I haven’t been following this story closely at all, so I was surprised to see over the last couple days a full-blown revolt against local government develop in Wukan, a town of ~20 000 people outside of Lufeng in Guangdong province. Apparently in response to the ongoing enclosures of communal lands for sale to developers, the people have been mounting protest actions against local government officials for months. Heavy-handed government response, including the apparent murder of a town representative, Xue Jinbo, has escalated the situation into violence over the last week or so. The people have now driven off the local officials, police, and paramilitaries. The police have barricaded the town and are refusing to allow food or water in. Residents say they have a 10 day supply of food, and are reportedly stockpiling spears. The people are appealing to Beijing for a resolution, there doesn’t seem to be any central response yet other than the usual censorship of mentions on Weibo and the like.
Fig 1. murdered representative Xue Jinbo, police barricade, people risin'
I. Background
Most people are probably aware that the real estate market in China has been pretty frothy for a while now- there’s been a lot of crowing in the Western media about Ordos, for instance, as an exemplar of China’s supposed Potemkin real estate economy. The wild increases in real estate values in major cities in China was big news a year or two ago, with some fairly crazy data coming in suggesting that real estate prices in places like Beijing had increased 800% or so over 6 years:
Fig 2. HOLY MOLY, lets demolish us some hutongs and build concrete boxes
As another example, a CASS economist, Yi Xianrong, estimated last year that there were approximately 64.5 million vacant residential properties in China from electricity consumption data, suggesting that much of this activity may have been speculative investment rather than actual owner occupation.
There seem to be a few different, overlapping structural reasons this occurred. I’m going to embarrass myself if I try to explain this with more than a gloss (hopefully dm can help out!!), but let me take a crack at it and maybe we can flesh it out some later. One is that there are relatively few good investments for Chinese households and businesses to make with their savings. My understanding is basically that because interest on savings is so low there’s a strong incentive, particularly for households, to park their savings in something like a Beijing condo that’s going to quadruple in price over a couple of years. Another reason is that indebted local governments are heavily dependent on enclosures and sales to developers for operating funds and debt servicing. This problem has been exacerbated for rural municipalities by the exemption of farmers from agricultural taxes in 2006. Residential property aside, there’s also been a major push since the 2008 crash for big fixed investment projects as stimulus, which has also contributed to the property boom. Michael Pettis at Tsinghua has been talking about some crazy shit I don’t understand but enjoy reading anyway, suggesting that these things are symptoms of structural problems with the Chinese growth model, which is heavily dependent on (he says) unsustainable debt loads, fixed investment, and transfers from the household sector to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and other businesses.
This has, all told, created a situation where a decent sized piece of communal land in a sleepy town looks pretty juicy to bought-off local officials, who are quite happy to tell the peasants to fuck off and grow turnips elsewhere and hand the plot over to a wealthy coastal developer, which has been going on all over the country and seems to be more or less what’s happened in Wukan.
II. The Events
Enclosures have apparently been happening in the area of Lufeng for several years, and petitions by farmers to have their land restored have fallen on deaf ears. Mounting discontent over these grievances resulted in open protests this September, with hundreds taking to the streets in what became violent clashes with police deployed to quell the unrest. The people of Wukang responded to police violence and arrests of protestors by assaulting the police station and burning police cars. Police were subsequently withdrawn, and the situation was deescalated after Wukan people agreed to stop their actions in return for new elections as well as an Shanwei-municipal-government-appointed investigatory committee to examine their claims.
The town elections apparently ran smoothly and the 13 elected representatives were accepted by the people of Wukan. Five of these representatives were brazenly abducted by plainclothes police in broad daylight from a restaurant on Friday the 9th of December and taken into custody. One of these representatives, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody. The official cause of death has apparently yet to be determined, but it is widely believed he was beaten to death by police. Some of the other representatives were trotted out for cameras to make fairly obvious propaganda statements about how well they were being treated. One retweeted response from Wukan people:
Ruichao, Jiancheng, and Liehong have given us words with hidden meanings, and teach us that in a time of crisis you must be clever. Some of our Wukan heroes have been arrested and treated maliciously by the government; from their words we can tell that the government is treating them ‘specially’, and is also telling them to memorize lines but they have a secret understanding with us, they speak calmly. The clothes they’re wearing cover up the cuts and bruises all over their bodies.
The people of Wukan proceeded to literally chase government officials, police, and paramilitaries out of town, resulting in the siege-like situation we now have. Some pretty amazing (1.1gb!) video of these actions is available via Charlie Custer at Chinageeks (helps if you speak the 廣東話)here: http://chinageeks.org/wukan.wmv
Custer also cut up a shorter version:
Fig 3. Charlie Custer bein a cutie pie, Wuhan ppl owning
Wuhan is apparently now under direct control of the people, who have taken over governance functions since the uprising.
III. Implications
We should immediately start out by noting that this is in no way an uprising against the central government and is very unlikely to turn into anything like that. Although it’s true that “good emperor misled by corrupt officials” has been a cover under which revolutionaries have operated in China for millennia, I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing here. That said, this is a massive, massive fuckup for the Guangdong cadres. It’s probably the biggest, most open, most successful expression of dissent since the 2009 riots in Xinjiang, but practically next door to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and there are no Muslims to blame for it. This is a very clear, open message from ordinary Han that their government has utterly failed them. The 18th Party Congress is coming up in 2012, which will see the transition from the 4th to the 5th generation of CCP leadership, and this looks just fucking awful for Wang Yang, Guangdong party chief and rising CCP star. I’m not sure how significant Wukan will be in the long term for the 18th Congress, but I think that if this kind of thing continues to happen it’s possible that the coastal cadres, particularly those who are themselves developers or in bed with the real estate oligarchs, will be marginalised.
A bit more broadly, Beijing can’t be happy about this, as they’ve been trying to crack down on official corruption and to wean municipalities off dirty land deals for a couple of years now. It’s been pretty clear that those activities have been proceeding apace but they’ve been kind of keeping a lid on it. This makes it entirely clear that Beijing either tacitly approves of this kind of enclosure (so long as it keeps the plates spinning and the little people can be kept down), or doesn’t have as much control over the provinces as it would like (which is almost certainly true but this makes it insultingly obvious). Beijing doesn’t seem to be doing much for now, censorship and the like, but they’ve apparently been making noises about investigating Wukan officials for misconduct. It will be interesting to compare the response to Wukan to that of the Uyghur riots in 2009. In the wake of those riots, one of Hu’s protégés, Wang Lequan, was removed from his post as head of the CCP for Xinjiang and recalled to Beijing (the Xinjiang PSB head as well as the CCP chief for Urumqi were also sacked). Beijing hasn’t been too happy about Wang Yang lately, so they’re likely to use this to weaken him politically, but it’s not clear to me how badly it’ll affect him in the short term. Beyond that, I think the ease with which Wukan disposed of its local cadres and police and began self-governance has probably caused a few soiled trousers in the CCP. It’ll be interesting to see how they try to accommodate the demands of farmers and households for a just land policy, and if they’re able to do so without taking their GDP engine off the rails.
Edited by discipline ()
i agree with you that this is how neoliberalism operates, and that neoliberalism is what gave rise to the structural pressures i outlined above which in turn shape the specific form that this enclosure takes. thinking about your comment more carefully for a while i realised that i didn't actually connect these kind of enclosures to the more general phenomenon of enclosure, which of course gave rise to the preconditions for capitalism. i think a 15th century english peasant or an 18th century scottish highlander would recognise exactly the form and intent of the land grab in Wukan.
it's actually pretty crazy watching this kind of stuff happen in China because there isn't any legal mumbo jumbo to justify it. i mean there's literally no provision for individual freehold property in Chinese law so it cuts away a lot of the bullshit that was used to justify European enclosures. it's straight up primitive accumulation, Proudhon in action- property is literally theft, a morally and intellectually bankrupt concept which can do nothing but impoverish the many and enrich the few.
as far as how the people are making a living, i'm not too sure, i'll try to dig up some stats. a significant proportion of them must be farming the affected land though, as the slogans used in the protests were mostly demands to be allowed to resume farming the land. i haven't spent much time in Guangdong outside of HK, but generally speaking it's really tough for rural Chinese to make a living as a smallholder farmer. many or most of them supplement w/ household economy-type activities as well as formal and informal labour elsewhere. probably part of why this is flaring up so badly now is that there are increasingly pressures on that kind of tradeoff. the real estate bubble is starting to deflate so they likely know that even if they do eventually get compensated for the land it won't be much, and at the same time you have a manufacturing slump so it's tougher to get work in the SEZs or wherever (tho a lot of the older men wouldn't get that kind of job even if they wanted htem, they prefer teenage girls)
The Post-Mao Chinese Left: Navigating the Recent Debates
July 16, 2011
By Zhun Xu. Guest contributor, Sanhati. The author is a member of the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
This year saw an unprecedented rise in political fights among the Chinese leftists. An outside observer might surprisingly discover such big differences on the “left” when all of the major leftist online forums began publishing harsh political polemics from opposing camps. Various issues are discussed, but the practical political stake is whether the left should be a political ally of the current CCP leadership or not, i.e. political program of a united leftist camp. One group, which mostly posts on one of the largest online leftist forum in China (Utopia, or wu you zhi xiang), has been a long supporter of the government and tries to consolidate the leftists under its pro-CCP flag and advocate reforms under current regime to “restore socialism”; while other groups, mostly publishing on relatively smaller online forums, take a different stance and argue that socialism cannot be built under the current capitalist state. The pro-CCP people accused other groups as “extremists”, and their opponents also called them “reactionary and opportunist”.
Who are our friends and who are our enemies? This is the most fundamental question for any political program. There has always been huge difference in the answers to this question among the Chinese left.
Some people argue that although China became largely a capitalist society and the class conflict between the workers and the new rich people including the CCP cadres and compradors, the major contradiction is between the Chinese as a people and “imperialist power” like the US.
Zhang Hongliang, a famous political writer on the internet and professor at Minzu University of China, is often times regarded as the spiritual leader of this camp. In Zhang’s articles, class conflict is always important, but racial conflict is more vital for him. It is unpleasant to find many reactionary ideas in Zhang’s writings, for example, Zhang repeatedly claimed that the Anglo-Saxon people (that is their preferred word to describe imperialists) have the huge genocide plan of killing Chinese people. In his own words: “racial conflict has changed class conflict fundamentally, nowadays class struggle is not about who controls the state anymore, rather it is on whether China is going to be destroyed (by Anglo-Saxon people and its allies). The solution to the danger of “genocide”, according to Zhang Hongliang, is to wholeheartedly embrace the government and defeat both the “imperialists and its allies” and the “left extremists”.
Other people presented the same perspective as Zhang’s. Kong Qingdong, professor at Beijing University, made the claim that those who want to overthrow the current regime by revolution are crazy “fundamentalist Marxists”, and there is no difference between them and imperialists together with their Chinese allies.
Zhang and others’ writings are popular among younger readers, including left-leaning students and nationalists. Although most of them repeatedly claim that they are Maoist communists, they do not really use Marxist analysis. They would like to throw out concepts like “class struggle”, “imperialist” etc, but as we have seen, their real message is a nationalist one, even with some Nazi flavors.
Others in this camp do not necessarily have the same ideas as Zhang or Kong, but they all seem to agree that given the existence of imperialists and their compradors, “save the Party” is more or less identical to “defend our country”. Therefore, they tend to believe that the ruling class in China is ultimately their friend while anyone opposing to the ruling class must be their enemy. In order to reconcile this view with the clear neo-liberal turn in the last three decades, they argue that while it is true that China has been going down a capitalist path, this is only because the anti-Mao faction held power and chose the way of capitalism, as long as the true “socialists” in the Party got power, China could be taking a totally different route!
The other camp had quite different perspectives on the nature of the Chinese society and the major enemy of the left. Although it is still difficult to generalize their politics, they view class conflict between workers and capitalists as the most important issue. Instead of dividing the Party leaders into the pro-socialism faction and pro-capitalism faction, they tend to treat them both as political representatives of the bourgeoisie and they just have different attitudes on how to build capitalism (and their family wealth) safely. Therefore, it does not make sense for Marxists to become allies of the government to fight against “imperialism”. In fact, both the domestic bourgeoisie and the imperialists should be our enemies.
Clearly, the two camps have opposite views on China from the very beginning, but why did they stay at relative peace previously and suddenly began to fight each other? Some historical background and current context should be discussed to help us answer this question.
It would be unimaginable for such a debate to take place in China for most of the recent 30 years. After Mao died in 1976, the communist party leadership quickly cleaned out all the leftists from the central committee and began taking a long but steady transition to capitalism as we can see now. Why the CCP changed its mission is another question which has been discussed elsewhere.
To accompany this transition, the previous revolutionary period was demonized as much as possible and “to be rich is glorious” became the official ideology. The “old” revolution doctrines were considered to become outdated or extremist or even “reactionary” for China’s enlightenment/development.
Plus, in a short period, the unleashed market brought some positive changes to the life of Chinese people while some key elements of socialism were maintained, like nearly full employment. Therefore, the intellectuals as well as many working class people believed the “reform” was the way to go. The major contradiction of China, at that time, was believed to be the pure conflict of the old regime and reform.
Of course, everything changed when the economic reform reached much difficulty in the late 1980s. Huge inflation unprecedented to Socialist China greatly affected people’s life, no need to mention that the increasing income polarization and huge corruption always came hand in hand with marketization. People became more and more suspicious about the ongoing reform and the CCP itself, which, combined with other political factors, led to the nationwide political demonstrations in 1989 which also happened in other Soviet countries. The difference was that in China the movement was soon defeated by the military force. This brought an end to the chaotic 1980s.
Although the 1989 movement itself was due to many negative outcomes of the neo-liberal turn of the CCP, there were no real self-conscious leftists by that time and no Marxist solution was provided. Instead, the vision from the petty bourgeois leaders of the movement was neo-liberal capitalism, not much different from the CCP itself in essence. Indeed, after a short 3-year break, in 1992 CCP began to officially embrace “market economy”, and the shift to capitalism was accelerated greatly. It was from here that political oppositions to the current neo-liberal model began to emerge.
Many Chinese intellectuals referred to the 1980s as their good old time since that was the only decade when most Chinese intellectuals seemed to have a consensus, clearly a right wing one. It was not the case anymore since the 1990s, when some people began to re-evaluate the transition to capitalism and re-appreciate the importance of the socialist period from 1949 to 1979. These people were not alone. The whole society was going through a thorough structural adjustment and workers and peasants bore all the costs. In the urban sector, millions lost their lifetime jobs because of the privatization and the working class began their nationwide struggles since then. These depressed, extremely exploited people still remembered clearly their good days under a socialist society, so they had nothing but socialism as their goal. In the countryside, the tension between peasants and state was palpable because of the stagnant revenue in face of increasing expenses and corrupted, sometimes violent local bureaucracy. The long process of fighting the neo-liberal turn to capitalism gave birth to the post-Mao Chinese left inside workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie (including intelligentsia). The late goodbye to the “golden” 1980s actually announced a new era of modern China’s political history.
There are, broadly speaking, three most important sources of leftists in today’s China. They share some of their politics, but still differ on a number of ones.
The first group was the veteran of the Chinese Revolution in the last century. Many of them experienced civil war, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution and maybe once supported the neo-liberal transition, but gradually began to stand against it. Although they are not part of the ruling class because of their politics, they still have relatively closer relationship with the CCP than others.
The veterans share socialism as their goal although their interpretations might be very different (from Soviet model to more radical versions). They also have complicated attitudes towards the CCP, on the one hand, they dislike the political program of the current regime, on the other hand, it was once a revolutionary party that they joined for the good of the people. So within the group there are divergent opinions, some try to believe that CCP can be steered towards socialism again (if the top leaders change minds, for example), and the rest gradually lean towards the idea that a thorough reform or revolution is needed to build socialism.
The second group came from the intellectual/petty bourgeoisie. They were part of the privileged people in the 1980s when the CCP tried to build a political coalition with them in order to isolate workers and peasants. However, with the good 1980s gone, petty bourgeoisie’s political weight decreased gradually because the CCP has already defeated the workers and peasants. The deepening of marketization and privatization has made them the new victims.
The intellectual/petty bourgeoisie group does not have a general political goal; often times their politics is a combination of several distinct elements, including the “new left” tradition from the west, nationalist sentiment and some parts of the Chinese revolutionary tradition from the Mao era. Radicalized ones tend to work with workers and other leftists to build future revolutionary path to socialism, while more liberal people prefer some sort of social democracy/regulated capitalism and put their hope in the peaceful changes from above.
The last group has its roots in workers, including the ones who had experiences under socialist period and the ones who became workers in more recent time. Workers have a natural tendency to be hostile to capitalism, in particular, the Chinese workers suffered greatly during the transition to capitalism; but they as a class did not become conscious until the nationwide layoff in the 1990s. The older generation saw the huge contrast between the Mao era and the current era, so they had very strong will to rebuild socialism in China; the younger generation only has experiences under capitalism, and generally they were not as politically sophisticated and organized as the older ones, but the severe exploitation by the new capitalist class make them resent the current regime.
In general, the workers, especially the old generation, are the most revolutionary ones in that they have nothing to lose in abolishing the current regime. Unlike the other two groups, they do not have any more hope in the ruling class as they have been hopelessly waiting for a “left turn” in recent two decades.
Therefore, the post-Mao left gradually formed two major camps as we have introduced at the beginning, differing on the nature of the CCP and means to achieve a better society. The radicalized parts of veterans and petty bourgeoisie joined the workers on overthrowing the current regime and constructing socialism (but not rejecting possible progressive reforms), while the more conservative parts of them gather around the goal of progressive reform (and exclusively reforms) under the current regime. The conflict has been there for a long while, but since the post-Mao left is relatively young and weak in various aspects and the dominant right-wing has been always very hostile towards any dissent, the two camps mostly worked together on the issues they share the same opinions, for example, they both oppose neo-liberalism and imperialism. Moreover, Mao is the flag held by all camps. As a side-note, although Mao has been demonized for so many years, his reputation remains extremely high among people, and increasingly so. In my experience, it is very rare nowadays to find an active Chinese leftist who is not a self-claimed Maoist, although the term “Maoist” might refer to different meanings.
This harmony between the “reform” camp and “revolution” camp could be maintained solely on the basis that the power of the left wing remains weak and the ruling class kept playing hardball with working class people. However, in recent years, the situation dramatically changed. First, a new wave of labor movement together with the world economic crisis greatly terrified the capitalists and the cadres, who are forced to begin changing their strategies to maintain order. The growing mass actions against the local government also manifest Chinese people’s huge resentment towards the current capitalist regime.
Second, as the contradiction of neo-liberalism unravels, lots of former middle or right-wing white collar/petty bourgeoisie people began joining the left wing. This significantly increases the impact of the left.
Not surprisingly, there arise politicians who deliberately behave more “left” than others. The most notable example is Bo Xilai, son of one of the former leaders of the CCP and currently the party leader of Chongqing Municipality, who started the huge campaign called “Praise Red & Destroy Black (chang hong da hei)” in recent years. The essence of the campaign is to destroy the gangs and maintain a good social order (destroy black) and educate people with so-called “red songs/books” which includes both revolutionary legacies and other purely old songs (praise red).
Bo, a charismatic cadre, likes to quote from Mao in his speeches and talk with passion and candidness like a revolutionary leader in those good old days. His programs and talks are well received among people and it is not very unrealistic to assume that he could easily win a national election if there is one. As a matter of fact, Bo’s program is a clearly capitalist one; there is nothing changed in the economic model, they embrace sweatshops and big capital just like other places do. The improvements like providing low-rent public housing and a safer society are pretty limited. Bo is definitely not building socialism (besides his lip service), although a good number of leftists try to convince themselves that he is the one (or one of the ones).
All these new factors contribute to the end of the harmony. Lots of signs suggest that left wing now has more say in the politics and even some of the high level cadres began to send a “leftist” message to people. This inevitably reinforces the confidence of “reform” camp in restoring socialism via the CCP as if the party is a neutral vehicle which can be turning left or right depending on the leaders. They began praising Bo Xilai and others as true socialist leaders who inherit the legacy of Mao and follow the revolutionary tradition. However, the other camp points out that the “left turn” is both very limited in its scope and opportunistic in its practice, and they find it unacceptable to be a political instrument of the ruling class. Thus it is only a matter of time for the fights between the two camps to start.
Based on this context, the internal struggles among the Chinese left are nothing but the natural results of the development of the left and the decline of the neo-liberalism. Its implications are twofold. First, it implies the leftist impact in China has reached a new high level due to the people’s continuing struggles against capitalism, and even part of the ruling class begin to “turn left” on purpose. Second, the left wing is now facing a historical moment; if the “reform” camp wins, the Chinese left wing will become a political partner of the CCP and cease to be a revolutionary force; but if the “revolution” camp successfully radicalizes the left wing, then the Chinese left should be able to play an important role in binging an end to neo-liberalism and capitalism in general in China and the world.
Some factors are likely to have significant impacts on the “choice”. First, is a Chinese version of welfare state possible in the near future? In other words, is the Chinese bourgeoisie willing and able to give up some of their privileges and redistribute part of their profits and rents to the working class? Second, is the Chinese left able to figure out new ways to mobilize and organize the mass as the early CCP cadres successfully did 80 years ago? My answers to these two questions are no and yes, but of course only time and practice can tell the results.
DRUXXX posted:
And people that this happens to who don't live in Guangdong would have to moves long distances to even get to an SEZ, right?
yeah, if you get kicked off your land and you've gotta go work a factory job somewhere and you're not anywhere near the coast, you're probably not going to be going back home anytime soon. that said i really don't know anything about the distribution of remaining communal farmland in China or the extent to which it's being enclosed in various places. if i had to take a guess, my feeling would be that this is more of a problem in the south, if only because the land is much more valuable on the south/southeast coast than elsewhere. i also have the impression that much of the north, to the extent that smallholders are working the land, they're doing it as individual freeholders on the western model and are hiring their labour and stuff.
this reminds me of another thing Custer did which might be of interest to yall, about a village in the Northeast:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/chinageeks/videos/1/
(if anyone knows how to embed that pls lmk)
gyrofry posted:
I recently ran across this article on The Internet and it seems like this might be a good thread for it
http://sanhati.com/excerpted/3894/
this is good & super relevant. i'm usually a little suspicious of expat takes on Chinese politics but from this guy's CV it looks like he left in 2007 so he's got a recent view and it rings true. also he's working on stuff that would be awesome to talk about in this thread (decollectivisation, political economy of agrarian change) but none of it's published and i dunno how to get econ working papers :/
one thing that i find fascinating is the relationship between Han identity and the state. in "The Art of Not Being Governed" James Scott points out that historically "Han" basically meant "pays taxes to the state"- rebellious people outside the current borders of the dynasty of the day would usually get some ethnonym, but as soon as they were incorporated as subjects, they became Han. so Han identity is sort of inseparable from nationalism/state identity and more recently party loyalty.
it seems as if the village-communal structure is rejecting the bigger fish of capitualized land-brokerage from the nuvobujwah-z, whom have split into abstract schools of ideology, from the filial material maintaninence of an ancestral shrine, or symbolic anchoring in past tradition, which really embodies everything chinese outside of stuffwith thmen china stickurz. as outside speculation is rude i should refrain from inferentially narrating akira kurosawa plotline into this noble thread.
, but the unfolding seems so heartless in narrative hindsight 
. this piece separates the other culture to the point of suggesting a parallel analysis which i think might be more rail than sandbox in terms of a self-empowered people with great heritage. any incursion or intervention on behalf of any outside means is bound to appear as a cultural slight, and the source of mischief can be traced by counting the times a flat stone skips when tossed across the yangtze.
i can only visualize the concept of a flat stone or the geographic logistics, but this shit is wack. what would buddha do?
shennong posted:
The Art of Not Being Governed"
been reading as much of this as i can find online since you mentioned it and i gotta say: great book! thanks!
anistorian posted:
this piece separates the other culture to the point of suggesting a parallel analysis which i think might be more rail than sandbox in terms of a self-empowered people with great heritage.
just to riff on this a bit, one thing that i love about looking at events like this is seeing the echoes from millenia ago. like peasant radicals in the warring states period were making the same demands and doing basically the same things (kicking out the officials & local warlord's levies, stockpiling food and spears, forming local councils and governance structures) Wukan people are
shennong posted:anistorian posted:
this piece separates the other culture to the point of suggesting a parallel analysis which i think might be more rail than sandbox in terms of a self-empowered people with great heritage.just to riff on this a bit, one thing that i love about looking at events like this is seeing the echoes from millenia ago. like peasant radicals in the warring states period were making the same demands and doing basically the same things (kicking out the officials & local warlord's levies, stockpiling food and spears, forming local councils and governance structures) Wukan people are
ya that stuff owns
shennong posted:
this is good & super relevant. i'm usually a little suspicious of expat takes on Chinese politics but from this guy's CV it looks like he left in 2007 so he's got a recent view and it rings true. also he's working on stuff that would be awesome to talk about in this thread (decollectivisation, political economy of agrarian change) but none of it's published and i dunno how to get econ working papers :/
You should email him
telegraph posted:
Chief village representative Lin Zuluan emerged from two hours of talks with the first high-ranking Chinese government official to intervene in the three-month long open revolt.
In a humbling rebuff of his administration’s authority, Guangdong provincial deputy-Communist Party Secretary Zhu Mingguo agreed to a series of demands, said Lin, starting with the release of the villagers.
“The three will be released one after another today and tomorrow,” Mr Lin announced to residents.
Mr Zhu also agreed to release “in due course” the body of Xue Jinbo, the protest leader allegedly beaten to death in police custody nearly two weeks ago, Mr Lin said.
Mr Lin did not say when the body of he 42-year old father of three would be released — police claim he died of a “sudden illness” but his family allege he was beaten to death.
But he said deputy-secretary Zhu had agreed to launch a full reinvestigation into the death, with Mr Xue’s family closely involved.
And he said the authorities have agreed to legitimise the status of the 12-strong temporary village representatives, led by Lin and Yang Semao, until later agreed elections.
“We went with three demands and they met them all,” said Mr Lin.
A government working group is to be allowed to enter the village and investigate the land grabs from peasants by local officials who were – along with the police – kicked out of the village during the rebellion.
Mr Lin says he believes the authorities will keep their word to avoid more unrest.
“Zhu and other officials stressed over and over again they would not come in the village and arrest people,” he said.
To the relief of the authorities, a planned protest march on the local administrative town of Lufeng to brazenly confront officials and demand Xue’s body for burial has been called off indefinitely.
“We’ll protest again if f the government doesn’t meet its commitments,” village representative Yang warned.
Unrest is spreading in the wealthy southern boom province of Guangdong, with two reported deaths on Wednesday during riots in the nearby town of Haimen, situated 75 miles from Wukan.
There, residents fearing for their health because of planned coal-fired power plant clashed with security forced after storming government offices.
Officials have denied any deaths but more unconfirmed reports emerged last night of further protests, with thousands of people blocking a motorway.
Though unrelated to the revolt in Wukan, Haimen residents told Hong Kong reporters they had been following the villagers’ resistance closely.
After a rally informing the residents of the unique bluff calling, Wukan village chief Yang told The Daily Telegraph the government’s compromise was a “temporary victory” for the community.
“The real victory lies ahead. When we can elect our own leader and when we get back all the land the government sold too cheaply, and trace all the money the officials have embezzled and hand it back to the villagers, that will be a victory,” he said.
“I think people can see the miracle of democracy will happen in Wukan,” Yang said.
this looks like a pretty decent resolution to a potentially violent standoff that largely saves face for the party and leaves Wukan in a relatively strong position going forward. we can be pretty much guaranteed that the Guangdong cadres will do everything possible to undermine that position, as they really need to send a "Do Not Do This" message to surrounding areas in order to tamp down imitators. Wukan's local leadership, backed by the masses in the town, have really done a good job here- we'll see how they fare going forward, fingers crossed.
Crow posted:shennong posted:
this is good & super relevant. i'm usually a little suspicious of expat takes on Chinese politics but from this guy's CV it looks like he left in 2007 so he's got a recent view and it rings true. also he's working on stuff that would be awesome to talk about in this thread (decollectivisation, political economy of agrarian change) but none of it's published and i dunno how to get econ working papers :/You should email him
tsk aiya i didn't even think of that. man im dumb.
the easiest thing to get out of the way is that real estate developers are real estate developers. what they do is simply what they are. that said, the land tenure system and the way the financing is arranged are really significant details though.
shennong posted:
There seem to be a few different, overlapping structural reasons this occurred. I’m going to embarrass myself if I try to explain this with more than a gloss (hopefully dm can help out!!), but let me take a crack at it and maybe we can flesh it out some later. One is that there are relatively few good investments for Chinese households and businesses to make with their savings. My understanding is basically that because interest on savings is so low there’s a strong incentive, particularly for households, to park their savings in something like a Beijing condo that’s going to quadruple in price over a couple of years. Another reason is that indebted local governments are heavily dependent on enclosures and sales to developers for operating funds and debt servicing. This problem has been exacerbated for rural municipalities by the exemption of farmers from agricultural taxes in 2006. Residential property aside, there’s also been a major push since the 2008 crash for big fixed investment projects as stimulus, which has also contributed to the property boom. Michael Pettis at Tsinghua has been talking about some crazy shit I don’t understand but enjoy reading anyway, suggesting that these things are symptoms of structural problems with the Chinese growth model, which is heavily dependent on (he says) unsustainable debt loads, fixed investment, and transfers from the household sector to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and other businesses.
those two factors are interrelated. public infrastructure investment (esp. transportation) can increase the value of the surrounding land if it isn't taxed or otherwise managed. afaik, China has a land tenure system where you pay a fee and you get a title to the land for 70 years.
the weird stuff comes in when you get people borrowing money to buy the land to turn around and sell it for a speculative gain. if the local governments give you a title to the land for 70 years, you might be able to re-sell that use of that land (i.e someone pays you to build something on it) for more than the fee, at which point you can pay back the borrowed money and keep something for yourself. what you can get if your bet plays out is: change in price/interest rate. notice that this means that the lower the interest rate, the higher the multiple. this is what's so amazing about fictitious capital (M-M').
but yeah, you can see how easy it is to get the real estate developers, local government officials, etc. all in on that. this is obviously a very sensible response
(1) Wang Yang is savvy. Beijing never had to get involved, Wukan people have been praising the provincial party for their soft touch, and Wang is now crowing:
WangYang posted:
"Zhu Mingguo leading a delegation into Wukan village was not only meant to solve problems in the village, but also to set a reference standard to reform village governance across Guangdong."
I believe that a few of the Wukan officials will probably recieve some punishment, but that's probably as high as it will go- it's very unlikely at this point that we'll see the kind of party shakeups that we saw in the wake of the 2009 Uyghur uprising. Wang's positioned himself brilliantly for the 2012 party congress as a liberal reformer who can deal with major unrest in a constructive, peaceful way.
(2) My comparison to the 2009 Uyghur riots was probably not useful. This was driven home for me by reports of ongoing violence in Xinjiang. Although some of the issues are the same (land appropriation, difficulty in finding employment), the ethno-religious divide makes it a different kind of conflict. It's interesting to note that the violence is primarily confined to Uyghurs in Western and Southern Xinjiang, where Han settlement has been relatively sparse. Han-speaking, sinicised Uyghurs in Urumqi (East-central Xinjiang) don't wear their traditional, ornate knives, speak Chinese, etc. For Uyghurs in Kashgar (West), a ban on their knives is a serious insult.
(3) Han Han, probably the most popular blogger in China, wrote a series of posts following the Wukan incident which are worth reading in their entirety. Han Han's popularity has been partly a result of his biting sarcasm and vicious tone toward the Chinese establishment. These posts are quite revealing of the general tone among the Chinese "culturati" (as Han Han refers to them). They're worth reading in full if you're interested in this kind of thing, but here's an excerpt I found interesting:
HanHan posted:
First of all, as a member of the culturati, I ask to be able to write more freely in the new year. I have not said this as XX freedom or YY freedom, because those two terms may make you subconsciously afraid and wary. Even though those freedoms are guaranteed under the constitution, they have not been implemented. At the same time, I ask on behalf of my colleagues -- media workers also need some freedom of press. The press has been strictly controlled. Also there are my friends in the film industry. You cannot understand their pain and sorrow. Everybody is conducting cultural activities like as if they are stepping through a minefield. If they step on a mine, they are blown to pieces; if they want to avoid the mines, they have to tread slowly and indirectly.
...
But the times have changed. Modern information communication has rendered censorship useless. The restriction on cultural activities makes it impossible for China to influence literature and cinema on a global basis or for us culturati to raise our heads up proud. At the same time, China does not have any media with global influence. Many things just cannot be bought with money. Cultural prosperity is actually the least costly to attain. The lesser the restrictions, the great the prosperity. But if you insist that there are no restrictions on cultural activities in China, you are being disingenuous. In the new year, I earnestly ask the authorities to be let culture, publishing, press and cinema be freer.
If this can be done, then I personally make these promises in the freer cultural environment: I will not try to settle old scores; I will look ahead; I will not discuss the sensitive issues in history; I will not discuss or criticize the senior-level groups or their families and their relevant interests; I will only criticize and comment on current social issues. It would be better for all if the culturati and the authorities can both take a step back and observe a pre-determined bottom line in order to create more space.
But if things do not improve in two or three years, I will personally attend or stand outside the annual Writers Association and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles meetings to protest. This effort may be like an ant trying to rock a tree, but this is what I can do. Of course, I will go alone and I will not incite my readers. I will not exploit others to pad up my resumé. At the same time, I believe in the character of our generation and therefore I believe that these freedoms will arrive sooner or later. I am only hoping that they will arrive sooner. I believe that I can write even better. I don't want to wait until I am old, so please let me be there in time.
Han Han also trots out the "suzhi" argument (effectively: the quality of the citizenry is too poor for democratic practices) which is discussed by Charlie Custer here.
(4) The Wukan incident has highlighted the model of Chinese governance, with some referring to it as "adaptive authoritarianism". This has, perhaps more descriptively, also been referred to as "consultative Leninism". Tsang in the linked paper sums this up:
SteveTsang posted:
Consultative Leninism has five defining characteristics:
-an obsessive focus upon staying in power;
-continuous governance reform designed to pre-empt public demands for democratization;
-sustained efforts to enhance the Party's capacity to elicit, respond to and direct changing public opinion;
-pragmatism in economic and financial management; and
-the promotion of nationalism in place of Communism.
I think this is a pretty interesting model to think about. My major question about it (assuming we accept it) is whether it's robust and resilient enough to deal with the ongoing crisis of global capitalism, as well as climate change. Can the system be reformed to some kind of sustainable status quo on the basis of national-pragmatic economic policy?
(5) Noone from Wukan has been overtly disciplined yet, although some speculate the hammer is still to come down.
Edited by shennong ()
To get to the really interesting thing I want to touch on, because of the unique function landed property serves as an equalizer of the rate of profit, a vestige of the aristocracy whom are not quite as vulnerable to the whims of the coercive laws of capital, the importance of land in creating spacial fixes for crisis and the unique properties of rent under capitalism (all of this is just a regurgitation of David Harvey btw) it seems that land speculation is a necessary phase in the neo-liberal effort to paint over the contradictions of capitalism that has happened in every capitalist system at around the same time even though Japan, China, the EU, America, etc on the surface have very different versions of capitalism.
This doesn't mean the end of capitalism, crisis are necessary to temporarily fix the contradiction between value and exchange value, but it could very well mean the end of the world. China and the USA are both going to be looking to devalue the massive fictitious capital they have accumulated, and as far as I know historically there's only been one way to do that and it's war.
babyhueypnewton posted:
To get to the really interesting thing I want to touch on, because of the unique function landed property serves as an equalizer of the rate of profit, a vestige of the aristocracy whom are not quite as vulnerable to the whims of the coercive laws of capital, the importance of land in creating spacial fixes for crisis and the unique properties of rent under capitalism (all of this is just a regurgitation of David Harvey btw)
its time for ignorant shennong questions!! can you elaborate on this a bit? isn't the kind of investment that's going on here (eg purchase of property rights and building of condo/office buildings) fixed capital investment which impairs capital mobility and therefore profit-rate-equalisation?
babyhueypnewton posted:
This doesn't mean the end of capitalism, crisis are necessary to temporarily fix the contradiction between value and exchange value, but it could very well mean the end of the world. China and the USA are both going to be looking to devalue the massive fictitious capital they have accumulated, and as far as I know historically there's only been one way to do that and it's war.
i'm not sure if i follow this, if the capital stock is fictitious can't it be arbitrarily revalued by changing the nominal value of the capital stock and tossing a bunch of capitalists out on their asses?
shennong posted:
i'm not sure if i follow this, if the capital stock is fictitious can't it be arbitrarily revalued by changing the nominal value of the capital stock and tossing a bunch of capitalists out on their asses?
How do you propose tossing enough capitalists onto asses if not by having a bunch of them die
swampman posted:
the capital isn't "fictitious" to all the people who have it and live off of it. those people are going to fight to maintain their position. even if they don't fight personally, the people and groups holding a great deal of fictitious wealth usually have a lot in actual assets with which they can fund all sorts of belligerence. we have to feed them foreigners so they don't eat us you see...
this isn't reconcilable with what BHPN was talking about, though. the significant owners of fictitious capital in China are SOEs and CCP-connected private industry. BHPN was contending (i think) that the CCP recognises that fictitious capital in China is overvalued and therefore will need to pursue war in order to devalue it. this seems unlikely to me given that the CCP has a direct hand in the activities of most of the significant owners of this capital. it's seems more likely to me that those people would go-along-to-get-along with whatever arbitrary devaluations of that capital the CCP felt were necessary (it's not like they're going to lose their social status, although they might not be able to import as much fake italian furniture), rather than finance a war in order to destroy their own capital base
"In October 1919, he reorganized his political party, the Kuomintang, & was Communism's rival for power in China."
and it was sun yatsen.
but it made me all complainy because a tv game show question didn't grasp the full complicated early history of the nationalists and communists, who were actually in alliance and had crossover membership for this period.
shennong posted:
i'm not sure if i follow this, if the capital stock is fictitious can't it be arbitrarily revalued by changing the nominal value of the capital stock and tossing a bunch of capitalists out on their asses?
As he's taking his cue from Harvey I'm thinking what he means to say is that capital's solution to a crisis of accumulation (too much capital and no surplus value left to extract) is to destroy fixed capital and create opportunities for investment to begin again. Capital is thus a phoenix born from its own ashes which assumes the nationality of its most recent assailant.
It's not so accurate to say war is the only way to do this (witness the mass bulldozing of foreclosed homes in FL and CA) but such acts can only be perpetrated against those already disenfranchised. The point at which the imperative to destroy capital contradicts the imperative to win middle class votes is the point at which the war drum will start beating.
NounsareVerbs posted:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
I'm ira glass's irritating fey liberalism leading in to a somehow more irritating dude speaking. !! I'm the thing!!
