(May 3, 2009)

After the county and prefecture governments made it clear that local Shanyang cadres had not, in their view, committed any crimes of corruption, the villagers had to decide how to proceed. According to the regulations pertaining to China’s shangfang [appeals] system, petitioners were allowed to appeal to a higher level than the prefecture government – the provincial authorities. But Tailor Wang and the other “elite” of the affected people decided to go to the highest authorities of all, the top leaders in Beijing, by way of the provincial capital. Wang’s father made a further suggestion: that their grievances should be summarized on a piece of white cloth, to really grab the attention of the high-ranking officials in the capital. Wang’s father would do the calligraphy, after which all the villages involved would add their seals. But at that point, Tailor Wang recalled, the unexpected happened:

[quote] “My father, as I’ve mentioned, was particularly good at calligraphy. At the top of the ‘white-cloth complaint,’ he wrote big characters for ‘Injustice’ and then below that highlighted the main points of our appeal in about 100 characters. Then we went round to each of the production teams affected by the dam to get them to stamp the cloth with their official seals. We were doing very well with the five upstream production teams, but then ran into trouble with the three downstream teams. To our dismay, a guy named Pu Dezheng suddenly grabbed the cloth and ran out the door. We couldn’t stop him, but immediately realized we had a big problem. Pu gave it to township officials, who handed it over to county party secretary Zheng Yunkang. We realized a disaster was imminent, and that we should start our journey immediately. I didn’t even take the time to change my clothes. We began walking to the county seat at once.”[/quote]

The appearance of a “traitor” in the ranks of the affected people was very distressing, but there was no time to clean up the mess, and the Beijing-bound representatives left in a great hurry.

Tailor Wang explained the divisions that had emerged between the five upstream groups and three downstream groups, both in terms of their ultimate goals and their ties to local officials. Under the leadership of Teacher Xu and Tailor Wang, the upstream groups were struggling to see corrupt local cadres punished so that the affected people would receive the money they were owed, and the protest leaders could then withdraw from the action without being punished. The three downstream groups, however, wanted to benefit from the collective actions but to bring no harm to local cadres. This was because these peasants had close ties to the officials. For instance, Pu Dezheng, the head of Mingyue 11 who had snatched up the white-cloth complaint, was a relative of Pu Shaosong, the former head of Shanyang commune. Another group leader in Mingyue village was related to Lin Qingshu, the former deputy head of Shanyang district. Thus, the people in the three downstream groups were interested in sharing the spoils of battle, but not in causing the downfall of any local cadres.

On September 3, 1984, Tailor Wang and Liang Yonggong, a peasant from Baiyang 14, set off on foot to find an “honest and upright judge” outside of Yunyang county. They met with indifference at the provincial Letters and Visits Office, but they had almost expected that. However, they felt confident that the authorities in the capital would welcome hearing from people who had been ill-treated by lower levels of government. What they didn’t know was that petitioners from below were not welcome at all in Beijing at that time, because the capital was busy preparing for an important prestige event: the grand celebration of the country’s 35th birthday on National Day, October 1, 1984.

As soon as they arrived at Beijing railway station on September 12, Tailor Wang and his companion were taken into custody by police who were checking travellers’ papers. The villagers back home in Shanyang, excitedly waiting for news of how their two representatives were faring in the capital, didn’t hear about their detention until September 25. At that time, Tailor Wang’s brother raced to the county seat to try and send an urgent telegram to the police at the Beijing railway station: “The person who has been in your custody since September 12 is Wang Xueping, the representative of disaster victims. Please let him go and pass on this message to him: that he must do everything in his power to complete the task of appealing to the higher authorities in Beijing. Await your reply a.s.a.p.”

The telegram was never sent. The county post office suspected that it pertained to criminal activity and reported its contents to the county police and party committee. The latter instructed that the telegram should not go through because of a ban on petitioning during the National Day holiday. In the absence of any response from Yunyang county, the police in Beijing lumped Wang and Liang in the “blind floating” or chaotically drifting population. They decided to send Liang back home, since he was carrying their travel-expense money. But Wang appeared to be penniless, so he was sent to a holding centre on the outskirts of Beijing, where “drifters” like him were made to work until they had earned enough money to pay for their own way home. Tailor Wang’s first trip to Beijing was nothing like he had imagined it would be. It had turned into a real nightmare:

[quote] “I was terribly shocked and deeply depressed by the holding centre they sent me to. I never, ever want to be in that place again for the rest of my life. Nobody beat me or cursed at me, but it was extremely painful and frustrating to be held there in that long room, with hundreds of people living cramped together, with dim light, dirty wood and dampness. The room, the air, everything gave off an unbearable stench.

“After a while, the staff at the holding centre told us: ‘You had better go register at the Letters and Visits Office of the State Council, and then you will be given a ticket. With that ticket, you will get everything free of charge for your journey home, but only as far as the county level. After that, the rest of the trip will be your own responsibility.’ So I was given such a ticket and sent along with many other prisoner-like people to Beijing’s Fengtai station, where we were locked in a railway carriage. Then the train left Beijing, going through city A, arriving at city B, until finally we got off and took a boat for Yunyang. At the port of Yunyang, the ticket was taken from me, and I had to find some way to get money for the rest of the journey home.

“I became very angry and frustrated about my terrible experience. I had travelled to the capital to appeal to the ’emperor,’ but instead was locked up in Beijing, unable to do anything for my people. When I talked to the peasants back home, I was overcome with regret that I had even gone to the capital, but they begged me repeatedly to continue the work I had begun on their behalf. ‘We’re so grateful for what you’ve done for us. Please carry on our struggle to the end. We all trust and hope that you can get things done for us.’ All my friends and relatives, particularly my wife and brothers, wanted me to walk away from the whole troublesome business. But I felt it was only right that I should try to finish what I had begun.”[/quote]

Before his trip to Beijing, Tailor Wang had imagined the capital as being clean, warm and bright. But before he even had a chance to take a look at the city, he was detained at the railway station and then sent to the holding centre. The whole experience frightened him terribly, and he couldn’t figure out why things had gone against him in this way. His failure to bring their appeal to the attention of the highest authorities in Beijing was a big blow to the villagers too. But they felt it would be inviting even more trouble to give up the struggle they had begun. They believed the best way forward was to exert growing pressure on the governments at higher levels so that new work teams would be sent down from above, to finally address their problems.

Trouble at the prefecture

Tailor Wang recalled:

[quote] “After the trip to Beijing, our problems remained unresolved. We had no idea how to fix them, or how to deal with the local cadres who had seized the money that was rightfully ours. Since the prefecture had built the dam, we had no choice but to report the situation to the dam builder – the prefecture government. And so, on October 17, 1984, 40 of us local peasants drove a truck to the prefecture government building, asking them for help. We already knew that the Dahe station had allocated around 420,000 yuan to us, but that we had received much less than that.

“So we drove the big truck through the pouring rain to the prefecture. We got soaked through and cut sorry figures. We looked like a dishevelled, disorganized bunch of peasants, but we had no choice. We had to survive and to feed our families, and to bring our plight to the attention of the government. We got in to see the commissioner and showed him a series of documents that contained convincing proof of what we were saying. Two of us were chosen to do the talking, and we thought we were doing so well that the officials were unable to advance any counterarguments. Eventually the commissioner said, ‘You’d better go home now, and we’ll send somebody to deal with these problems.'”[/quote]

The group spent the night in a carpentry workshop in the courtyard of the prefecture government. In the morning, it was so cold that they lit a fire, which ended up exploding a hole in the cement floor of the workshop. “We felt very sorry about that,” Wang recalled, “and then we went home because the government had promised to send officials down to sort out our problems.”

Wang described the group as looking “disorganized,” but a prefecture document recording the meeting put it differently:

[quote] “More than 40 peasants arrived from Shanyang, moved in, lit a fire and held a sit-in in front of the prefecture office. They had been organized to come here, and those who didn’t take part had to hand over five yuan. We instructed the county to send staff to investigate the case. Any township officials found to have had a hand in the incident will have to face the consequences.”[/quote]

It is worth noting the official’s use of the term “sit-in.” In China, shangfang or collective appeals are not encouraged by the government, but are also not illegal. Calling it a sit-in, however, made it sound like an action on the edge of legality. But the prefecture government did not take any action against the peasants. A strained relationship between the prefecture, and district and township officials, may have helped: The prefecture attributed the incident to a “black hand” manipulating the masses. In other words, the peasants were regarded as being the innocent puppets of a few district and township officials, who were pulling the strings behind the scenes.

It would break a major taboo in China’s political life if governments at the grassroots level were found to be inciting the masses to appeal to higher authorities through collective actions such as sit-ins. Officials responsible for encouraging such actions would be severely punished if the case was proved against them. So why did district and township officials dare to ask the masses to “get money from above, and food from the hydropower station”? By doing so, it appeared that Shanyang district and township officials hoped to draw the prefecture government into the whole complicated hornets’ nest of the Dahe dam and the calcium-carbide factory; to put further strain on the relationship between the affected groups and the prefecture government; and, finally, to have an excuse to punish the elite of the affected people. In any case, either the prefecture or the county now realized that the situation had became too urgent to put off action any longer.

Joy in Baiyang 16

On November 5, 1984, a 14-person work team arrived once again in Shanyang. The team consisted of representatives from the prefecture’s Letters and Visits Office, its hydropower bureau, the county party committee office, government office, committee of inspection and discipline, auditing bureau and its own Letters and Visits Office. Wang Jintang, team leader and newly elected vice-governor of Yunyang, was eager to achieve something in order to show off his ability to deal with tough issues. This was the first time he had led such a work team, going down to the grassroots and dealing with “leftover” problems. During a 12-day stay in Shanyang, the team worked hard at gathering firsthand information, visiting affected households, and interviewing local cadres and staff at the Dahe station. The team encouraged all parties involved to speak freely and frankly.

One of the work team’s greatest successes was to help work out an agreement on the boundary issue between the Dahe station and Baiyang 16. On November 16, the team held a meeting attended by all villagers in a classroom at Baiyang primary school. Governor Wang pointed out that compensation for the 39.6 mu of cultivated land that had been requisitioned for building the Dahe dam had already been delivered, based on the policy in force at that time; that the agreement had been signed by representatives of Baiyang 16 and the hydro station, and that it had to be respected. Hearing this, the villagers began to express dissatisfaction, and soon there was a great hubbub in the classroom. Governor Wang gestured for silence. “The government is aware of your plight, and should make allowances for your difficulties. For this reason, the work team has decided to propose additional compensation. Of course, this proposal is subject to the approval of higher authorities. But today I can tell you that we have proposed a preliminary plan, which I will now outline for you.”

His words silenced the noisy crowd. With a smile on his face, he began listing on the blackboard the new terms being proposed. He said that although the hydro station had taken over and paid compensation for the land it needed in 1974, the work team was proposing that the amount should be recalculated based on 1984 compensation standards. The difference between the two rates for almost 40 mu of land came to 30,000 yuan. In addition, the hydro station was prepared to hand over an additional 2,600 yuan, he said. This meant that every person in Baiyang 16 would get almost 300 yuan, which was big money in the countryside at that time. The villagers cheered and applauded, and someone shouted out: “The government is good and takes care of the people!”

Governor Wang continued: “But before you get the money, you have to agree to three conditions. First, the 1,500 yuan you borrowed from the Dahe station in 1981 will have to be deducted from the total.” Nobody in the classroom expressed any disagreement with that; the deduction would not significantly reduce the total. “Second, Tan Wanyuan built a house on the grounds of the hydro station in July, and the station won’t pay any of this money unless Tan agrees to withdraw from the area within 10 days of receiving official notification.”

All eyes in the classroom turned toward Tan Wanyuan. He had indeed built a house right on the border between the village and the hydro station, in an attempt to show station officials how strongly local people felt about the land dispute. At the time, the other villagers had supported and even encouraged Tan’s plan; now they were worried he might be an impediment to the wonderful deal they were being offered. Sensing the pressure he was under, Tan stood up and said haltingly: “Okay, yes, I will withdraw.”

Governor Wang set out the final condition: “After the meeting, we ask that you choose several representatives, who, along with staff from the work team, district and township governments and Dahe station, will work out the boundary between Baiyang 16 and the station, and then sign an agreement to that effect. You won’t get the money until the agreement is signed, and once it’s signed, you can’t back out.” The villagers began cheering and applauding and shouting out: “Let’s sign, let’s sign!” and “We’ll never back out, never!”

Soon afterward, the boundary was drawn, the agreement signed, and the people of Baiyang 16 looked forward with great excitement to their windfall. The work team had bent the rules (kai kou zi) again, but this time had achieved the demarcation of a strict boundary line and resolution of a contentious land dispute. The people of Baiyang 16 were so excited at the thought of the financial compensation that they didn’t take the time to consider what the boundary line would mean in practice – that they could have no access to the land on the Dahe station side.

The managers and workers at the station were delighted to see the villagers take the money and walk away from the dispute, thus lifting the threat hanging over them of being the repeated target of disruptive collective actions. Having signed this agreement, Baiyang 16 was prevented from returning in future to ask for more compensation. The work team had done Baiyang 16 a special favour, but in so doing had also fulfilled its mission of dealing with leftover problems. The team also dealt with another thorny issue along the way: Zhou Changfa, the “tireless pest” who had pursued a 10-year campaign to be compensated for forest land he lost to the dam. The work team saw to it that Zhou received his compensation.

Developments in the erosion zone

The work team went on to help farmers in the erosion zone with the hardship they were experiencing, and arranged for the county grain bureau to deliver a special aid shipment of 100,000 jin of grain. The team also proposed to higher authorities that the agricultural tax collected from peasants should be eased or cancelled altogether in the erosion zone, and that from 1985 on, the fixed quota of grain required to be handed over to the state should be reduced. Local people were happy about these developments, but they were still divided on two big issues: how to distribute among the affected groups the 100,000 yuan allocated by the prefecture in 1981, and how to transfer the ownership of the calcium-carbide factory from the local government to the villages affected by the Dahe dam.

The work team proposed three main ways of distributing the money, but the groups in the erosion zone could not agree on any of them. In the absence of a clear consensus, the work team favoured dividing the funds equally among residents of the erosion zone. This plan had the backing of a majority of the affected people and was also in line with the tradition in rural China. The work team submitted this proposal to the prefecture government for final approval, because it was not absolutely sure that this was the best method of distributing the money. The work team also discovered confusion surrounding the accounts of the calcium-carbide factory, and suggested that before the factory was transferred from local governments to the villagers, the accounts should be inspected. But it did not agree with the villagers’ request to waive the factory’s external debts.

The prefecture government approved the work team’s proposals on reducing the agricultural tax and fixed grain quotas in the erosion zone, but made no comment on the fund distribution and factory issues. The prefecture was well aware that these were contentious and didn’t want to show favouritism to one side or the other. It was trying to strike a balance between “bending the rules” and “drawing boundaries”: Approving the proposals to reduce the agricultural tax and the grain quota was a goodwill gesture and bending of the rules, while making no comment on the fund distribution and factory issues was an attempt to “set boundaries” between itself and the affected people, by leaving these problems for a subordinate government – the county – to deal with. Acting this way helped the prefecture government distance itself from the whirlpool of troubles.

Differences among the villagers over the factory appeared to become more acute and complicated. In July 1984, inspired by Teacher Xu, several villagers took some machinery parts away from the factory. In mid-February 1985, Xu organized a group of people who went to the factory and threatened to dismantle the homes of anyone who dared to try to put the factory into operation. However, in early March, in defiance of this threat, the factory did produce its first batch of calcium carbide. Teacher Xu learned that a company in the county seat had agreed to buy tonnes of the product, and he instructed several villagers to vandalize and immobilize a truck that was preparing to transport a shipment.

On March 8, while factory managers were meeting to discuss ways of boosting productivity, Teacher Xu barged in and said: “Before you start operating this factory, please hand over to us the tens of thousands of yuan that were embezzled by local cadres.” The meeting fell silent, and nothing further was said on the issue. Then, while the head of the factory was away at a conference in the county seat from March 18 to 22, Xu and others created disturbances at the factory, preventing the workers from operating the machines. Five days later, during a second meeting at the factory, Xu organized an even larger disturbance there, which succeeded in halting production. Factory leaders sent several reports to higher authorities accusing Teacher Xu of wrongdoing, but the factory never did succeed in producing anything after that initial batch.

The battle over whether to allow the factory to go into operation stemmed from the basic divergence of the two main groups of villagers affected by the dam. One group, led by Teacher Xu and Tailor Wang, had been trying to get local cadres held accountable for corruption so that the affected people could receive what was theirs by right, and so that the protest leaders would not be punished for their role. If the factory was allowed to go into operation, it would mean the affected people accepted the situation, and the struggle ought to be abandoned.

But another group of affected people saw the transfer of ownership of the factory as a victory in the struggle. They didn’t want to pursue the matter further by supporting more petitions or giving local cadres a hard time – for one thing, many people in this group had close ties to those cadres. Furthermore, they felt that once the factory was up and running, they would be in a position to gain economic benefits from it. Meanwhile, cracks within the bureaucracy were also appearing, with Shanyang township officials even writing a letter to the China Peasants Daily [Zhongguo nongmin ribao] criticizing the prefecture’s failure to disburse the resettlement funds properly because of its bureaucratic style of work and refusal to listen to local cadres and the masses. In turn, prefecture vice-commissioner Huang criticized local cadres for inciting disturbances at the Dahe hydropower station and not doing enough to sort out the “leftover problems.” He called for “ideological education” to be strengthened among the local cadres. Commissioner Xu Zerong, meanwhile, expressed his confidence in local governments’ ability to deal with the problems.

For his part, prefecture party secretary Song Yangxu jotted comments on an appeal letter (submitted Dec. 9) that were critical of district and township officials, and recommended the prefecture conduct an investigation. “I don’t think all the masses’ requests are unreasonable,” and more trouble will enuse if the issues continue to be treated carelessly, he wrote. Sending a special work team to Shanyang seemed a reasonable next step, given Song’s comments, but unfortunately he was soon transferred to another post and unable to push the idea forward. When Tailor Wang went to his home to inquire about the status of the work-team idea, Secretary Song sighed and said: “The tea becomes cold when the tea-drinker is gone.” The elite of the affected people took advantage of the differences that had appeared among prefecture leaders. In particular, by the time Song’s comments filtered down to local people in Shanyang, the elite had turned them into much stronger criticisms. In this version, the prefecture government had denounced local cadres for violations of law and discipline, confirmed that villagers’ reports were all true, expressed great sympathy with their miserable plight, and called for local cadres’ wrongdoing to be investigated.

Meanwhile, other cracks were appearing on the landscape of the appeals struggle itself, in areas outside of Shanyang that were also affected by the Dahe dam. While 11 groups in Shanyang were affected by land-requisition and erosion problems, many other groups suffered even greater losses from the submersion because of unexpectedly high water levels and sedimentation in the upstream area behind the Dahe dam. More than 50 groups in Xunlu township and 30 groups in Kaixi township, Bailong county, were affected by these problems.

Inspired by the prefecture government’s moves to resolve the leftover problems in Shanyang, villagers outside Shanyang who had also felt the negative impacts of the Dahe dam launched their own petition campaign. Residents of Xunlu, a township bordering Shanyang upstream of the dam, became outraged when the leaders of the Shanyang protests showed them official documents indicating that 500,000 yuan had been promised to Xunlu in 1981, while the villagers had in fact received nothing. They were further frustrated by the fact that for years they had been handing over their grain quota to the state without any reduction in the levy. Encouraged by the Shanyang villagers’ achievements, the groups in Xunlu felt they should waste no time in sending their own representatives to the prefecture. The first trip was fruitless, and the representatives came back empty-handed. In January 1985, the Xunlu representatives tried again and submitted three demands: that agricultural taxes by reduced or lifted altogether; that the 500,000 yuan should be recovered and distributed to the affected groups; and that more compensation should be paid for fields that had been submerged by the unexpectedly high water levels. This time, the representatives asked the prefecture and Dahe station officials to respond to their demands within 10 days, and were disappointed when no reply was forthcoming by the deadline.

Prefecture officials faced a dilemma. If they bent the rules in Xunlu, as they had done in Shanyang, the flood of demands that would be released as a result was likely to be much bigger. The prefecture would face no end of trouble as groups in the upstream area beyond Xunlu took heart and, following Xunlu’s example, also pressed for compensation. On the other hand, if they failed to deal with the problems in Xunlu, the prefecture would find itself in an embarrassing position, unable to explain why it had showed favouritism to the people of Shanyang. After half a year of delays, popular feeling in Xunlu was running high, which made the prefecture leaders even more anxious. As Song had warned, if the problems were not resolved, they would fester and lead to instability. Finally, prefecture officials realized they would have to confront the leftover problems before they were completely overwhelmed by them.

Notes:

¹ Yunyang county, the provincial capital Chengdu [Yunyang, now in Chongqing municipality, was then part of Sichuan province] and Beijing form a geographical triangle. Tailor Wang travelled first to the provincial capital and then on to Beijing so as not to give the impression that he was intent on bypassing the immediate levels of government with his appeal. For the petitioners, however, Beijing was certainly the most attractive place to take a complaint, given that it was home to the highest authorities who have a final say on things. On the one hand, the central authorities saw petitioners who bypassed lower levels of government as practising democracy. They welcomed this direct channel of communication with the masses, which allowed them to overcome the barriers of bureaucracy and win the trust of ordinary people. On the other hand, the top leaders were also greatly concerned that a surge in such petitions could cause trouble for the authorities, and threaten the social order in provincial capitals and in Beijing itself.

² After Pu Dezheng handed over the “white-cloth complaint” to the authorities, Tailor Wang and Teacher Xu warned him, “We’d like to tear down your house and chop down your trees!”(Interview with Pu Dezheng) In the affected area, the peasants, mobilized and organized by the elite, had joined together under the banner of “when everybody suffers from a disaster, the masses should unite to fight the tiger.” As Stichweb (1997) has pointed out, in such extreme circumstances, everyone is categorized as belonging to one of two sides: friend or foe.

³ In the early 1950s, agencies from the central government provided food and shelter to petitioners who arrived in Beijing. In an attempt to maintain social order in the capital, they also gave them travel allowances so they could return to their home provinces as quickly as possible. Unexpectedly, these humanitarian measures failed to reduce the number of petitioners, and instead encouraged the influx. The authorities decided to increase their control over the petitioners by establishing special peasant service centres in the Beijing suburbs, first in the Deshengmen area and later near the Yongdingmen railway station. Both centres provided room and board for petitioners, which was free of charge for those who had letters of introduction from their local government, and low-cost for those who had no such letter.

Later, in August 1958, the Interior Ministry built a sandstone factory in another suburb, Lougouqiao, to house those who “willfully make trouble by coming to Beijing to avail themselves of the travel allowance and stay in the capital to avoid engaging in farm labour.” That group was sent to work at the factory “voluntarily,” to earn the money for their travel expenses home. At the same time, they received ideological education. The creation of both the peasant reception centre and the sandstone factory created a relatively separate space that isolated the petitioners from the city centre. By being there, they provided cheap labour to ease the state’s financial burdens, while also helping to relieve public security concerns in the capital. (see M. Dutton, “Disciplinary projects and carceral spread: Foucauldian theory and Chinese practice,” Economy and Society, Vol. 21, 1992).

Generally speaking, approaches such as these aimed at clearing the capital of petitioners are employed mainly to deal with those who carry out persistent appeals or willfully make trouble. But the capital acts as a window on the country and its image is important. And so in the run-up to major events such as Labour Day (May 1) and National Day (October 1) or foreign leaders’ visits, police and security officials, and even the elderly women in the street committees, will be mobilized to “clean up” (qing li) the floating population that has arrived in the capital from the provinces. Little wonder, then, that Tailor Wang was detained the minute he set foot in Beijing.

⁴ Because of the delays in addressing the peasants’ problems, the elite of the affected people had time to divide into three groups: One consisted of the legal representatives of the peasants, the heads of village “groups” [the successors to the production teams]. Another group, represented by Liang Yongsheng, focused on obtaining adequate compensation and taking over the calcium-carbide factory as soon as possible in order to develop the local economy and create jobs for peasants at the factory. A third group, represented by Tailor Wang and Teacher Xu, was more concerned about seeing corrupt local officials punished for their wrongdoing, and strongly opposed the distribution of the grain allowance and the factory going into operation. While the three groups each represented the interests of a segment of the local population, their leaders added their own personal interests to their group’s demands. And so conflicts emerged among the different groups, and also between the groups’ leaders and their followers.

⁵ In his analysis of rumours, Tamotsu Shibutani suggested a famous formula: a rumour = (the event’s) importance x (the event’s) ambiguity. The formula demonstrates how a rumour is spread widely when people have difficulty obtaining accurate information about an issue they are deeply concerned about. (See L. Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, 1984).

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.