with the end of the commune system.

Villagers’ views diverge

The Shangyang petitioners, particularly those attached to the eight production teams in the erosion zone, were not satisfied with either the report prepared by the county work team or with the self-criticism submitted by Shanyang commune. First of all, the peasants in the eight teams had asked the county to disburse all of the 100,000 yuan the prefecture had intended for their benefit in 1981, but the county team proposed giving them only 60 per cent of the money. The remainder was to go to other production teams who were also lobbying for a share of the funds.

Second, the peasants in the eight production teams insisted that the commune officials who had diverted the money to the factory should be investigated for corruption. But the county work team approached the matter differently: The commune had diverted resettlement funds to other uses, and that money should be recovered, but no official was to be held accountable for the act, and the word “corruption” was never mentioned. Third, the affected peasants wanted to take over the calcium-carbide factory so that workers in the eight production teams could get jobs there, but the work team paid no attention to this request.

In fact, there was a divergence of views among the petitioners as to the greatest failing of the county work team’s report. Some people felt it did not pay sufficient attention to the hardships in local people’s lives, while others felt the county work team had failed to “lift the lid” (jie gai zi) on the issue of corruption among Shanyang district and commune officials. This difference of opinion was reflected in the content of the respective appeals the two groups submitted to the county government.

On April 8, Liang Yongsheng from Baiyang 13, Liang Yonggong from Baiyang 14, Huang Guangfu from Liuping 4 and Yang Biqing from Mingyue 6 presented four requests to the county party committee and government in the name of “representatives of the afflicted people”:

1. The fixed grain quotas [handed over to the state] should be reduced for the eight production teams;
2. 100,000 yuan earmarked for the resettlement operation should be disbursed in its entirety to the people in the eight production teams affected by the erosion below the dam;
3. Ownership of the calcium-carbide factory should be transferred to the eight production teams so that jobs at the enterprise can be arranged for production-team members;
4. The county party committee and government, along with county law-enforcement departments, should lift the lid on the problems at the calcium-carbide factory so that those can be thoroughly resolved.

The letter was signed by the four representatives, though no official seals appeared on it, as they had on earlier petitions. Later, when I interviewed one of the four representatives in 1997, I learned that the fourth item had been added after Teacher Xu lost his temper and called the four people traitors. Liang Yongsheng recalled the incident:

[quote] “At the time, we [four representatives] presented Zheng Yunkang, the county party secretary, with three requests: reduce the grain quota, distribute the 100,000 yuan to the affected production teams, and transfer ownership of the calcium-carbide factory to those teams. He asked us to write a report and sign it. After we returned home, we gathered at Yang Biqing’s home and I reported on what happened at the county seat. Teacher Xu pounded the table in anger and swore at us, calling us traitors. He asked us to get the agreement of the eight production teams before taking any important action in future, especially in negotiations with any level of government.”[/quote]

Later I found another appeal, written by Teacher Xu and dated April 22, that was stamped with the official seals of the eight production teams. The letter detailed the suffering of the Shanyang peasants, how the prefecture had helped the people tide over the disasters, how the commune had misused the emergency-relief funds, and how the affected groups had been forced to appeal to higher authorities for help. In light of the recent case of Yuncheng prefecture in Shanxi province, four requests to the county government appeared at the end of the letter:

1. Dispatch officials to conduct a detailed investigation, and ensure that prefecture policies are implemented;
2. Assign officials to investigate the funds earmarked for both the resettlement related to the Dahe dam and the emergency relief after the 1982 floods, and make the results of that probe public;
3. Investigate the finances of the calcium-carbide factory;
4. Investigate official corruption and misuse of money and grain earmarked for relief, and assign legal responsibility.

Comparing the two letters, there are obvious differences between them. The first one mentions “lifting the lid” on the factory’s finances in a vague way, but places the emphasis on three other issues and concentrates on the rights of the affected people. The second letter, by contrast, focuses on “lifting the lid” and investigating official wrongdoing, while mentioning only in passing that the 100,000 yuan should be distributed to its intended recipients.

The authors of the first letter also pledged that if the county government saw fit to resolve their problems, they would make “no further appeals to higher authorities and never break this promise.” By contrast, the other group, led by Teacher Xu, continued to appeal to higher authorities after submitting their letter to the county. On April 24, for instance, Xu asked his followers to fire off letters to the prefecture, the provincial party committee, the party’s central commission for discipline inspection, the Letters and Visits Office of the Central Committee, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. They put their request this way: “We ask the central government to send an honest and upright official to Shanyang, to help rescue the affected people from this man-made disaster by bringing to justice corrupt officials in the district and commune governments, or we people here will remain unconvinced of the government’s sincerity in sorting out our problems.”

Unintended consequences of bending the rules

On April 26, 1984, Huang, deputy head of the prefecture’s planning commission, Guo Taihua, governor of Yunyang county, and Liu Xingjian, party secretary of the Dahe station, held a meeting at the dam site that focused on three issues: the 100,000 yuan disbursed by the prefecture in 1981, the ownership of the calcium-carbide factory and the grain policy for the affected people. After listening to presentations made by the county work team and local governments, Huang said the priority had to be addressing the problems of the eight production teams. He proposed that the 100,000 yuan be distributed and the factory handed over to the production teams. After the meeting, Huang held a private discussion with Guo Taihua, and the next morning Guo made the following decisions public:

1. The 100,000 yuan would go only to the eight production teams. An additional 10,000 yuan would go to Baiyang 16.
2. Work on the calcium-carbide factory would continue, in an effort to make the plant a going concern. The production teams named above could either jointly own and operate the enterprise, or enter into a contract with others willing to run the business.
3. Many factors were responsible for the inundation and erosion problems, which also affected areas outside of the eight production teams, so it was inappropriate to assign all the blame to the Dahe dam. In terms of the difficulties facing residents of the area, however, the prefecture decided to earmark 100,000 yuan to deal with the problems.
4. Two million jinof grain would be waived from the grain quota that the nine production teams affected by the erosion were required to deliver to the state, though this arrangement was subject to final approval by prefecture leaders.

To appease the affected people and smooth over relations among all the parties involved, the prefecture government took an approach that basically accorded with the wishes of one of the groups of affected people – the group that had focused on the compensation issue rather than the corruption problem. The prefecture agreed to hand over an additional 110,000 yuan to the eight production teams directly affected by the erosion and to Baiyang 16. However, the decision to “bend the rules” in this case proved to be counterproductive, and sowed the seeds of further trouble down the road. The prefecture government had decided to address the pressing matter of compensation and meet people’s immediate needs, while failing to seek a comprehensive solution to the problems, which would have included tackling the issue of official corruption.

Baiyang 16 was one of the Shanyang groups most affected by the Dahe dam. Some of its fields had been requisitioned for construction of the hydropower station and later it lost a great deal of farmland to the erosion caused by the dam. The prefecture government earmarked 10,000 yuan to help address the group’s problems, but the sum was too little to solve those. In addition, it was still unclear whether the group would be exempted from agricultural taxes and the grain quota. So when the prefecture government bent the rules, the people of Baiyang 16 felt they had nothing to celebrate.

On the other side of the conflict, the leaders of the Dahe hydropower station did not appreciate the complexity of the issue. While the county felt the fee paid by the station for the land it requisitioned had been too low, the station believed it had acted correctly in the matter, and had later done the erosion-affected people an enormous favour by handing over 110,000 yuan of dam revenue, at the prefecture’s behest. And so when it set out to build more dormitories for its staff, the station did not expect to run into any major opposition.

One day in May of 1984, when station workers were preparing to level land on which to build the dormitories on the edge of the dam site, a group of villagers from Baiyang 16 surrounded them and tried to halt their work. With everybody eager to put in a word, the villagers shouted in anger: “We’ve suffered enough! We will never allow you people to do anything if you do not follow the proper procedures [related to land requisition].” The station workers responded that they would be going through the formalities while constructing the dormitories. But the villagers didn’t buy that, and declared that they would never allowed themselves to be cheated again. With popular feeling running high, the station felt compelled to call the township government for help. Having heard that the peasants of Baiyang 16 were making a disturbance at the hydropower station, township officials felt more pleased than concerned and, pleading a tight schedule, they refused to rush to the station’s assistance.

As a result, the confrontation between the hydropower station and the villagers lasted a whole morning. It was almost noon when Yang Yongqian, head of Shanyang township, finally arrived, unhurriedly, at the dam site. Station head Liu Xingjian took Yang to the scene of the unrest. The villagers paid no attention to Yang’s admonition to disperse, but continued to insist that before starting work on the dormitories, the station should follow the proper land-requisition procedures and pay the appropriate compensation. After discussing the matter for a short while with the villagers, Yang informed Liu there was nothing he could do, and reminded him that the station had better follow the proper formalities. Yang departed in a hurry, and Liu had no choice but to instruct the construction crew to halt work on the dormitories.

The standoff over construction of the Dahe dam dormitories stemmed directly from a land-requisition dispute with the Baiyang 16 peasants, but the station held local governments responsible for the trouble. As a construction and production unit, the station found it difficult to deal with the peasants, who were poorly educated and acted like a common herd without a leader. Construction of the dam brought benefits to local communities, such as roads, bridges and electricity. While the dam also brought problems, such as the inundation and erosion of farmland, the station did its best to deal with those by providing compensation to the affected people. The station felt, however, that local governments at the district and township levels did a poor job of controlling the masses. Moreover, local governments had not only diverted part of the funds earmarked for the resettlement scheme, but they had also repeatedly tried to transfer their problems with the affected groups onto the Dahe station.

In 1980, when peasants from the erosion zone gathered at the station and ate at its canteen for the first time, the station was well aware that the commune had incited the masses to cause the disturbance. In a moment of desperation, station officials had shown the protesters a document that showed the prefecture had earmarked 300,000 yuan for Shanyang in 1978. From then on, the peasants firmly believed that local governments had pocketed the money that should have gone to them. In 1982, when the villagers made up their mind to accuse local cadres of corruption, the station even helped them type up their appeals. As a result, station officials were dismayed that the Baiyang 16 peasants were now taking such a fierce stand on the land-requisition issue. And they resented the attitude of local cadres, who seemed to gloat over the station’s troubles with the peasants. The station was looking for a way to get back at district and township officials, and a heaven-sent opportunity soon arose.

On May 10, 1984, Yunyang county held a conference on the safe use of electrical power, and announced a campaign for “one trouble-free month of electricity use” that was due to commence at the end of May. On June 5, an accident occurred on the Shanyang line, which resulted in a short-circuit and the failure of a main transformer at the Dahe station. Shortly after the accident, the station decided to halt the power supply to Shanyang, and then informed the township that it would have to undertake a thorough repair and upgrading of its circuitry before power would be restored.

Local officials felt it was unfair to expect them to assume full responsibility for the accident, since the system had been poorly constructed and maintained by the station before the line was transferred to Shanyang in May of 1982. Problems on the line after the handover had led to two dozen accidents between August 1983 and June 1984. With previous accidents, the station and local governments had made a joint effort to repair the problem, and any power outages did not last long. This time, however, local governments interpreted the station’s intransigence as being linked to the land-requisition dispute and, specifically, to local officials’ failure to negotiate a deal between the station and the peasants.

On the same day the station halted their power supply, Shanyang district officials convened an emergency meeting. Afterward, district head Zuo Wengui announced five measures:

1. Station workers’ children attending Shanyang High School would be expelled;
2. The district hospital would no longer treat patients who worked at the station;
3. The district grain station would halt all supplies of grain and oil destined for the station;
4. The district post office would suspend phone service to the station;
5. Teachers at Liuping Primary School who were related to workers at the station would be transferred to teaching posts in remote areas.

Having heard this news, the hydro station immediately reported the situation to the prefecture government. Yu, the prefecture’s vice-commissioner in charge of the industry sector, was extremely unhappy and said he would have a word with Yunyang county officials and try to get them to lean on the district government to revoke the orders.

Despair spreads downstream

On June 13, 1984, a massive rainstorm hit Shanyang. Watching the reservoir water level rise rapidly, Dahe hydropower station head Liu Xingjian called the township government and said he was shocked at what he was seeing. The impending flood, he said, looked as dangerous as the 1982 disaster.

Without giving local people any advance warning, Liu decided to lower the reservoir level by opening the dam’s sluice gates. This engulfed the river valley below the dam in a vast body of water, submerging more than 3,000 muof cropland. Corn that was close to being harvested was completely ruined. Peasants, with tears in their eyes, raced to complain to village cadres, who in turn vented their anger at the township and district levels. But when Shanyang township officials reported the disaster to higher authorities, the prefecture government turned a deaf ear.

Receiving no significant response from the various levels of government, local people had no choice but to take the traditional approach in coping with a desperate situation and head for the hydro station to create a disturbance, as they had back in April 1980. An appeal submitted by station workers to the county government on June 26 described what happened next:

[quote] “From June 14 to 17, led by village heads and party secretaries, more than 300 people from the downstream area below the dam came to the hydropower station and kept pestering the station leaders. Peasants from Baiyang and Liuping villages were persuaded to stop the disturbances, but about 50 peasants from Xinhua and Bolin villages dashed around wildly, behaving disgracefully. They caused disturbances for several days and nights, and station staff had great difficulty doing their jobs. At noon on June 17, a group of peasants ignored security staff and overran the staff canteen. They dragged the cooks away and ate up all the food that had been prepared for the more than 100 station employees.

“From June 26 onward, several dozen peasants came to the station and caused trouble almost every day. They demanded that station leaders sign a document they had prepared and threatened that if they refused to sign, they would mobilize more villagers and kidnap the station leaders. They put it this way in their document: ‘The Dahe hydropower station is 100 times more merciless than the devastating floods. The dam is more cruel and more violent than the devil, and it determines whether local people live or die. We will not retreat. We have made up our mind to perish along with the dam.'”[/quote]

The villagers involved in the previous disturbance at the dam, in 1980, were from the erosion zone. This time, the protesters were from Xinhua and Bolin, villages far downstream of the dam, beyond the officially designated erosion zone. They were unhappy that villagers in the erosion zone were considered disaster victims eligible for government compensation. By contrast, the peasants of Xinhua and Bolin had received nothing for their losses caused by the floods that had become more devastating in frequency and intensity since the construction of the Dahe dam. The hydro station believed that while it bore responsibility for the erosion near the dam, villages as far away as Xinhua and Bolin were not in the affected zone and so were no concern of theirs. The Xinhua and Bolin villagers were upset about being treated differently, when they too were suffering terribly.

The two villages were trying to secure a greater share of the 100,000 yuan that was supposed to go to villages outside of the eight groups in the erosion zone. When the relationship between the local governments and the station had become strained, the district and township had signalled that villages that were most active in fighting the station would get the biggest slice of the pie. And so Xinhua and Bolin villages were out in front now, doing their best to cause mayhem at the station.

As the table below shows, the local governments at the district and township levels repaid the two villages for their role in struggling against the Dahe station. Xinhua village in particular was rewarded handsomely for its efforts, receiving close to half the 100,000 yuan.

Disunity among the officials

Local cadres at the district and township levels felt as if they were being squeezed from above and below. The peasants were trying to get somebody to take responsibility for their poverty and misery, and were accusing the cadres of embezzling funds earmarked for resettlement. At the same time, the officials were feeling pressure from the prefecture government, which was displeased with the local cadres’ failure to work out a land-requisition deal and with the five measures the district had proposed to make life difficult for hydro station employees. The prefecture was frustrated by the local government’s disruptive impact on the dam’s operations, given that the hydro station was an important source of revenue for the prefecture.

In this situation, the district and township governments decided to gain the upper hand by striking first: to incite the affected peasants to create a disturbance at the hydro station on the one hand, and to report to the central government directly by bypassing the immediate leadership on the other hand. The day after the incident at the Dahe station, the government of Shanyang township sent a letter to the party central committee’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, lodging a complaint against the prefecture government on issues such as land requisition, power supply and the hardships experienced by the affected people.

This was the first time since the dam was completed in late 1970 that the local governments had bypassed the immediate leadership to file a complaint in the name of grassroots organizations. By venting these grievances, the local governments hoped to win the sympathy of the central government and to have the prefecture come under criticism for its “bureaucratism.”

Tailor Wang enters the fray

Wang Xueping, a tailor who had set up his stall outside the calcium-carbide factory, had managed to persuade the Baiyang and Liuping villagers to stop causing trouble at the Dahe station. Wang recalled how he convinced the villagers to call off their action:

[quote]”I said they had better report their problems to higher authorities through the proper channels and in a disciplined manner. I said it was wrong and illegal for them to be creating a disturbance in this way. I was doing my sewing at that spot, so I had a lot of opportunity to talk with them about the hows and whys of what they were doing. And I said, ‘Just don’t do it the way you’re doing it.'”[/quote]

Tailor Wang went on to recount how he had become involved in the villagers’ appeals:

[quote]”I had been sewing clothes near the factory since 1984. I saw the peasants going back and forth across the bridge [leading to the Dahe station] almost every day. So I asked them why they were going there, and they said: ‘To fill our stomachs.’ The local cadres didn’t want to fix their problems and had advised them to go to the station for help. So the peasants were going off to make trouble at the station. But I said this wasn’t a good way to solve their problems. The peasants listened to me carefully. They trusted me because of my experience. They knew I had made a living since a young age, wandering from place to place. They believed I was more experienced and knowledgeable than they were, so they asked me to take part in the appeals. At first, I didn’t intend to become involved, but the production team heads and many other people asked me to join them. They particularly liked the fact that I was good at making friends and negotiating with all sorts of different people. And it’s true that I’ve always been happy to help others. So they said, ‘We really hope you can give us a hand on this issue.'”[/quote]

Chatting with Tailor Wang, I learned that he had been born into a noble family in Yunyang. His grandfather was a well-known doctor and lawyer in the county seat, and his family had moved to Shanyang to escape the fighting during the war with the Japanese. Tailor Wang’s father was not well educated but was gifted in many ways, and particularly good at calligraphy. Tailor Wang was not permitted to attend junior high school or join the army because of his family’s political background. At the age of 11, he began roaming from place to place, picking up work as a porter, busboy, tailor and so forth. He was a brilliant conversationalist, adept at friendship, and also very loyal to his friends. As a result of his family background and personal experiences, Tailor Wang was a steady, reliable and courageous man. He displayed these traits even before he became involved in the appeals. He sensed danger in the villagers’ plan to cause trouble at the station, and felt that the crux of their problems – and the solution to their plight – lay with local governments rather than the Dahe station. He pointed out the possibility of landing local cadres in hot water by forcing an official admission of the problems with the calcium-carbide factory.

Tailor Wang also recalled his experience of working as a labourer at the factory for a short period of time:

[quote] “We young men from five production teams affected by the dam were required to work on the construction of the factory. We did heavy, dirty work such as transporting stones and bricks. But after the factory was completed, none of us was employed there. They [district and township officials] arranged jobs for their own relatives and friends at the factory. Several years later, we went to the factory asking for jobs but the township cadres drove us away with their fists. We became frightened and ran away.”[/quote]

Tailor Wang told me he was well aware of the risks involved in confronting officials:

[quote] “My grandmother told me that accusing officials of wrongdoing was as dangerous as beating a tiger and that it would bring enormous trouble to the family. She advised me never to do this, and I always bore her words in mind. So when I heard the peasants talking about making a disturbance, I told them again and again that it was no joke and that I was really scared.”[/quote]

Tailor Wang said that if you take on a tiger and it is not killed, you can get seriously hurt. Wang also realized that only by being well organized could the peasants bring corrupt officials to justice, protect the rights and interests of the affected people, and guarantee the personal safety of the protest leaders.

Tailor Wang enjoyed several advantages that propelled him to the forefront of the struggle. He was among the peasants affected by the Dahe dam, but local cadres had a hard time pinning anything on him because he had worked for such a long time as an itinerant labourer outside of Shanyang. He had the energy and also the time to become involved in the struggle. Moreover, Wang was able to do what Teacher Xu could not do: to work as a conductor at the front of the stage. Tailor Wang became a firm supporter of Teacher Xu, and both men shared the goal of seeing corrupt officials punished for their wrongdoing. Tailor Wang’s appearance on the scene created the distinction between front and back stages: He would work at the front, while Teacher Xu was busy in the background.

Notes:

¹ The expression jie gai zi, lift the lid, has been used in post-1949 political movements to describe the determination of higher authorities to investigate and reveal problems with subordinate governments.

² After the land reform of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the central government viewed sending work teams to the countryside as an institutionalized means of finding out what was happening in the countryside. The work team was expected not only to clarify and solve problems in the rural communities to which it was sent, but also to pay close attention to the political atmosphere. A work team could play four different roles, though which one it actually played would depend on the specific conditions. First, the investigator – the representative of the state, sent to research events in rural communities. Second, the liberator – through its investigations, to get to the bottom of things, identify “friend and foe,” right wrongs and free the peasants from local oppressors. Third, the educator – through “ideological education,” to drive a wedge between the masses and small groups of troublemakers. Fourth, the protector – while researching local problems, the work team would protect local cadres, who play a vital role in the operation of the state machinery at the grassroots level.

³ By the late 1980s, higher authorities were encouraging subordinate levels of government to implement policies “flexibly” in order to push ahead with the economic reforms. But it was also possible for these lower-level officials to take advantage of the situation for personal gain, For example, the Shanyang township and district governments wanted to build the calcium-carbide factory not in the interests of the affected groups, but for income-generation purposes (see A. Krueger, “The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society,” American Economic Review, 1974; C. Rowley et al., The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking, 1988). It was possible for high-level authorities to tolerate such activities and even to be reluctant to expose their existence. For the affected people, however, it was hard to accept this “flexible” approach when it created a threat to their own interests. Thus it could happen that they would press for things to be done strictly in accordance with the higher authorities’ policies and regulations.

⁴ China declared an end to the people’s commune system in 1984. The old system, with its hierarchy of people’s commune, production brigade and production team, was replaced by the new one of township/town, village and group.

⁵ Bending the rules (kai kou zi) and lifting the lid (jie gai zi) are both important means employed by the government to deal with conflicts among the people that could cause social instability and even undermine the authority of the central government. Bending the rules aims to show care and concern toward a certain group in order to reduce the severity of a conflict, while lifting the lid and punishing officials for wrongdoing is used as a warning to others (“execute one to warn 100”).

⁶ From March 1983 to January 1984, a work team from the central inspection and discipline committee of the Communist Party investigated problems in Yuncheng prefecture, Shanxi province, and arrested 42 officials on various charges. The work team also reorganized the leadership of Yuncheng prefecture, a move applauded by local people.

⁷ From 1984 onward, as an arbitrator between the peasants affected by the Dahe dam and local governments, the prefecture faced the dilemma of whether to “lift the lid” on official wrongdoing (jie gai zi) or deal coercively with the complainants (ba ding zi). The former approach would put the prefecture on the peasants’ side, as they investigated and took a tough stance on any misuse of resettlement funds. This would damage local cadres politically, intensify the conflict within the government bureaucracy and generally worsen the situation. On the other hand, if the latter approach were taken, the prefecture would have to crack down on the leaders who organized the collective actions, and accuse them of “inciting the masses to cause trouble.” On the surface, this would appear to bring the situation under control, but it could also spark stronger popular feelings of dissatisfaction and serve to worsen the relationship between the peasants and the state. If the government employs “strong weapons” to deal with a complex developing situation, it runs the risk of exacerbating a conflict and disrupting the new development-orientated economic order. The reality is that the state needs to consolidate an atmosphere of unity and stability but is at the same time challenged by all the accumulated “problems left over from history.” Therefore, one of the most important principles in dealing with the problems is to address the peasants’ problems while taking care not to undermine local cadres’ drive and enthusiasm.

In these circumstances, bending the rules (kai kou zi) became an effective means of balancing the situation: demonstrating the government’s warm-hearted concern for the affected people on the one hand, and letting local cadres walk away from the troubles untarnished and with their heads held high, on the other. However, the difficulty with “bending the rules” lies in how to avoid producing a new sense of injustice among those who have not benefited from the benevolent gesture.

⁸ In other circumstances, Teacher Xu would have been a perfect person to be out at the front of the stage. But on several counts he was unsuitable for the role of public organizer of the collective actions. For one thing, although his family’s fields were threatened by the dam-induced erosion, his income was not dependent on them (he was a primary-school teacher with a stable salary) and so he was not, strictly speaking, a member of the afflicted group. He also had to fulfill his duties as a teacher, and so his time was not all that flexible. Finally, and most importantly, Teacher Xu had been an activist in the Cultural Revolution and so his own “problems left over from history” could give local cadres who were eager to go after him an excuse to do so. For all these reasons, the best role for him to play was that of behind-the-scenes mastermind.

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.