Just saw this on a Xici thread.
Basically, the story goes like this: Cheng Weixiu (成维秀), a migrant worker from Lin county in Shanxi province（陝西臨縣) was supposedly beaten to death by a coal mine boss Xue Sanwei (薛三卫) in 2007. Cheng’s relative (cousin?) Cheng Yunqiang (成运强) and some other relatives paid a visit to a hotel that Xue owned to seek redress, conflict ensued, and the local police detained Cheng Yunqiang on the grounds that they were inciting violence or crime. However, Cheng managed to escape to Beijing, where he got in touch with civil law journalist Jing Jianfeng (景剑峰) to discuss his case. However, the Lin county police came to Beijing and discovered Cheng’s whereabouts, detained him, and since Jing Jianfeng was there, detained him as well.
After Jing was taken, various rumors were spread around; some say he was extorting the mine boss for 7 million RMB.
The post then encourages people to pay attention to Jian’s case, because he is going on trial October 24, 2008 in Lvliang City, Shanxi province (山西省吕梁市临县) on three counts: obstruction of justice, hiding known fugitives, and receiving a bribe of a 8700 RMB valued laptop computer.
The writer of the post then encourages people to pay attention and stand up for Jian because, as a reporter, anyone of us could be next!
After reading this, I decided to find and read some other reports that Jian has written. The few that I have cursorily read are all quite interesting. There is one written this year about Foshan in Guangdong province, where a former village named Buxin (布心) was made part of Foshan city and all the former villagers given city hukous. However, they lost their livelihood in this process: formerly collectively owned agricultural land has been requisitioned by the government. This happened in 1992, and according to the report, the people of Buxin feel that their standard of living has suffered since then: one person said “before 1992, our lives were getting better day by day. And since 1992, our lives have been getting worse day by day.“
The developers are associated with the government. They gave the villagers compensation for the property and objects on the land, but crucially, not the land itself: in 1992 the land was worth 35,000 rmb per mu, and with 4000 mu or so that comes out to 150 million RMB. The price of land now is worth 450,000 RMB per mu, which means that their former land is now worth about 1.8 billion RMB.
In the beginning, the two development companies had given the villagers some jobs, but after some SOEs went bankrupt or laid off workers, most of the villagers lost their jobs, and being unemployed were not qualified for any compensation. Despite their low incomes they were not given any basic social welfare. Even though they have the hukous, they don’t have basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, or retirement/old age insurance.
It is quite telling that many of the villagers in Buxin are actually envious of the neighboring villages, which have not become part of any cities, and therefore are able to keep their agricultural land, which provides a basic source of income, and which allowed them to create several enterprises as well.
There’s another interesting report Jian wrote about the so-called Guangzhou phenomenon, which basically means that down in Guangzhou, the representatives/legislators are encouraged to speak the truth. They are encouraged to openly communicate rather than repeat the same tired cliches and nostrums. They are encouraged to speak their minds, even if what they say could be–gasp!–wrong, or erroneous.
Further proof that in many regards, Guangzhou is the vanguard of Chinese political culture.
I don’t think that Jing is a real muckracker, but in a place like China, one wonders if not this whole business has not been vetted or at least conveniently ignored by the powers that be, and if that has anything to do with what Jian writes. I don’t know enough about Jian or his work to say. I think it’s safe enough to say that he is being placed on trial on account of this Cheng Yunqiang business, even though that is absurd as it is.
