Peasant uprising against corrupt officials in Jiangxi

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): Last March 8, the Chinese government executed a former vice-governor of the southeast province of Jiangxi in the hope that this would demonstrate its determination to act against corrupt and oppressive officials.

Yet in the last two weeks of August as many as 20,000 farmers in southern Jiangxi staged a small but significant uprising against corrupt and oppressive officials, who obviously had not got the message that Beijing was trying to send with the execution.

The farmers evidently went on the rampage, starting around Aug. 13, against what they feel is excessive local taxation, in addition to the provincial and national taxes which must be paid.

One flare-up by some 2,000 farmers quickly snowballed into further outbursts in small towns and villages around Fengcheng, a city in central Jiangxi.

As they trashed government offices and robbed the houses of the wealthy in various towns, the brief peasant uprising illustrated some of the fault lines of the communist structure, and what is wrong with China generally.

First, China's muzzled press and half-muzzled Internet did not serve to warn the government that trouble was brewing or to air the peasant grievances after the trouble was finally suppressed by increased security forces, as it appears to have been.

Predictably, the Chinese media has yet to report the revolt, while, as far as is known, the Internet in China did no better.

A human rights organization in Hong Kong, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy in China, first drew attention to the troubles in the town of Yuandu, by which time the violent discontent had spread to other neighboring towns as well. Then reporters outside China were able to confirm the troubles with some officials contacted by phone.

But even now the full details of what precisely happened cannot be ascertained.

Given the controlled media, and the system's constant pressure towards sycophancy, this lack of precise knowledge may be true for Beijing as well as the outside world.

Second, the incident would appear to confirms that Beijing's orders are often ignored by provincial and local officials. The taxes to which the rioting farmers objected were local ones. Fearing the development and the spread of unrest, Beijing has told officials to avoid charging excessive local tax rates.

In this area of Jiangxi, as elsewhere, local officials have obviously not complied with this directive. But, in their defense, local officials claim that the trouble stems from their need to meet Beijing's tax impositions at a time when the rural tax base is shriveling.

Third, the brittle situation in the countryside stems in part from the fact that while the economy in the large urban areas flourishes, in many rural areas it stagnates. Peasants did well in the early days of China's economic reform.

They have not done so well since. Increased production has led to declining grain prices. They may do even less well, if China's accession to the World Trade Organization leads to a rapid increase of import of cheaper grain, and other primary products.

Local officials in Yuandu went on taxing the farmers as their incomes declined to the point where the burden became intolerable, and the infuriated farmers took the law into their own hands.

Fourth, China's economic growth has sparked an ethos of "keeping up with the Wongs" which often acts to perpetuate corrupt or oppressive practices.

Jiangxi officials did not always measure their local taxation rates against the farmer's ability to pay. Instead they sought the funds for adding perks (like an imported car or an ostentatious house) to their official status.

More broadly, the growing rich-poor gap can also serve to stimulate rioting, especially as the well-off are frequently government or party officials.

Fifth, as the government seeks to control information and to suppress all dissent, it makes sporadic uprisings such as this almost inevitable. The farmers have no other recourse but to turn to mindless violence to express their very real discontents and grievances.

Last year, when a farmer refused to pay exorbitant taxes in the central Hunan province, officials threatened to retaliate by destroying his home. Faced with this threat, the farmer committed suicide. Police had to battle roughly 10,000 outraged farmers before order was restored.

Sixth, the system of village elections which China has instituted, amidst great foreign fanfare, does not serve to channel frustrations into less violent protest. Overwhelmingly, the village elections merely serve to ratify communist officials in their positions and do not present the farmers with any real choice.

As one other occasions elsewhere, so in Jiangxi, the government structure is only responsive when police reinforcements have to be rushed in to restore order, once trouble has broken out.

It evidently took between five and seven days to bring a deteriorating order situation back under control. Scattered reports indicate that the security presence around Yuandu is still heavy. Police reinforcements even had to be rushed in from nearby Fujian province.

There is a strong historical irony in the situation as, once again, history repeats itself. In the 1930s it was the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek which was rushing reinforcements into Jiangxi as the communists' Jiangxi Soviet sought to take advantage of peasant discontent over official corruption.

Visitors to southern Jiangxi say it is still a relatively poor area. It was from southern Jiangxi that the Chinese Communist Party set out in 1934 on its fabled Long March to a new base in Yenan in northwest China.