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Xichong
Village Land Rights Activists Lose Appeal
Eleven Guangdong defendants convicted of sabotaging construction sites
and blocking factory gates in the course of protests over the
misappropriation of communal farmland had their appeal rejected by the
Foshan Intermediate People’s Court on October 25, 2007, according to
information obtained by Dui Hua.
Among the convicted residents of Xichong Village, located 62 miles (100
km) northwest of Hong Kong in the heart of South China’s booming Pearl
River Delta, were Li Dezai (李德仔) and three other members of the village
committee, the “self-governing” representative body elected by local
residents to communicate village interests to government officials. The
village elections held in 2005 had followed a lengthy and contentious
campaign period, with a central issue being controversy surrounding past
land deals.
If elected, Li Dezai promised to secure compensation for fellow
villagers who had lost land—a pledge that ran into repeated obstacles
after he was voted in as head of the village committee and went so far
as to create a land survey team to investigate transactions, permits,
and agreements tied to land use and construction in Xichong. Farmland in
the village had been developed by a company with ties to local officials
higher up in the government hierarchy, and with whom factories and other
enterprises had signed contracts. Even after finding improprieties with
numerous contracts, the village committee representatives lacked
leverage to negotiate new deals favorable to Xichong villagers and
instead resorted to direct action.
For his role in the Xichong land protests, Li Dezai was sentenced in
August 2007 to five years’ imprisonment on charges of “gathering a crowd
to disturb social order.” Seven other defendants received sentences of
between 18 months and four years, and three others received suspended
sentences.
Conflicts over the ownership of land have increased in recent years,
especially in areas such as the Pearl River Delta that have seen rapid
economic development and the influx of investment capital. In
acknowledging the existence of the problem, the Chinese government has
encouraged resolution of these conflicts through the courts. However,
many ordinary Chinese do not yet trust the judicial system to rule on
their behalf in disputes with entrenched bases of local power especially
considering that local judges’ salaries are paid from local government
budgets.
Xichong Village’s conflicts over land were the focus of Dui Hua’s most
recent volume of Selected Decisions from Chinese People’s Courts, part
of the foundation’s Occasional Publications series. It is the first
published in connection with Dui Hua’s research on “mass incidents” in
China.
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