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In Southeast China, Skepticism on Land Reforms
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Other farmers also declined to give their names, but they echoed the same view. "Compensation?" said another vendor, bursting into laughter as he sat under a large banyan tree in the village square. "No compensation at all. Not a single penny."
The plastics factory planned for Hebu will consume land from six villages. Farmers who protested the factory's construction said it will pollute the air and afford them little economic benefit.
"The villagers tried to stop the construction, but the police were very tough," said Lu, a 77-year-old farmer who pulled up his sleeves to show scrawny arms purple with bruises and welts. He said he had been on his way to a doctor, not the Oct. 13 demonstration, when police grabbed him, threw him into a car and jailed him overnight. "If you showed your anger or said anything, they beat you," Lu said.
Behind the protests is a backdrop of anger shared by many of China's nearly 800 million farmers, who have been bypassed by the country's explosive economic growth. Even with a recent slowdown, growth in China's gross domestic product is at 9 percent, a rate other nations can only envy.
The booming economy is partly to blame for the large amount of land requisition, said Wen Tiejun, director of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at Beijing's Renmin University. "Rural land is so cheap because the power of government, combined so closely with capital, prevents farmers from having much of a say in deciding the value of the land."
In Hebu, some farmers support the proposed plastics factory, which is expected to bring in $1.5 billion a year and employ more than 10,000 villagers.
But Lu, the 77-year-old farmer, said he would never sell his land. "I can't speak for others," he said. "If they sell their land off, it will affect their livelihoods. Anybody who thinks about the future won't sell their land entirely -- they'll keep enough so that they can eat."
Researchers Liu Songjie and Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
