There has never been much doubt about what Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders think of democracy: They hate it. Yet despite the party’s 57 years in power, it has not been able to completely eradicate the desire for democracy.
When given a chance to say what they really feel, many Chinese have been harshly critical of the CCP and demanded a greater voice in their government, from the 100 Flowers Movement of 1956 to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 to the uprising five years ago in a fishing village in Guangdong Province.
Unfortunately, the end results have been the same: harshly repressive crackdown, arrests, imprisonment and deaths. Yet in spite of that, many Chinese, including well-known intellectuals like Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), self-taught lawyers like Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), average farmers and fishermen, continue to press for democracy and human rights.
That fishing village near Lufeng, Guangdong Province, returned to the news this week because its residents have been under siege by armed police and plainclothes thugs who have used rubber bullets, tear gas, beatings and arrests to try to cower them.
Five years ago next week, the villagers of Wukan launched a protest against land seizures by municipal officials and developers, demanding an investigation by Beijing. They withstood months of intimidation until the mysterious death in police custody of one of the representatives chosen by the villagers to negotiate with officials pushed them over the edge and in mid-December 2011, they drove police and CCP officials out of the village.
Their bravery drew international media attention and an embarrassed Beijing eventually caved and agreed to investigate their complaints, probably because the villagers strongly professed their loyalty to the party.
The following February, provincial-level CCP authorities allowed the villagers to elect a new governing council and several of the protest leaders, including Lin Zuluan (林祖鑾), won in a landslide.
The election was seen as a possible model for grassroots democracy in China and did indeed inspire several other villages to push for similar votes. Yet city, county and provincial-level CCP officialdom continued on as always, with no end to the questionable land deals and corruption, despite the Chinese president’s widely publicized anti-graft campaign.
In early June, Lin wrote an open letter promising to launch new protests against illegal land sales and unauthorized construction on village land. A few days later he was arrested for allegedly taking bribes and ended up on television, making one of the confessions that the CCP loves so much. The villagers responded with protest marches and a staunch defense of their leader.
On Sept. 9, Lin was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison and on Tuesday, riot police launched a raid on Wukan, seeking more than a dozen people who have led protests since Lin’s arrest. Despite television broadcasts warning against sheltering the suspects and the offers of large cash rewards for tips, the villagers have fought back.
While Beijing has tried to block coverage of what is going on in Wukan, including ousting reporters from Hong Kong’s Chinese and English-language media on Thursday and blockading the village, photographs and video footage of clashes and wounded residents have emerged.
The protests in Wukan might lack the scale of Tiananmen, but the bravery and determination of the residents matches those of 1989.
Their fight is a reminder that the face that Beijing likes to present to the world of a modern power is built on a foundation of lies, and that many people inside China — in Wukan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong — and outside, including in Taiwan, are not willing to accept the CCP’s belief that only it can rule the nation.
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