The man is almost too scared to talk. "I am just a farmer," he whispers, shortly after the police had descended on his village of Panlong in China's southern Guangdong province. "I know I don't matter." But what he has witnessed does. In mid-January, the man joined a remarkable protest against the local government's decision to seize communal farmland and lease it to a foreign investor. For several days, more than 1,000 villagers gathered near the disputed land, brandishing pitchforks and blocking a highway. But the brief exercise in free expression ended in tragedy. As dusk fell on Jan. 14, men armed with electric batons poured out of police vans and attacked the farmers. Villagers say a 13-year-old girl who tried to hide behind a woodpile was beaten to death, and they estimate that 20 or so others were seriously injured. (A spokesperson from nearby Zhongshan City claims the girl died of a heart attack.) The clash was barely reported within China, but few locals believe it will be the last. Says the witness, who doesn't want his name used for fear of official retribution: "The local government has lost the hearts of the people."
China's leaders had better try to win them back. Violent local protests are convulsing the Chinese countryside with ever greater frequency--and Beijing has proved unable to quell the unrest. By the central government's own count, there were 87,000 "public-order disturbances" in 2005, up from 10,000 in 1994. Most took place in out-of-the-way hamlets like Panlong, where peasants who were once the backbone of the Communist Party feel excluded from China's full-throttle economic development. Many of China's 900 million rural inhabitants are farmers, who have little legal or political leverage. They have borne a disproportionate share of the side effects of China's growth, from environmental degradation to misrule by local party officials more eager to line their pockets than provide basic services. Income disparity between the urban rich and the rural poor is at its widest since the People's Republic was founded in 1949. "What China has now is the worst of a planned economy and the worst of capitalism," says Christine Wong, a University of Washington professor who studies local governance in China. "The farmers are the ones who are losing out the most."
Their anger could have seismic consequences. Revolutions in China have a history of springing from rural discontent. The Communist Party rose to power on the strength of its pledge to protect the rights of farmers who joined its fight to overthrow the landlord class. The current crop of Communist leaders is aware that rural unrest could spark political mayhem, especially when cell phones and the Internet can connect citizens with the click of a button. In some cases, such as in Panlong, local officials have resorted to violence to suppress the uprisings, which has only incited more rage. In response to the rising furor, President Hu Jintao announced plans last month to give billions of dollars in central-government aid to farmers. "If farmers are rich, then the country will be prosperous," Hu said. "If villages are stable, then the society will also be stable."