An Unusual Sort of Democracy

Jin was replaced as party secretary in 2002 -- villagers were unsure why -- and a new election was organized the following March, Zhang said, with secret ballots and supervision by an elected committee. Zhang won with 1,514 votes out of 1,600 ballots and became head of the village council for a three-year term.

"They could not stop it," Zhang said. "Everyone knows the power of democracy."

Full of zeal, Zhang decided that his first step as village head would be to demand that the government of surrounding Dang Jiazheng county, which owned the quarry, return the land to the farmers who used to work it. His second step, he recalled, was to ask county officials for the village account books; villagers, he said, wanted an explanation for Jin's large green home and big black car.

For more than a year, he said, he pushed -- but got nowhere. The quarry was shut down, but the farmers did not get their land back, and the new village council never saw the account books. "Even now, we don't know where our account book is," Zhang said in an interview.

Two lawsuits were brought against the county; both were thrown out of court.

Then county officials announced that new elections would have to be held after less than two years. The reason for advancing the schedule, they said, was to synchronize voting among villages surrounding Jinan. Zhang and his followers believed, however, that the reason was to kick them out of power and prevent them from looking into the village accounts.

The new voting was held last December. But as villagers filed in to cast ballots at a local primary school, someone burst in and stole a ballot box. As a result, county authorities again were forced to invalidate the election.

Starting anew, Dangxi voted for yet another election organizing committee in April. As he had before, Zhang received the most votes, becoming head of the committee. He prepared to set up another election that he expected to win.

But as preparations were underway, Zhang said, he got reports that people were receiving money in return for pledging to vote against him. Several villagers said the going rate was $12 per vote. A number of people, including Li, the 42-year-old pancake seller, gave Zhang signed statements acknowledging they had accepted money in return for voting as they were told.

Armed with their testimony in a file folder, Zhang petitioned county authorities to put off the election until the allegations were investigated. But they ordered the voting to go ahead.

On May 20, when the election was held, Zhang was the lowest-ranking vote-getter, barely retaining a seat on the council and losing his post as village leader. The winner was Fa Zhonglei, a Communist Party member who worked at the quarry and whom many villagers regard as an associate of Jin and his successor, Li Lianzeng.

A month later, Zhang still refuses to hand over the village seal, a traditional symbol of power, and he has written an open letter to Civil Affairs Minister Li Xueju in Beijing demanding an investigation.

The minister has not responded. But Zhang said he was heartened by an article in the ministry's official newspaper headlined: "The vote-buying was obvious in Dangxi." Meanwhile, he has continued to rally his followers against the new council.

Jin, who villagers said still exercises quiet influence but keeps a low profile, could not be located for comment. Fa, the new village head, said in a telephone interview that Zhang and his supporters invented the vote-buying charges to explain their loss. Their accusations of corruption are also groundless, he said, and Jin was only trying to bring economic progress to Dangxi as Jinan sprawled into suburban land.

But Fa Jinming, 79, the patriarch of a large family in Dangxi that backs Zhang, said he got a call from Fa Zhonglei on June 5 seeking his family's cooperation with the new administration. In the conversation, the elderly farmer said with a smile, the new village head said he planned to model his tenure on Zhang's.