The Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2011
By BRIAN SPEGELE

WUKAN, China—Residents from the embattled southern Chinese village of Wukan are planning a march to the nearby city of Lufeng on Wednesday, according to organizers, expanding the protest outside the village in a major test for how authorities will respond.

Residents in Wukan also appeared to be widely embracing democracy—in particular an elected village council—just as they continued to stress that they support China’s ruling Communist Party and pleaded for leaders in Beijing to investigate allegations of corruption and crooked land buys in the village.

Higher-level authorities appear to be increasingly involved in pushing for a resolution to the Wukan crisis. In a video of a speech delivered Sunday, Shanwei municipal Communist Party chief Zheng Yanxiong, is seen as saying that a resolution to the dispute was still possible, but accused villagers of using foreign media to draw unwanted attention to the situation there.

The villagers “don’t turn to the government but turn to the good-for-nothing foreign media, who will only be pleased if our socialist country falls apart,” Mr. Zheng said. The village of Wukan falls under the city of Shanwei’s larger jurisdiction.

The unrest began in September and escalated last week following the death of a protest leader in police custody. Police and local government officials have been chased out of town, their offices dark and empty, in the most serious case of unrest in China this year.

While residents insisted their goals are peaceful, they also appeared to address the risks of provoking higher-level authorities.

“The men will be at the front,” said one girl in high school, who said she wouldn’t attend classes Wednesday and would attend the march instead. “Their job is to protect everyone.”

Residents of the southern China village of Wukan hold banners and placards during a rally on Monday.

In the town’s main square Monday, around 1,000 villagers participated in a rally, one of several that have occurred there in recent weeks, and one where villagers invoked the original ideals of Chinese Communism. “The East Is Red,” a Mao-era revolutionary anthem, played over the sound system. “Long live the Communist Party,” chanted the villagers, which say that their protest is directed at local officials’ corruption rather than at the system at large.

Hundreds of paramilitary police, many of them armed with automatic rifles, have been patrolling outside the village in recent days and have set up roadblocks along the region’s main roads. They haven’t attempted to enter Wukan, which is guarded by dozens of villagers at a series of their own roadblocks on the outskirts of town.

The march is slated to begin Wednesday morning, and it remains unclear whether or how authorities will attempt to suppress it. Local officials appeared to be moving more aggressively Monday to ease tensions with villagers, who at times fought violently with police in recent months for control of Wukan. Communist Party and government leaders from neighboring villages traveled to Wukan on Monday for talks with its elected leadership.

The scene was unusual given China’s closed political system.

The visiting officials spoke with elected village leaders sitting on an open-air stage near Wukan’s center. Dozens of curious villagers looked on. Foreign journalists, more than a dozen of whom have entered the village in recent days, observed and shot video.

Nonetheless, Wukan’s leaders appeared to further dig in for a standoff of several more weeks or months. Speaking to reporters following the morning negotiations, the chairman of Wukan’s elected village committee, Yang Semao, reiterated calls for the government to return land that locals believe was illegally seized and sold as part of a property-development project. He and others have also called for the government to return the remains of Xue Jinbo, who authorities say died of a heart attack while in police custody, but many villagers believe was murdered.

In addition, Mr. Yang stressed that the government needed to return land that locals believe was illegally seized and sold as part of a property development project. Residents say land grabs in Wukan occurred over the course of decades, and recent growing solidarity among villagers enabled the continuing villagewide protests.

Many shops in town closed amid riots in September, according to residents, though the ones that remain open appeared to be well stocked with food and water. At a building in the center of town Monday morning, village leaders were stockpiling bags of rice, which were purchased and delivered by motorcycle from a nearby town, to be distributed first to the sick, children and others in need.

The collective spirit was evident across Wukan, a far cry from much of the southern province of Guangdong, one of the world’s key export and manufacturing bases.

The man in charge of the rice and water stockpiles tallies the supplies in black marker on a board in the center of town.

Twenty bags of rice arrived Monday morning. The man rebuffed a foreign journalist’s request for an interview, saying he and other villagers were too busy collecting food and other supplies Wukan needed to keep operating.

Write to Brian Spegele at [email protected]

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