Wukan Journal: Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China’s
Wukan abuts a natural harbor that is ideal for development.
吴坎紧靠一个天然良港,是理想的发展。
Occupy Wukan is another matter entirely. The state press has been all but mute on why 13,000 Chinese citizens, furious over repeated rip-offs by their village elite, sent their leaders fleeing to safety and repulsed efforts by the police to retake Wukan. But the village takeover can be ignored only at Beijing’s peril: There are at least 625,000 potential Wukans across China, all small, locally run villages that frequently suffer the sorts of injustices that prompted the outburst this month in Wukan.
据吴坎完全是另一回事。国家媒体已全部静音为什么13000的中国公民,愤怒的反复宰客的村庄精英,把他们的领导人逃往安全和击退经警方努力夺回吴坎。但村收购可以忽略,只在北京的危险:至少有625000个潜在的wukans在中国,所有小,本地运行的村庄,经常受到各种不公正,促使突出在这个月吴坎。
“What happened in Wukan is nothing new. It’s all across the country,” said Liu Yawei, an expert on local administration who is the director of the China program at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
“发生了什么事在吴坎是没有什么新的。这是在全国各地,”刘建超说亚威,专家对地方行政谁是导演的中国计划在卡特中心在亚特兰大。
A second analyst, Li Fan, estimated, in an interview, that 50 percent to 60 percent of Chinese villages suffered governance and accountability problems of the sort that apparently beset Wukan, albeit not so severe. Mr. Li leads the World and China Institute, a private nonprofit research center based in Beijing that has extensively studied local election and governance issues.
二分析员,李范,估计,在一次采访中,百分之50至百分之60的中国乡村治理和问责制问题遭受的那种显然吴坎困扰,尽管不那么严重。李先生是世界与中国研究所,一个非盈利研究中心在北京进行了广泛的研究,地方选举和治理问题。
On paper, the Wukan protests never should have happened: China’s village committees should be the most responsive bodies in the nation because they are elected by the villagers themselves. Moreover, the government has built safeguards into the village administration process to ensure that money is properly spent.
在纸的吴坎抗议,不应发生:中国村民委员会应该是最敏感的机构在国家因为他们是由村民自己。此外,政府已建立保障措施纳入行政村工艺确保钱真正花。
Village self-administration, as the central government calls it, is seen by many foreigners as China’s democratic laboratory — and while elections can be rigged and otherwise swayed, many political scientists say they are, on balance, a good development.
村民自治,作为中央政府的呼吁,在很多外国人作为中国民主实验室,而选举被操纵,否则动摇,许多政治科学家说他们,平衡,一个良好的发展。
Actually running the villages, however, is another matter. Village committees must provide many of the services offered by governments, such as sanitation and social welfare, but they cannot tax their residents or collect many fees. Any efforts to raise additional money, for things like economic development, usually need approval from the Communist Party-controlled township or county seats above them.
实际运行的村庄,但是,是另一回事。村民委员会必须提供的许多服务由政府提供,如卫生和社会福利,但他们不能税务居民或收集费。任何努力筹集更多的钱,比如经济发展,通常需要征得中共控制的乡镇或县以上。
In practice, the combination of the villages’ need for cash and their dependence on higher-ups has bred back-scratching and corruption between village officials and their overseers. China’s boom in land prices has only broadened the opportunity for siphoning off money from village accounts.
在实践中,结合该村对现金的需求和依赖上级孕育了开方便之门和腐败官员和他们的监管者之间村。中国繁荣的土地价格只有扩大的机会,将钱从村帐。
And the checks and balances — a village legislature to sign off on major decisions, a citizens’ accounting committee to watch over the village books — have turned out to be easily manipulated by those who really hold the power.
和制衡——村议会签署对重大决策,公民会计委员会关注农村读物-已被证明是容易被操纵那些真正掌握权力。
“Land sales are where the big money is,” Edward Friedman, a political science professor and a China scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a telephone interview. “Every level can see how much better the level above it is doing. And each one wants to live at least that well. The system has within it a dynamic which makes people feel it’s only fair that they get their share of the wealth.”
“土地是最赚钱的,”爱德华弗里德曼,政治学教授和中国学者在威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校,在电话采访中说。“每一级可以看到更好的上面级的做。每个人都想生活至少那个好。该系统内的动态,使人感到这是唯一公平的,他们有他们自己的财富。”
The opportunities to get that share are vast, apparently. In 2003, a candidate for village committee chairman in Laojiaotou village, in Shanxi Province, spent two million renminbi — then about $245,000 — to campaign for an office that paid 347 renminbi a month, the Chinese journal Legal News reported at the time.
机会去分享是巨大的,明显的。2003,候选人在laojiaotou村村民委员会主席,在山西省,花了二百万人民币约245000美元的竞选办公室,花了347人民币一个月,中国法制
新闻报道的时候。
In interviews this month, leaders of the Wukan protest said it was common knowledge that local government and Communist Party officials had spent millions of renminbi to buy potentially lucrative posts. They maintained that Wukan’s village committee stayed in power in part by threatening any challenges to its continued rule.
在这个月,领导的抗议说,这是共同的知识吴坎地方党政官员花了数百万元人民币买潜在利润丰厚的职位。他们认为吴坎村村委会呆在动力部分由任何挑战威胁其持续的规则。
None of those allegations could be quickly confirmed. One verified statistic, however, is compelling. Of the nine members of Wukan’s village committee, five had held their posts since the committee system itself was set up under Mao Zedong’s successor, Deng Xiaoping.
没有这些指控可以迅速确认。一核实统计,然而,令人信服的。这九个成员吴坎的村民委员会,五个进行了从委员会制度本身都是建立在继承毛泽东,邓小平。
The same was true of the village’s Communist Party secretary, Xue Chang, who had held office since 1970 before being replaced amid Wukan citizen protests in September.
同样是真实的村党委书记,薛长,谁举行了办公室自1970之前在九月取代吴坎公民抗议。
Though a village in legal terms, Wukan is bigger than most such entities. It sits in urban Guangdong Province, abutting a natural harbor on the Pacific Ocean that is ideal for development.
虽然一个村的法律条款,吴坎是最大的实体。它坐落在城市的广东省,毗邻的天然海港上太平洋,是理想的发展。