In struggle to be heard, rural Chinese pack Beijing
Thousands seek officials' attention
By Jehangir S. Pocha, Globe Correspondent | March 15, 2005
BEIJING -- The National People's Congress, China's largely ceremonial Parliament, ended its annual legislative session yesterday with promises of reforms to ease the lives of ordinary Chinese.
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Elsewhere in Beijing, beyond the frescoed walls of the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square where delegates had gathered, people were struggling to contact the nation's leaders so that they could tell their stories of hardship and battles with Chinese officialdom.
Thousands of country folk had come to Beijing to petition their representatives for help with such problems as unpaid pensions, illegally demolished homes, and corrupt local officials. But many said security officials beat them and intimidated them from pursuing their complaints.
''Even if they just see you standing around or trying to petition, they'll crowd around and start pushing and beating you," said Bao Shi Gao, 39, a bicycle repairman from Dong Zhi village in the southeastern province of Anhui, who had come to Beijing on borrowed money to try to resolve a litany of complaints.
In the early 1980s, when China had just begun its economic changes, Bao said he had started a small fish farm in his home village of Ba Li Cun in Anhui. But the fledging business was ''seized by a powerful man from my village," he said. Dejected, Bao moved to Dong Zhi in 1991 and became a bicycle repairman. But there he had a run-in with a local official who he said was charging him double for electricity because he would not offer him free meals. ''When I complained one day, he sent hooligans to beat me up and smash up my place."
When Bao came to Beijing last week, he said, the few low-level officials he managed to see told him to return to Anhui. After he refused, he said, he was beaten on the street by a group of men as a group of policemen stood by and watched.
The other petitioners sitting around him nodded in commiseration.
Every time there is a major government event, thousands flock to the city, hoping to get the attention of the nation's leaders. In Beijing, a large slum colony called Petitioners Village has sprung up by one of the city's largest railway stations to accommodate them. Hopeful supplicants can share a tiny room with five others for about a half-dollar a night.
But few petitioners seem to have any success. At Tiananmen Square and around other government buildings, the roads are sealed off when important conferences or meetings are in progress. Armored surveillance vans patrol the area, as do plainclothes and uniformed policemen who shoo away even curious passersby. The police also patrol railways and bus stations for possible petitioners and step up Internet surveillance, which is always high in China
''I've been coming here for three years now, and I've never managed to talk to anyone," said Wang Heng Mao, 35, from Yao Du village in Anhui Province. He is pleading with officials to help him secure about $1,200 in back wages from a state-owned bank that laid him off three years ago.
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Wang said he initially thought resolving the issue would be easy because he had the relevant paperwork and other proof. ''First I went to the county government, who said go to the court," he said. ''The court said go to the bank, and the bank said go to the court. Then someone told me to come [to Beijing]. When I met the officer here, he told me to go back to my county. It's a horrible thing, having to beg for what's right, but what other choice do we have?"
It is not only the poor who accuse officials of corruption.
''I was the richest man in my town; I had a great car and all," said Zhou Jun Qi, 45, a petitioner from the city of Liu Zhou in the southern province of Guangxi.
He said he started a sock factory in 1993 with an American partner and invested about $250,000, but quarreled with the partner in 1996 and took the dispute to court.
''The judge asked me for a bribe, but I refused," he said. Soon after, the judge ordered the factory sealed. When the judgment came in 1998 it was in Zhou's favor, but he said that when he opened the factory doors, he found that all its assets had been stripped.
''Now I don't even have money for food," said Zhou, whose extended family lives in the southern Guangdong Province. Because family is the only real social safety net in China and Zhou's is not close by, he depends on friends for meals and financial help.
Yet Zhou, like Wang and Bao, retains some faith in the system and said he thinks all his problems would be solved if he can reach senior leaders such as President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, who have been far more visible and more willing than previous leaders to intervene on behalf of downtrodden or abused peasants.
''Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, they really care for the people," Zhou said. ''It's the lower officials who hide things from them, keep us from them."
At the closing news conference for the Parliament yesterday, Wen declared, ''This will be a year of reform."
Underplaying international issues -- such as the resignation of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa of Hong Kong and the passage of a controversial antisecession bill that has raised tensions with Taiwan -- Wen focused on domestic governance.
''Our priority is to transform the working of government" and ease conditions for China's impoverished and increasingly restive farmers, he said.
At last year's congress, Hu and Wen amended China's Constitution by enshrining the term ''human rights" in it and expanding citizens' property rights.
Although the changes created no new monitoring system to enforce these rules and nothing much has changed at the grass-roots level, the actions gave petitioners such as Zhou some hope.
''They have to do something for us now," he said. ''I'm 110 percent confident of winning my case eventually. I'm definitely coming back next year."
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
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