Chapter 10 Tyranny and Crisis (1)

Xi Jinping exploits the peasants to maintain his rule. In Ningbo, an acre of land is expropriated from the peasants and the peasants are given 10,000 yuan to sell to the developers for 500,000 yuan and so the government and the developers make a net profit of 490,000 yuan per acre. If 100 million mu, that’s 49 trillion, what a resource! The Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Social Sciences did a survey. Migrant workers are paid 10,000 yuan wages but the output of GDP is 25,000, the difference of 15,000 is what? A professor from the Central Party School said, “Is this 15,000 surplus labor? He said yes; it is depriving the peasants.

In 2020, China will receive RMB 8.4 trillion from land sales, accounting for 44% of national revenue (40% in 2019) and 84% of local revenue. All are by violent demolitions and forced relocation acquiring peasant land and ultimately deprive them of their land.

Forced evictions are a major tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist government receives a large amount of land revenue from the demolition of houses. Land selling has become a major source of local finance, called “land finance”. “Land finance” accounts for more than 20% of government revenue and a large part of the revenue from land sales is used for the government’s “image projects” to show the Communist Party’s great, glorious, correct performance with new local construction and to maintain the legitimacy of the regime. Part of the revenue from land sales is transferred to the “small treasury” of each province which is a collective embezzlement to be shared with the local top government officers. A small percentage is embezzled by the departments and personnel who happen to handle it.

After the Chinese New Year in 2014, Xi Jinping made a hypocritical visit to Nanluo Pot Alley in Beijing saying that he would respect the legitimate rights and interests of the evicted people and put on a veneer of “good governance” and “love for the people”. But the brutal evictions in 2014 were worse than the evictions of 2013 and the methods were even more brutal. And the scale of demolition was also bigger. According to information released by the Ministry of Land and Resources, the revenue from land sales in 2013 was 4.1 trillion yuan, much higher than the 315 million yuan in 2011 and in January 2014, the revenue from land sales in Beijing alone exceeded seven times that of the same period in 2013. The revenue from land sales in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou exceeded 100 billion yuan, continuing to drive the national land sales market higher. The reliance on “land finance” is even deeper in various places.

Government-sanctioned and government-led forced and hasty demolitions in various places have caused numerous tragic cases.

On March 21, 2014, at 2:00 a.m., one villager was killed and three injured when a tent in Du Jiao Tong Village, Fengtai Street, Pingdu City, Shandong Province, was razed and set on fire. The local government claimed it was a “fire” but it was actually an arson attack by village official Du Qunshan, who gathered Wang Yuefu and others to set the fire. After his release from prison, Wang Yuefu repeatedly threatened and intimidated evicted families, threw firecrackers to create explosions, smashed windows and doors with an axe and harassed and assaulted the villagers.

On December 27, 2014, an “AIDS demolition team” consisting of six people living with HIV were formed in Nanyang, Henan Province, by a government-approved developer. The AIDS demolition team threatened residents to “infect you if you don’t move out” and set off firecrackers in the middle of the night to scare them.

On July 16, 2014, outside the China Youth Daily in Beijing, seven middle-aged men and women by taking poison fell on the ground foaming at the mouth and committed suicide. Seven people from Sihong, Jiangsu Province, who had petitioned for compensation for demolition and relocation in 2013, were forcibly repatriated by the government and put in a black jail. They felt desperate and escaped to Beijing to take medicine to commit suicide.

On January 15, 2014, the demolition of the West Street Village in Baoxiang County, Hebei Province caused the Feng Wenji couple to self-immolate in front of the forced demolition construction team. They got seriously burnt and Feng Wenji died on the 23rd and his wife went to the intensive care unit.

On November 19, 2014, the owner of a farm in the village of Songxia Town, Changle City, Fujian, poured gasoline on his body before the construction team indulged in the forced demolition. He ignited a fire and rushed towards the construction workers and the village director was held and burnt.