Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (12 page)

After the meeting, Zhang Guiyu’s widow, Wei Surong, collapsed on her bed and sobbed. Her husband had died for nothing, it seemed, and there was nowhere to appeal for justice. She was even forbidden to mention the frightful event. She cried because the ways of the world seemed so dark and inscrutable, and she felt she was about to go mad.

On May 7, nearly three months after the tragedy, a newspaper based in the provincial capital published a story on its sec-ond page, titled, “Village Chief’s Temper Flares Up; Four Villagers Lose Their Lives.” The article was published just when the procurator of the city of Bengbu, which had jurisdiction over the county, was just about to transfer the case to the municipal court, for public prosecution. The article was ingeniously worded to manipulate public opinion as to the nature of the incident, insinuating that it was the result of tempers getting out of hand rather than revenge against the peasant auditors.

It began with a carefully crafted background description: “The deputy village chief was offended by the extremist language of the villagers; supported by his sons he got into a fight with the latter, the incident ending in four deaths.”

The reader would easily come to the conclusion that the villagers’ extremist language had initially given offense, which led to the deputy chief’s explosion of anger, which led to the killings. According to this version of events, the villagers were the troublemakers and those who had been killed had brought about their own deaths.

But a careful reader could not help noticing the gaps between the lines: Since it was a “fight” between two groups, why was it that only people on the villagers’ side had died? And why did this deputy village chief want to fight the villagers to the death? What exactly was the “extremist language” used by the villagers? What were the words that infuriated the deputy village chief so that he went on a killing spree? The article did not

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answer any of these questions, perhaps it could not, or dared not, spell out the truth.

The article completely ignored the plain truth: that the villagers had demanded their democratic rights and refused to bear excessive financial burdens. These important facts were intentionally ignored, and therein lurks a conspiracy. Thus, a conflict that many Chinese would consider a life-and-death struggle between good and evil, civilization and barbarity, progress and regression was distorted into a fistfight in which some foul-mouthed village ruffians ended up dead, and deservedly so.

The people of Zhang Village were once more up in arms. They challenged the publisher of the newspaper: “This is a mat-ter of life and death! How dare you publish that trash without checking the facts!”

But, the editors countered, how could they check into every report that crossed their desks? They explained that they had followed the proper procedures, and that the report carried the official stamp of the public prosecutor’s office, which absolved them as editors from the necessity of checking the facts.

The situation was very clear. This atrocity took place in the spring of 1998—not, like the Ding Zuoming case, in 1993. In the meantime, the Party Central Committee had repeatedly issued documents forbidding exacerbating the peasants’ bur-den, and had spelled out the punishments to be meted out to violators of such orders: township Party and government officials would be disciplined if villages under their jurisdiction were overburdened, and the same up the ladder: the county’s Party and government officials must submit written self-criticism to their superiors. When the Anhui provincial authorities were informed of those harshly worded directives, they added a rule of their own to demonstrate their determination to implement the Party Central Committee’s orders: the Party and govern—

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ment authorities of the relevant cities and prefectures must also submit written self-criticism to them, their provincial superiors. The documents were timely and the spirit that they promoted was undoubtedly correct. The severe measures toward erring cadres were doubtless genuinely designed to protect the interests of the peasants. But can self-criticism really be counted on to

magically solve the problems of cadres at the grass roots?

Zhang Guiquan was not any ordinary deputy village chief of a village; he had become a village cadre while still a convicted criminal on probation. As serious as this was, he not only had increased the peasants’ burden but also had committed murder. The Party Central Committee had laid down clear guidelines: cases where peasants’ excessive burden led to one death or to more than six peasants’ complaining to higher authorities must be reported to the Party Central Committee. Zhang Guiquan and his sons had killed four people and wounded one—hair-raising atrocities. Should such crimes be reported, and if so, then how?

Neither in Guzhen County nor in Bengbu did the leadership want to face the situation squarely. They probably did not lack conscience, but the events were so sudden, so stark, that they were left with no wiggle room. The Ding Zuoming tragedy, which had so shaken the Party Central Committee, was still fresh in people’s minds. The kind of responsibility they bore and the kind of risk they ran in dealing with the current case were clear to all cadres. Obviously, none of them wanted to take responsibility or run any risk. How else can we explain all the strange happenings in the aftermath of the affair, much less explain why the loss of four lives—even those of mere peasants— was dealt with so off-handedly?

Of course the people who absolutely could not accept the situation were the families of the victims. Zhang Liang, Wei Surong, and several other family members of the victims

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plucked up their courage and once again went to the county authorities and had an audience with the county Party head. They dropped to their knees in front of the young Party head, sobbing out their grievances. When they mentioned that their loved ones were tragically killed in the course of checking the village finances, the Party head flew into a temper: “Who said it has anything to do with auditing? The whole county is going through auditing, how come only your people are killed and no one else?”

The family members were stunned, at a loss for words.

By the logic of this Party boss, a young girl who was raped and wanted justice could be told, “The world is full of beauti-ful young women; how come you and only you are raped?” Such “logic” is outrageous.

The arrests of Zhang Guiquan and his sons did in fact facilitate the auditing of the village finances, and many irregularities of the village’s cadres began to surface. Undoubtedly the problems in Zhang Village were not limited to Zhang Guiquan alone: the Party head, the village chief, and the accountant were all implicated. They had feared and opposed the auditing from the beginning. But the general auditing was ordered by the county, and the village auditing group was appointed and approved by the township. Much as they hated and feared the auditing and were on pins and needles all the time, they were not so stupid as to go on a killing spree. Fortunately for these village cadres who were all more or less compromised, they soon sensed that with the passing of time, the county and township leadership themselves had lost interest in the auditing and were trying all they could to gloss over the crimes of the Zhang father and sons. In this kind of atmosphere, the village cadres resumed their defiance as the auditing dragged on.

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When the auditing group discovered that in 1997 the peasants of Zhang Village had been overtaxed sixty jin of grain per person, which was obviously against Party policy, they put the case before the village Party boss, Zhang Dianfeng. Zhang, not at all disconcerted, took it all in stride. “Yes,” he said, with a grand manner, “it was by my order. I had my reasons for ordering the extra sixty jin per person. You need not concern yourself.” The auditing group also found out that four village cadres had stolen 2,600 yuan from the sale of village land and had divided it among themselves, and that the village Party boss, Zhang Dianfeng, had taken 6,000 yuan from the sale for himself. He blandly explained to the auditing group, “I know about this. This is called ‘compensation for caretaking.’” When asked whether they had a right to take this money, the Party boss said defiantly, “I had an end in view.”

On another occasion, the auditing group asked another village cadre, “The watering fee of 4,000 yuan for our rice paddies had been paid in full, so why was four thousand yuan held back for this same expense from the land-sale revenue?” The man, having no answer, flew into a temper, leaving the auditing at an impasse.

Not long afterward, word got about that the auditing at Zhang Village was in its final stages, and that they had found nothing on Zhang Guiquan, the murderous deputy village chief. After that, word filtered out that “some of the representatives [those doing the auditing] themselves may well end up behind bars.” What’s more, Zhang Guiquan’s son number four threatened, “It’s too early to call a truce, there must be some more bloodletting!” It seemed as if an evil wind was blowing stealthily through the village, carrying the smell of blood, chok-ing the inhabitants.

Zhang Jiayu was a Party member who was an upright man and had been actively involved in protesting the excessive taxes all along. As a member of the audit group, he was the one who

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