New York Times
December 31, 2004
THE GREAT DIVIDE | TALKING BACK TO POWER
China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence
[Photo] European Pressphoto Agency
What started as a mildly annoying encounter on Oct. 18 between a
porter and a man who claimed to be a senior official in Wanzhou, in
central China, turned into a full-scale riot, fed by resentment among
poorer residents.
By JOSEPH KAHN
[Photo] Du Bin for The New York Times
For Wen Jiabao, "being an official is even better than being rich."
ANZHOU, China, Dec. 24 - The encounter, at first, seemed purely
pedestrian. A man carrying a bag passed a husband and wife on a
sidewalk. The man's bag brushed the woman's pants leg, leaving a
trace of mud. Words were exchanged. A scuffle ensued.
Easily forgettable, except that one of the men, Yu Jikui, was a lowly
porter. The other, Hu Quanzong, boasted that he was a ranking
government official. Mr. Hu beat Mr. Yu using the porter's own
carrying stick, then threatened to have him killed.
For Wanzhou, a Yangtze River port city, the script was incendiary.
Onlookers spread word that a senior official had abused a helpless
porter. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people had swarmed
Wanzhou's central square, where they tipped over government vehicles,
pummeled policemen and set fire to city hall.
Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party,
obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet
the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a
dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by
government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches
accruing to the powerful and well connected.
"People can see how corrupt the government is while they barely have
enough to eat," said Mr. Yu, reflecting on the uprising that made him
an instant proletarian hero - and later forced him into seclusion.
"Our society has a short fuse, just waiting for a spark."
Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic
expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining
social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy
movement in 1989.
Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly
60,000 in 2003, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight
times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops
are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control.
China does not have a Polish-style Solidarity labor movement.
Protests may be so numerous in part because they are small, local
expressions of discontent over layoffs, land seizures, use of natural
resources, ethnic tensions, misspent state funds, forced immigration,
unpaid wages or police killings. Yet several mass protests, like the
one in Wanzhou, show how people with different causes can seize an
opportunity to press their grievances together.
The police recently arrested several advocates of peasant rights
suspected of helping to coordinate protest activities nationally.
Those are worrying signs for the one-party state, reflexively wary of
even the hint of organized opposition.
Wang Jian, a researcher at the Communist Party's training academy in
Changchun, in northeast China, said the number and scale of protests
had been rising because of "frictions and even violent conflicts
between different interest groups" in China's quasi market economy.
"These mass incidents have seriously harmed the country's social
order and weakened government authority, with destructive
consequences domestically and abroad," Mr. Wang wrote in a recent
study.
China's top leaders said after their annual planning session in
September that the "life and death of the party" rests on "improving
governance," which they define as making party officials less corrupt
and more responsive to public concerns.
But the only accessible outlet for farmers and workers to complain is
the network of petition and appeals offices, a legacy of imperial
rule. A new survey by Yu Jianrong, a leading sociologist at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, found that petitions
to the central government had increased 46 percent in 2003 from the
year before, but that only two-hundredths of 1 percent of those who
used the system said it worked.
Last month, as many as 100,000 farmers in Sichuan Province,
frustrated by months of fruitless appeals against a dam project that
claimed their land, took matters into their own hands. They seized
Hanyuan County government offices and barred work on the dam site for
days. It took 10,000 paramilitary troops to quell the unrest.
Also in November, in Wanrong County, Shanxi Province, in central
China, two policemen were killed when enraged construction workers
attacked a police station after a traffic dispute. Days later, in
Guangdong Province, in the far south, riots erupted and a toll booth
was burned down after a woman claimed she had been overcharged to use
a bridge. In mid-December, a village filled with migrant workers in
Guangdong erupted into a frenzy of violence after the police caught a
15-year-old migrant stealing a bicycle and beat him to death. Up to
50,000 migrants rioted there, Hong Kong newspapers reported.
Wanzhou officials initially treated their riot in October as a fluke.
They ordered Mr. Hu to declare on television that he is a fruit
vendor, not a public official, and that his confrontation with Mr. Yu
was a mistake. The police arrested a dozen people and declared social
order restored.
But the uprising alarmed Beijing, which told local officials they
would be sacked if they failed to prevent recurrences, according to
Chinese journalists briefed on the matter. Luo Gan, the member of the
Politburo Standing Committee who is in charge of law and order,
issued national guidelines warning that "sudden mass incidents" were
increasing and calling for tighter police measures.
More than a dozen people interviewed in Wanzhou, part of Chongqing
Municipality, described the city as tense. All said that they still
believed that Mr. Hu was indeed an official and that the government
concocted a cover story to calm things down. They say the anger
excited by the riot awaits only a new affront.
The Chance Encounter
Like many farmers in the steeply graded hills along the Yangtze, Mr.
Yu, 57, supplements his income hauling loads up and down city roads -
grain, fertilizer, air conditioners, anything that he can balance on
a bamboo pole and hoist on his slender shoulder. Sweaty and dirty,
porters put their low-paying profession on parade. They are often
referred to simply as bian dan, or pole men.
Mr. Yu's lot is better than some others. He has another sideline
collecting hair cuttings off the floors of beauty salons and barber
shops, packing them in big burlap bags and selling them to wig-makers
down south.
On Oct. 18, he spent several hours collecting hair from upscale
salons along Baiyan Road, a busy shopping street that runs near the
government square downtown. His load was light - two bags of loose
locks - and he scurried down the sidewalk to lunch.
"Hey, pole man, you got dirt all over my pants!" he heard a woman
shout. When he turned to face her, the man by her side, Mr. Hu, was
glaring at him.
"What are you looking at, bumpkin?" Mr. Yu recalls Mr. Hu saying.
Mr. Yu is mild mannered, with a slightly raffish grin stained yellow
from chain smoking. Mr. Hu, wearing a coat and tie and leather shoes,
looked like he might be important. Mr. Yu said he should have let the
moment pass. He did not.
"I work like this so that my daughter and son can dress better than I
do, so don't look down on me," he recalled saying. Then he added, "I
sell my strength just as a prostitute sells her body."
Mr. Yu said he was drawing a general comparison. Mr. Hu and his young
wife, Zeng Qingrong, apparently thought he had insinuated something
else. She jerked his shirt collar and slapped his ear. Mr. Hu picked
up Mr. Yu's fallen pole and struck him in the legs and back
repeatedly.
Perhaps for the benefit of the crowd, Mr. Hu shouted that it was Mr.
Yu, sprawled on the pavement, who was in big trouble.
"I'm a public official," Mr. Hu said, according to Mr. Yu and other
eyewitnesses. "If this guy causes me more problems, I'll pay 20,000
kuai" - about $2,500 - "and have him knocked off."
Those words never appeared in the state-controlled media. But is
difficult to find anyone in Wanzhou today who has not heard some
version of Mr. Hu's bluster: The putative official - he has been
identified in the rumor mill as the deputy chief of the local land
bureau - had boasted that he could have a porter killed for $2,500.
It was a call to arms.
Mr. Hu's threat, spread by mobile phones, text messages and the
swelling crowd, encapsulated a thousand bitter grievances.
"I heard him say those exact words," said Wen Jiabao, another porter
who says he witnessed the confrontation. "It proves that it's better
to be rich than poor, but that being an official is even better than
being rich."
Xiang Lin, a 18-year-old auto mechanic, had seen China's rising
wealth when he worked near Shanghai. But when he returned home to
Wanzhou, he felt frustrated that his plan to open a repair shop
foundered. He was drawn downtown by the excitement.
"Don't officials realize that we would not have any economic
development in Wanzhou without the porters?" Mr. Xiang asked.
Cai Shizhong, a taxi driver, was angered when the authorities created
a company to control taxi licenses, which he says cost him thousands
of dollars but brought no benefits. The police also fine taxi drivers
left and right, he said.
"If you drive a private car, they leave you alone because you might
be important," Mr. Cai said. "If you drive a taxi, they find any
excuse to take your money."
Peng Daosheng's home was flooded by the rising reservoir of the Three
Gorges Dam. He was supposed to receive $4,000 in compensation as well
as a new home. But his new apartment is smaller and less well
located, and the cash never arrived.
"The officials take all the money for themselves," said Mr. Peng, who
spent eight hours protesting that night. "I guess that's why that guy
had $2,500 to kill someone."
It took the police more than four hours to remove Mr. Hu and Mr. Yu
from the scene. The crowd surrounded police cars and refused to
budge, afraid the police would cover up the beating, and even punish
Mr. Yu.
"People knew the matter would never be resolved fairly behind closed
doors," Mr. Yu said.
Even after the police formed a cordon around two cars - one for Mr.
Hu and his wife, another for Mr. Yu - the crowd smashed the windows
of the car carrying the couple. It was nearly 5 p.m. before the
vehicles crawled through the assembled masses.
A Loss of Control
The police may have hoped that removing the main actors from the
scene would defuse the tension. Instead, the crowd rampaged. At 6
p.m., a police van was surrounded and the policeman inside was beaten
with bricks. Seven or eight people tipped the car over, stuffed
toilet paper into the gas tank and set it ablaze, according to
witnesses and a police report.
When a fire truck arrived, the fire fighters were forced out and
their truck commandeered. A driver smashed it into brick wall, then
backed up and repeated the move to render the truck immobile.
"They lost control at once," recalled Mr. Cai, the taxi driver, who
wandered through the crowd that day. "Suddenly the police were nobody
and the people were in charge."
The local government never published an estimate of how many people
took part in the protest. But unofficial estimates by Chinese
journalists on the scene ranged from 30,000 to 70,000, enough to stop
all traffic downtown and fill the government square.
By 8 p.m., the rally focused on the 20-story headquarters of the
Wanzhou District Government, with its blue-tinted windows and
imposing terrace facing the square. The crowd chanted, "Hand over the
assassin!" Riot-police officers in full protective gear - but
carrying no guns - held the terrace. Officials with loudspeakers
urged the crowd to disperse, promising that the incident would be
handed according to law.
But the mob now followed its own law. An assembly line formed from a
nearby construction site. Concrete building slabs were ferried along
the line, then shattered with sledgehammers to make projectiles.
Front-line rioters hurled the rocks at the police - tentatively at
first, then in volleys.
Under the barrage, the police retreated. Protesters charged the
terrace, shattered the windows and doors of government headquarters
and surged inside.
Official documents were scattered. Protesters dumped computers and
office furniture off the terrace. Soon, a raging fire illuminated the
square with its flickering orange glow.
Li Jian, 22, took part in the plunder. A young peasant, he had found
a city job as a short-order cook. But he longed to study computers,
said his father, Li Wanfa. The family bought an old computer keyboard
so the young man could learn typing.
"He wanted to go to high school but the school said his cultural
level was not high enough," Mr. Li said. "They said a country boy
like him should be a cook."
The police arrested young Mr. Li scurrying through the melee with a
Legend-brand computer that belonged to the government, according to
an arrest notice.
Yet even at the height of the incident, rioters set limits. They did
not attack any of the restaurants or department stores along the
government square, focusing their wrath on symbols of official power.
By midnight, the crowd dwindled on its own. When paramilitary troops
finally arrived on the scene after 3 a.m., there were only a few
thousand hard-core protesters left.
"Most people went home," said Mr. Peng, the man whose home had been
flooded by the dam. "But the armed police were fierce. They beat you
even if you kneeled down before them."
The Tensions Persist
The local government praised its own handling of the riot. An
assessment published three days afterward in The Three Gorges City
News, the daily paper of the Wanzhou Communist Party, also declared
the uprising had no lasting ramifications.
"The district government displayed its strong governing ability at a
crucial moment," the report said. "This incident was caused by a
handful of agitators with ulterior motives who whipped up a
street-side dispute into a mass riot."
The uprising did dissipate as quickly as it emerged. Baiyan Road now
bustles with afternoon shoppers. After work, dancers bundled against
the damp chill use government square as an outdoor ballroom, a
synthesized two-step beat filling the night air.
Yet the underlying tensions did not disappear.
When the Wan Min Cotton Textile Factory declared bankruptcy in
mid-December, scores of policemen occupied the factory grounds to
prevent a riot. The next day, a handful of workers from the factor
went to city hall to protest. Several hundred uniformed police
surrounded them.
Mr. Xiang, the auto mechanic, was arrested for throwing stones and
taken into custody. One day, returning from the cold showers inmates
were required to take in the unheated jail, guards told him to kneel.
One elbowed him in the back and several others kicked him in the gut.
As he lay prostrate, a prison supervisor said: "Nothing happened to
you here, did it? You're a smart kid."
He could not eat for two days.
"We were all brothers inside," he said of his fellow detainees. "The
officials despise the ordinary people and are not afraid to bully
them."
Then there's Mr. Yu. He missed the riot that occurred in his name,
but has been under pressure ever since. The government kept him
isolated in a hospital for nearly two weeks, even though bruises on
his legs and the stitches he needed above his eye had healed.
His daughter and son were told to take a vacation, paid by the
government, to avoid contact with the news media. "They told us not
to talk or it would hurt the city," Mr. Yu said in his first
interview.
Yet he said what really shook him was the reaction to the statement
he made to Wanzhou television on Oct. 20, two days after the riot.
The government told him to appear - he was still under guard - and
had prepared questions in advance.
"They told me to emphasize the importance of law and order," he said.
"I was told just to answer the questions and not to say anything
else."
What he said on the evening news sounded innocuous enough. "Let this
be handled by law," Mr. Yu told viewers. "Everyone should stay at
home."
So he was unprepared for the backlash.
Relatives of those arrested criticized him for propagandizing for the
government, saying their kin felt betrayed. Neighbors warned him not
to plant rice this year because his enemies would just rip it out.
His wife says she wants to move because she has heard too many
threats.
Mr. Yu is understandably confused.
"First an official tries to break my legs because I am a dirty
porter," he said. "Now the common people want to break my legs
because I spoke for the government."
Chris Buckley contributed reporting for this article.
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