China's Rising Tide of Protest Sweeping Up Party Officials

Wan, the Huayuan county leader, said in a telephone interview that such overlapping jurisdictions have been an obstacle to enforcing antipollution standards. Huayuan has instituted strict rules, he added, forcing mines to comply with antipollution standards by the end of this year. Vanadium factories are banned altogether, he said, and county officials have ordered about 20 blown up.

But Hua and his friends, who have heard such promises before, have almost given up hope. They have stopped petitioning the region's county governments, he said, and now hope their resignation threat will draw the attention of Premier Wen. New elections may come along before anyone actually resigns, Hua acknowledged, and the peasant violence that erupted this spring was not carried out on orders from the Leading Group. But the organization has taken shape, with Hua at the helm, and has resolved to move the struggle to a new front.

A Mysterious Sediment

The 4,000 residents of Guideng village have built their simple homes on a hillside sloping lazily toward the Qingshui River. The river passes through Sichuan and Hunan provinces, including Hunan's Huayuan county, carrying its filth along without regard to jurisdictions.

About 3,000 feet away from Guideng, just above the river on a steep hillside, three vanadium refining factories rose up and started operations at the beginning of April. Their waste, which falls down the hillside in a series of connected basins, ended up in the river upstream from Huayuan.

Villagers said the river-bound runoff was not what got them riled. Rather, it was that the three factories, each with a row of 14 smelting ovens and a brick chimney, sent up a powdery sediment along with their smoke. Villagers said their eyes hurt and their lungs got congested. The sediment, which settled over the farmers' rice paddies and corn plants, turned into a yellow coating when it rained, they complained.

About 100 villagers, upset because chest congestion forced several dozen middle school students to miss classes, marched on the factory soon after it opened. The peasants said the owner, Yang Changjun, promised to pay for any damage to their crops, but reassured them that the smoke and sediment were not harmful.

Doubting his word, the villagers sought out local township officials, who also said the powder was not dangerous. When the villagers protested that people were getting sick, "they didn't pay any attention," recalled Su, the village elder, who has a gray brush cut and a jolly, round face.

At about the same time, Su said, the factory owner hired 10 young men from nearby villages as guards. For extra insurance, he named Chen Shuhua, party secretary of nearby Nong Tang village, as deputy general manager.

About 100 villagers visited the factories a second time on April 19, making threats over the sediment and trading insults with the guards. By then, it was becoming clear something would have to be done. Talk of a raid began.

"I am not going to oppose you if you destroy these factories, but I won't support you, either," the villagers quoted their village head, Liu Qian, as saying during the discussions. Liu declined to be interviewed.

Three days later, at 10 a.m., an estimated 600 farmers from Guideng and neighboring villages joined forces and attacked the factories. Yang, the owner, and his guards hid in their offices, the farmers said, while the farmers picked up whatever tools they could find and tore the refineries apart.

Anger Boils Over

In nearby Xiachaoshui, villagers seethed over the wildcat molybdenum mining operations on the upstream hillsides. The water used to flush out valuable ore, they found out, entered the porous, rocky terrain and seeped into streams that feed the Chaoshui, making the cherished waterway a channel of mud and poisonous chemicals.