China's Rising Tide of Protest Sweeping Up Party Officials

But mining has changed things drastically in the last few years. With China consuming steel at a breakneck pace, the price of minerals has soared. The magnesium, molybdenum and vanadium buried here have sparked the equivalent of a gold rush, bringing economic growth but also pollution. Scores of upstream mining operations send foul waste flowing untreated into the rivers, sullying downstream waters that peasant villages have relied on since ancestral times for drinking, irrigation, fishing and bathing.

The region's main stream, the Qingshui, whose name means "clear water," has in the last three years turned from limpid to oily black. Yellowish foam was seen floating on the surface where the river snakes down from the hills. Local authorities, who test the waters annually, reported the Qingshui contains unhealthy levels of magnesium and chromium.

Hua, the village leader, complained that local officials "only focus on economic growth, not on the quality of people's lives." With a knotted brow and blazing black eyes that make him look permanently angry, Hua is an unusual champion for a challenge to the government. He is a former delegate to the regional People's Congress and People's Political Consultative Conference, the Communist Party's main representative bodies. Beside a little statue of Buddha in his living room, he keeps a photo of Mao Zedong, and he quotes the Communist icon to explain where he finds his support: "All power comes from the people."

Now Hua is defying the party. He has recruited more than 30 other village leaders into an association, prohibited because it has not received approval from the Communist Party. They have named it the Leading Group of 100,000 People Living Along the Qingshui River Protecting Our People's River. Using cell phones, he said, the leaders have kept in touch across county and provincial lines in this area -- called the Golden Triangle because of its precious metals -- where Guizhou, Sichuan and Hunan provinces come together.

Hua said the village leaders formed the group because they had lost faith in the ability and willingness of county and provincial authorities to rein in the highly profitable mining operations. "We appealed to the authorities many times, but we never got a solution," he said.

Hua and about 40 other village leaders lodged their first complaints in 2002, saying the river was turning black and people were getting sick. But Hua recalled that the county leadership was so eager to work with businesses, including miners, to promote economic development that the villagers' pollution concerns were not taken seriously.

Then, as the pollution steadily worsened, about 60 village leaders again went to complain Nov. 9. They demanded to see the county leader, Wan Qingfeng. Wan refused to see them, Hua said, but the director of the local Environmental Protection Administration came out to talk. He conceded the problem was serious but cautioned it would take time to solve.

Frustrated, the village chiefs took up position on the grass in front of county headquarters, refusing to leave. Some called for a 100,000-strong demonstration, which would amount to mobilization of all villagers along the Qingshui. Others urged a joint expedition to destroy the mining operations. But Hua said he counseled patience.

At that point, Ma Jianfeng, the deputy county leader for industrial production, agreed to meet with a few of the angry village chiefs, Hua said. As a result of those talks, six village leaders and several county officials drove off at 9 a.m. the next day to inspect some magnesium mining sites. Of five they visited, Hua said, four were found to be discharging unacceptable levels of waste into the river.

But the county officials said the mines could not be closed without a hearing. In addition, Hua said, they informed village leaders that the county government had given the mining companies a Dec. 31 deadline for cleaning up their operations. In earlier contacts, Hua recalled, the village chiefs had been told of a Sept. 30 deadline, which appeared to have been forgotten.

"We got very angry," he said. "We said, 'It's obvious you are protecting the interests of these businesses and you pay no attention to the interests of the people living along the river. We can't stand this anymore. If you don't close the mining sites today, we are going to destroy them.' "

Suddenly, the county officials changed their minds, and ordered the four offending factories closed, Hua said. But in an effort to show the agitated peasant leaders that the pollution came from elsewhere, they drove upstream to a neighboring county where several factories polluted the waters before they even got to Huayuan.