The tiny chinese village of wukan in Guangdong Province has gone from obscurity to public prominence in three months. More than 10,000 villagers who call wukan home embarked on a three-month long confrontation with the local government in september 2011, an event watched closely by the entire country. In the process, much public debate was stirred up, providing food for thought about how the country should be governed, most notably in rural areas.
　　According to observers, the major reason for the conflict was the election of the village head in February 2011, who led the newly elected villagers’ committee in their bid to sell wukan’s last piece of farmland of 404 mu (27 hectares) to real estate developers without informing the villagers.
　　The villagers appealed to higher authorities for intervention on september 21 and November 21, but received no reply, and peaceful protest became confrontation. The villagers blocked all the roads leading to the village to prevent police from entering. They even elected an “interim villagers’ council” to replace the previous villagers’committee to manage their own affairs, trying to reclaim the farmlands that were previously sold.
　　Change of attitude
　　“The interests conflicts between the government and local people is natural in Guangdong Province, a place widely regarded as china’s forerunner of reform and opening up where about 110 million people live, including a 30-40 million migrant population,” Ma licheng, a senior news commentator of People’s Daily told the Economic Observer. “The key is, what attitude the government should take in dealing with such events.”
　　According to Ma’s observation, after the protest took place in september, the local government adopted harsh measures to cool public sentiment, but this only led to greater resistance.
　　The intervention of the Provincial Government of Guangdong in December is widely regarded as a turning point of the protests. On December 20, the provincial government sent a work group headed by Zhu Mingguo, Deputy secretary of the Guangdong Provincial committee of the communist Party of china(cPc) to wukan to resolve the conflict.
　　“You can see the attitude of the work group in dealing with the confrontation, which is to-tally different from the previous attempts by the local authorities,” commented Ma, adding that the most prominent change was that the work group put people’s interests first and did not only focus on maintaining stability.
　　while meeting the villagers, Zhu stressed that their main requests were reasonable and their actions understandable. he also admitted that some local government officials had erred in the way they had handled things. On December 28, the work group also declared the villagers’ committee elected in early 2011 illegitimate. Xue chang, former secretary of the cPc wukan Branch who had led the villagers’ committee for 41 successive years, was detained and put under investigation. More importantly, villagers got their land back.
　　“This is a great change in dealing with mass disturbances, a more positive approach,” said Ma at a seminar on wukan affairs held on December 22 in Beijing.
　　Admin innovation
　　The wukan protest is only one of the thousands of similar events taking place in china every year. According to Ma, when such disturbances happened previously, they were usually dubbed as “manipulated by foreign forces,” “hostile forces” or “stirred up by media.” But this time, Zhu used no such terms during the investigation process. “This is an innovation in social administration in china,”said Ma.
　　wang Yang, secretary of the cPc Guangdong Provincial committee and top administrator of Guangdong, also had similar views.
　　“It [wukan protest] seemed to be accidental, but it is actually the natural result of local government neglecting the social contradictions during the long-term social and economic development,” said wang. he describes the current government administration as “strong in one aspect while weak in another,” referring to the fact that local government stresses too much on the economic development while neglecting people’s concerns during the process.
　　According to Zhang Tie, a People’s Daily news commentator, the local government failed to be aware of the outcome of their actions and respond properly to villagers’ reasonable appeals. “In dealing with problems related to people’s interests, the government should show enough respect to their demand,”said wu si, editor in chief of Yanhuang Chunqiu magazine, at a seminar held by the economic Observer.
　　A similar protest took place in the northeast coastal city of Dalian. In early August 2011, a strong typhoon destroyed the outer wall of a p-xylene project of a company in Dalian, directly threatening local residents’living environment. The incident also led to a demonstration of Dalian citizens. After communicating with the citizens and investigation, the Dalian Government believed that the project threatened people’s health and decided to move the project out of the city, thus ending a possible mass disturbance.
　　“Many mass [social] disturbances [in china] today originate from very simple causes and can be solved easily,” said Zhu, adding that the government should first listen to people’s requests before the conflicts between citizens and the government can be solved properly.
　　Talking equally
　　According to Ren Jiantao, Professor of Politics at school of International studies of Renmin University of china, governments should discard “rivalry ideology” while dealing with their conflicts with the people. “I see that the Guangdong Government did not regard the villagers as their rivals, but as a party they needed to communicate with equally,” said Ma. “This is a new approach for solving problems related to social administration.”
　　But “rivalry ideology” was the previous method adopted to resolve conflict, something shown during the process of shanwei city dealing with the wukan protests before the provincial government’s intervention. On December 9, 2011, nearly three months after the beginning of the conflict, the shanwei Government announced at a press conference that the public security departments had arrested those who led the protests and were making efforts to clamp down on “illegal organizations.” It also stated that it believed that the wukan protest was “promoted by foreign forces.”
　　This ideology was later replaced an approach of relating equally when the provincial government interfered. “This is an innovation in china’s social administration mode by putting people’s interests first,” remarked Ma, adding that the “rivalry ideology” can only sharpen conflicting opinions.