Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (21 page)

Wang Hongchao was furious when he heard what had happened. He decided that something must be done about this lawless taxing and extortion going on in the village. He met up with his friend the army veteran Wang Junbin and a mutual friend of theirs, Wang Xiangdong. The three young men talked over the situation and decided that the sensible thing was to go to the township for a just ruling on the case. They were doing nothing wrong, they figured, by going to the next level of the Party leadership. It was their legal right, they assumed.

So the three young men from Wang Village went to the township center and looked up the township Party boss, Han Chunsheng. It was a day they would always remember— October 28, 1993. It was the day when these three young men for the first time got a good dose of the bureaucratic run-around, and were chilled to the bone by what they experienced. Han made it clear that he would do nothing on their behalf.

Knowing that he was being shielded by his superior at the township level, Village Party Boss Gao Jianjun became all the more insolent. When he learned that Wang Hongchao and his friends had gone to the township to accuse him of snatching a TV, Gao strode to Wang’s house again and made off with his bicycle. But to be robbed of a TV and a bike because of non—

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payment of an unjustified tax of 6 yuan was more than the long-suffering peasants of Wang village could put up with. They decided that enough was enough. They came forward one after another and showed the three young men solid proofs of endless cases of forced payments, unjustified collection of “village cash reserves,” lawless fines, and other official swindles.

On our own visit to the village, we had a chance to inspect three copies of such evidence. On a copy of a “peasant tax and payments card” stamped with an official seal we saw clear traces of changes in the record of figures for the amount of land under contract. The figures grew imperceptibly, and it goes without saying that taxes grew in proportion. On the records of payment for the “village cash reserve” and the “township combined payments,” the changes were even more confusing. For instance, altogether there were fourteen items for these two categories, but what each item stood for was never explained. Among all this confusion, one thing was clear: one card recorded what the peasants were made to pay, and the other recorded a lower figure, for the benefit of the inspectors. Basically, double books were kept.

Armed with these solid proofs of excessive taxation of the peasants and illegal record keeping, the three friends Wang Junbin, Wang Hongchao, and Wang Xiangdong resolved to appeal to the higher authorities. Having had a taste of the cold shoulder at the township level, they decided to go one step higher—to Linquan County.

They were shocked to get an equally cold reception at the county level. They now demanded to see the Party secretary of the county himself. This man was the highest representative of the Party for the whole county. He would never tolerate violations of Party policy at the grassroots level, the three young men thought to themselves.

the long road

“We want to see Comrade Zhang Xide,” they announced quietly to the receptionist.

The man behind the desk cast a look in their direction. Seeing three unsophisticated peasants, he asked, visibly annoyed, “Do you know whom you are asking for?’

“Of course. The county Party secretary!” “And who may you be?”

“We are from Wang Village, Baimiao Township.”

The man said contemptuously, “So the county Party secretary wants to see the likes of you? Go to the township for affairs of your village.”

“We did. But the township didn’t care.”

“They didn’t care, so you come to us? Supposing everybody acted like you, rushing to the county Party secretary for all your petty affairs? How do you think the secretary can carry on his work?”

The three young men were stunned.

Of the three friends, Wang Xiangdong was the one with the shortest fuse. “The township doesn’t give a damn,” he said. “If we don’t call on county leaders, which way should we turn?”

The man behind the desk stood up, opened his arms wide, and started shooing them off, saying, “Out. Out. Out. We are busy here!”

Wang Hongchao, who had been standing quietly aside, now stated calmly, “We are asking the county Party leadership to implement the Party Central’s policy of relieving the peasants of their excessive burden.”

“Then go and deal with whoever refuses to relieve your bur-den” was the retort.

“We absolutely need to talk to Comrade Zhang Xide.” Wang Hongchao repeated firmly.

“The answer is no!” “Why not?”

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“I say no, and I mean no!” The man left no room for negoti-ation.

Wang Hongchao, still not giving up, said, “Is this your attitude toward the people?”

“Beat it,” the other said disdainfully, “or you’ll see worse.”

When the three young men came out of the Party Committee building, their faces were blank. The strongest belief in their young hearts had been painfully crushed. When they returned and told their story, the villagers decided that three people could not make enough of a show to catch the leadership’s attention. If three hundred people turned out, in a dozen trucks and tractors, it would be different. Soon a convoy of peasants was rumbling into the county town. But that show of numbers only aggravated the situation. The county leaders regarded the villagers’ action as ganging up to raise hell.

After these rebuffs, the villagers decided that their problem of overtaxation could not be solved in Linquan County. There were three choices left: appeal to authorities at the prefecture level, appeal to the provincial authorities, or go to Beijing. The villagers had their doubts about the first two choices. The officials at these various regional levels were linked in such a mesh of relationships, it was inevitable that they would shield each other. Newspapers, radio broadcasts, and TV programs were all full of stories of peasants’ accusations and appeals to higher officials being relayed downward tier by tier until they ended up in the very hands of the original targets of the complaints.

The people of Wang village deliberated back and forth. Eventually they concluded that the only workable solution was to go directly to Beijing, to appeal to the Party Central Committee and to petition the central government. It was, after all, the Party Central and the central government that had laid down the new policies about reducing the peasants’ burden. The villagers figured that only the top levels of authority cared about them.

the long road

Of course the villagers realized that making an appeal to the center and going over the heads of one’s direct superiors involved certain risks. Bringing problems in the village and township directly to the Party Central was in effect making accusations against the county leaders; it could even be seen as smearing them, tantamount to saying that the Linquan County leadership was not doing its job. The villagers were pretty sure that County Party Secretary Zhang Xide would never let them get away with it.

This Zhang Xide was quite a celebrity. He was often seen on local TV making public speeches, his hands sweeping through the air to emphasize a point. His speeches were obviously drafted by his assistant. The minute he departed from the script, coarse jokes and barbarous obscenities would take over. On one occasion, when he was talking about enforcement of the one-child policy, he raised a clenched fist and announced, “I’d rather see seven grave mounds than one extra birth,” obviously referring to women who died from botched abortions. This shocking saying of Zhang Xide’s was whispered far and wide, chilling everyone who heard it.

Going to Beijing meant being on the wrong side of Zhang Xide. Who was willing to take the risk, the villagers wondered. Who was capable of shouldering such a responsibility? All eyes fell on the ex-army man Wang Junbin, the peddler Wang Hongchao, and the smart young fellow Wang Xiangdong, the only three people from the village who were young and educated.

A Touch of Warmth: The First Trip to Beijing

Almost two months after the three friends’ first brush with authority over the 6-yuan school-building tax and the forcible removable of Wang Hongchao’s TV and bicycle, back in the fall

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of 1993, the three friends made ready to leave for Beijing, bearing written evidence of overtaxation safely in their pockets.

When Wang Junbin and his friends got off the train and were actually standing on the platform of Beijing railway station, they were seized with emotion. They felt as if they were being folded into their mother’s bosom. They couldn’t help wishing they could visit Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People and the vermilion walls of Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Party Central Committee, and other emblems of the Party state. But they could not afford to indulge their personal enthusiasms. The villagers had squeezed themselves to put up the money for their trip and they must set out immediately on the business that they had been entrusted with. They asked for road directions to the Petitions and Appeals Office of the Central Committee and to that of the State Council (each maintained its own such office).