"It's the Chinese Communist Party's nightmare in miniature: Locals stage protests against their land being taken away by shady real estate deals, police respond with heavy-handed tactics and suddenly, with years of frustration and allegations of official corruption bottled up, an entire village erupts in open revolt.
That's exactly what's happened in Wukan, a fishing and farming community of some 20,000 people on China's eastern coast.
The main road leading into town has been blocked by a police checkpoint on one end, and at the other by dozens of villagers manning a tall barricade of tree branches and boards with nails sticking out.
...Village officials and police had fled the town, leaving government offices empty in the shadows of street signs.
The result is almost unthinkable in today's China: A swath of land no longer under the direct management of the Communist Party and its functionaries.
...While the standoff at Wukan doesn't threaten to spark wider unrest in China, the underlying issues are similar to those that have presented problems for the Chinese Communist Party across the nation.
In the village, as with much of China, people took pains to say they blamed immoral and greedy officials...
The trouble in Wukan erupted, locals said, after years of unanswered petitions to provincial authorities asking for help adjudicating land grabs that they claimed were being orchestrated by village and neighboring city officials.
...villagers drove back a large contingent of police and the lines were drawn.
The village scene as dusk fell Thursday seemed to partly rebut Chinese officials' long-standing argument that without tightly controlled governance all would be chaos. Life seemed almost normal in Wukan. Men sat around card tables. Young people wandered the sidewalks telling jokes and laughing.
There were worries about how long food supplies would last, but a few grocery stands were open with no sign of looting.
...Across China, displays of discontent with local governments — despite the best efforts of official censors — often tap into nationwide anger about issues such as corruption, income disparity and, more broadly, a growing sense that the country's rulers and those linked to them are above the law.
...A 56-year-old carpenter named Huang Deping leaned forward in his chair and said that no matter what happened, "the point is not that they (officials) fled, the point is that we fought them until they left."
MCCLATCHY
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