A tense stand-off between police surrounding the southern Chinese village of Shangpu continued on Monday as villagers called for elections to replace the party chief accused of collusion with a local businessman in an alleged land grab of communal farmland.
People in the village in Guangdong, the southernmost Chinese province that is also the country’s export powerhouse, told the Financial Times that land had been leased to a businessman close to the village chief, Li Baoyu, for 50 years for as little as Rmb5,000-6,000 ($803-963) per mu a year. Some villagers said 500 mu (33.33 hectares) had been leased until 2064 to the businessman since January, but others said even more land had been leased in the deal.
The siege by security personnel after villagers and unidentified attackers clashed in late February after tempers flared over a deal brokered by an allegedly corrupt party chief, resembles a similar situation in the village of Wukan, about 100 km from Shangpu, in 2011. After an 11-day siege by police in December that year, the Guangdong provincial government brokered a truce, allowing Wukan’s villagers unusually free elections to elect a new village committee, which included young men who had been previously detained by police for leading the protests.