To the people, it looked like an invasion. For three years farmers in Fuyou village had been fighting the government-backed developer who turned their land into a giant construction site. Thugs circled after dark, threatening and sometimes beating the residents. Villagers armed with hoes and scythes had taken shifts guarding the entrance to their narrow streets.

Now, truck after truck packed with men in hard hats labelled “police” and carrying long staves, electric prods and riot shields rolled down the highway. Relatives working in a nearby town say they called ahead to warn that it was on its way. The villagers grabbed steel rods from the construction site, and waited.

The two forces clashed on the wide roads between half-finished buildings under the bright southern sun in China’s Yunnan province — more than 2,000km from Beijing. The crowd overturned three silver Chevrolets. Small running battles left men bloodied and beaten on the ground.