Qian Yunhui would not be silenced. A local leader in a community of farmers, Qian devoted much of his time to protesting a power plant being built on his village’s ancestral land.
In a country where public dissent against the government is rare — and quickly silenced when it appears — Qian continued to lead demonstrations and submit petitions despite having been sent to prison twice in three years. He wrote letters to provincial and national leaders naming the government officials and companies he accused of stealing land — something most Chinese would consider extremely dangerous. His provocative campaign ended Christmas morning. That’s when — after receiving a phone call, Qian’s family said — he walked out of his modest concrete home to meet someone, though it’s not known whom. Villagers found his body a short while later, mangled under the front wheel of a construction truck. The fat tyre had crushed Qian’s chest and neck, coming to a rest at the back of his head — the pressure sent blood and flesh spurting from his mouth. Qian’s face lay in the cold mud, eyes shut.
Every villager interviewed by McClatchy Newspapers in Zhaiqiao said they thought Qian, 53, was murdered as a warning to locals that it was time to stop talking about the power plant. Witnesses, they said, had seen men holding Qian down as the truck pulverised his body. Government officials maintain that Qian died in a simple traffic accident, an unfortunate bit of bad luck on a wet patch of road.
The difficulty of drawing a conclusion about what happened that morning says a lot about the system in which China’s authoritarian government operates. As the world focuses on Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington next week, and his country’s growing economic clout and military ambitions, at home the Chinese Communist Party is often far more preoccupied with maintaining domestic order — “harmonious” is the adjective preferred by leaders like Hu.
The death of Qian Yunhui is in many ways a startling reminder of how high the cost can be for those who won’t fall in line, a reality that the government tries hard to suppress.
China’s Zhejiang Province, where Zhaiqiao sits, is an epicentre of factories that make clothes, shoes, lighters and other cheap goods for export to the West. The billions of dollars that flow each year from that manufacturing boom have filled the roads south of Shanghai with Mercedes sedans and sprinkled towering homes in the middle of impoverished villages.
The flood of cash, however, hasn’t brought a corresponding rise in civil liberties. While the state allows the election of local village heads, like Qian Yunhui, it does not tolerate challenges to its political or financial decisions. In Qian’s case, his efforts only got him arrested, imprisoned twice and, locals say, murdered. “He went to Beijing (to lodge formal complaints) only after he petitioned at every local level,” said his 31-year-old son, Qian Chengxu. “It was all useless.” Whatever the cause of Qian Yunhui’s demise, this much is clear — he was not afraid to stir up trouble. He said publicly that village leaders had signed over their mountain plot for a power plant in 2004 only after police detained them at a hotel for a week until they agreed. That same year, Qian helped lead hundreds of villagers to protest the property deal in the nearby town of Yueqing, which oversees Zhaiqiao. That earned him an 18-month prison term after a Yueqing court convicted him of intent to “make disturbances and provoke incidents.”
The sentence was suspended, apparently on the condition that he keep quiet. Instead, Qian ran for and was elected village leader in 2005 and kept complaining about what he described as an illegal land grab. The local security bureau appealed for help to the court, which dusted off the 2004 conviction and sent Qian to prison for eight months in 2006, according to a case summary provided by Yueqing officials.
By 2008, his role as village leader was no longer officially recognised, but Qian was re-elected anyway and renewed his campaign against plans for the power plant. Court records show he was sent back to prison in 2008 on a new charge of land fraud, though government documents given to McClatchy didn’t fully explain the charges.
Qian was released in July, the same month that the provincial government announced the power plant officially had been put into operation. Qian was not deterred — he continued writing letters to officials alleging corruption and organising locals.
The leadership in Yueqing maintains that villagers in Zhaiqiao were simply trying to renege on their agreement to sell the mountain plot and other pieces of land. The villagers, according to a release from Yueqing’s government, were given about $5.7 million but kept demanding more and more cash.
While residents of Zhaiqiao say they never received the $5.7 million, the Yueqing government contends the money was put in a special account and that village leaders decided not to disburse it. In the days after Qian’s death, grisly photographs and videos showing his bloody remains spread across the Internet. His name became a national symbol for frustration with the country’s widespread corruption.
On Jan. 1, hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police down the road from Zhaiqiao. Video footage from the standoff shows protesters lobbing rocks and the police charging into the crowd behind riot shields.
The government said it would allow a combination of lawyers, Internet activists and rural experts to investigate the matter. By the time those gestures were made, the state had snipped away any loose ends that might contradict the official narrative. Qian’s body was taken away before an autopsy could be performed.
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
