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In the case of Panlong, villagers say they twice sent representatives to Beijing hoping someone would listen to their land-dispute issue, but no one did. In January, after months of fruitless petitioning of various levels of government, Panlong residents decided to stage a protest near their seized land. A similar effort in nearby Dongzhou village a month before had ended with paramilitary police killing at least six locals. But people in Panlong felt they had no other choice. The protest stayed peaceful for several days, until armed men with electric truncheons descended on the crowd and started beating everyone from young teenagers to elderly women, according to eyewitnesses. "I can't bear thinking about what I saw," says a protest participant, whose friend was hospitalized after being beaten in the head.
The Panlong saga isn't an isolated case. In the village of Liujiaying, in eastern Shandong province, local officials told residents in 2003 that they would lose their fruit and vegetable fields. After finding out how little compensation the village committee was offering, Liujiaying villagers refused to clear their land. Within a few months, the fields were bulldozed in the middle of the night, destroying decades-old grapevines and fruit trees. Later, rows of greenhouses were torn down. Peasants who complained say they were awakened at night by bricks crashing through their windows, and that several villagers were beaten up. ("I don't know the details of this case," says a spokesman for the municipal government of Qingdao, the nearby administrative capital that oversees the village. "There are too many incidents like this in China.")
As in Panlong, authorities in Liujiaying have used brute force to silence those with the temerity to speak out. In January, Liu Yinde, 62, traveled to Qingdao to seek redress, bearing a petition letter that detailed the alleged abuses. In it, he claimed $1.8 million in lost farming income for the village and appealed directly to Beijing: "We farmers believe the central government headed by President Hu will carry out the law for the people. We believe you certainly will take care of our village affairs." But before he was able to submit his letter, Liu says, a group of hooligans stopped him at the train station, tore up the letter and kept him hostage for eight days in a hotel. "I can't understand why no one addresses my problems," Liu says. "What good is the law if it doesn't serve the people?"