China Farmer Has a Novel Approach to Fighting Graft

He wrote by the dim glow of one naked lightbulb, the only electrical appliance his family could afford. He scribbled out, by hand, 12 drafts of his book, 5 million words in all.

Gao Qiwei is just an ordinary peasant with a single year of high school. But nothing could keep the 38-year-old from speaking out about the injustice of life in his home village.

“Peasants are like volcanoes,” Gao said. “They may be silent now. But they will erupt.”

Already, tremors of discontent have rocked the countryside, where two-thirds of China’s 1.3 billion people live. Excessive taxation, local corruption and declining income have driven angry peasants to riot in the streets, commit suicide, refuse to pay up or simply abandon the land in search of jobs in the cities.

Villagers in Tiemiao say they have long given up on local officials, who have a history of levying taxes at will, siphoning public funds and doctoring the books to cover their tracks.

“The government’s appetite for taxes is a bottomless pit,” said Hu Jiahu, 37, a villager. “Even if we had a gold mountain and a silver mountain, it would still not be enough.”

Rural unrest poses a huge threat to the legitimacy of the Communist Party, which rose to power in 1949 with the support of the peasantry. Last month, villagers in Jiangxi province clashed with police over tax disputes. In a rare move, armed troops fired into a crowd, killing two peasants and wounding more than a dozen.

Then there are those who have picked up the pen as a new weapon of resistance.

Last summer, a Communist Party secretary in Gao’s home province, Hubei, made headlines with a letter that reached Premier Zhu Rongji. Li Changping’s teary account of old peasants wishing to die instead of paying taxes and young people hoping to go to school but not being able to afford it prompted Beijing to investigate the situation in Hubei and make some amends. Li, however, was forced out of office by local cadres angered by what he did.

Complaint Letters Fell on Deaf Ears

But long before there was a Li Changping, there was a Gao Qiwei, protesting alone, without the status of a party job. For nearly two decades, the farmer fought the system, drafting complaint letter after complaint letter, all of which seemed to vanish into a black hole.

No one outside his county knew about his protest until he published a book last August called “Xiang Ji,” or “A Village Family.” It took him 15 years to complete and find a taker who is willing to publish it under the category “anti-corruption novel.”

Thousands of hours and about $2,500 in borrowed money went into the book, which for a Chinese peasant is a daunting task bordering on the impossible. In return, Gao got a few hundred copies to sell on his own. Otherwise, there are no royalties for sales in the 10,000-copy run.

“My son asks me, ‘How much is your book worth?’ ” Gao said. “I tell him: ‘The house we live in could collapse one day. But a book lives forever.’ ”

The plot is roughly based on Gao’s own experiences. To make the project viable, Gao had to fictionalize parts of it and provide a happy ending. Otherwise, he said, “no one would dare publish it.” Last year, a rural affairs journal in Jiangxi province published a manual to help farmers evade unjustified fees and taxes. Despite brisk sales, it was quickly banned. Gao’s novel is still available in major bookstores.

“There is a lot I didn’t dare put in my book,” said Gao, a slight man with a wild crown of black hair. “Such as how officials would tear down homes and beat people to death because they can’t afford to pay their taxes.”

Gao’s father died young. All four of his brothers quit school early to tend the land. Gao had the most education, with one year of high school. Now the father of two sons, he had no choice but pull his 15-year-old out of school because the family cannot afford the hundreds of dollars it costs to attend each year.

After Gao left school, he noticed that the few acres of land assigned to his family were spread out in tiny patches. The distance made it difficult to farm efficiently, yet that was the common practice in the village.

The young man began writing to the village party boss, expressing his desire to run for village office. He wanted to redistribute land to improve productivity and start some small factories to process farm products that could earn the village extra cash.

That was in 1984. Initiatives lauded across the country now were then attacked as the product of personal ambition and naivete.

Meanwhile, party cadres with connections and reverence for the status quo rose up the ladder. They presided over soaring taxes and sliding profits. Up to 80% of Tiemiao’s families have sent away some or all the relatives to make money elsewhere so they could pay the taxes back home. Even now, practically every other house is locked and empty.

In 1985, Gao pitched the same plan to improve his village, but to a town-level party secretary--one step higher than the village leader. Again, he was laughed out the door. You are so poor yourself, the official told him, how could you make others rich?

The following year, Gao stirred more trouble by demanding to see how his tax money was spent. Officials told him to pay up or get locked up. Gao didn’t budge. The cadres barged into his house and seized the family’s reserve food supply as collateral. They even dragged away his two piglets. One struggled so hard its tail was torn off, Gao recalled.

Another year came, and again Gao asked to see the books. As usual, he said, the cadres ignored him, instead absconding with the family’s food--and the last 70 cents in Gao’s pocket. His wife was pregnant then with their second child, who never made it past the winter.

“They told me to stop asking questions,” Gao recalled. “But we all knew they were splurging [with] public money to wine and dine themselves and offer each other cash gifts for birthdays, funerals, weddings and new years.”

Harvests Seized After Tax Protest

By 1993, a new county party secretary--one rung up the ladder from the town party boss--came to office with the promise to eliminated unjust taxes. But peasants still didn’t have a say in deciding what’s just and what’s not. When villagers followed Gao’s lead and refused to pay their taxes, officials confiscated all the cotton they had harvested for the year. And if that weren’t enough, 20% annual interest was slapped onto their remaining unpaid tax bill.

Gao didn’t give up. In 1996, he wrote to the county, demanding clean government and an open election.

He finally got somewhere in 1997. By then he had finished a draft of his 479-page novel. He brought it all the way to the provincial capital, Wuhan. Cadres there turned him away because his “letter” was too long.

But a magazine editor offered him a sympathetic ear. Soon, a scathing report came out, confirming Gao’s suspicions of unjustifiably high taxes and siphoned public money. It cost the village party secretary and accountant their jobs.

More good news came last year, when the Li Changping letter to Beijing led authorities to slash about 30% from the local tax bill. Now Gao’s book is keeping the spotlight on the plight of Chinese farmers, even as it irks local officials.

Villager Wants ‘Real Change From Above’

But for the villagers in Tiemiao, neither the tax cut nor Gao’s book seems to make much difference. They are still dirt poor.

“The petition efforts offer only temporary relief,” said Hu Jiayuan, a 51-year-old who toils on land abandoned by families who fled to the cities. “To improve life in the countryside and end corruption, we need a real change from above.”

Even Du Zaixin, the new county party secretary, admits that the rural burden is oppressive. “Two and a half kilos of grain could sell for less than a bottle of mineral water,” Du told a local newspaper. “That’s why people think farming is not worth the trouble.”

For those who can’t walk away, the anger is brewing.

“Our lives are going downhill,” farmer He Qiyun, 43, said as he stared at fields of blossoming mustard greens and waves of grain. “I’ve made no money in three years. I’m taxed out.”

In the fictionalized world, the protagonist, based on Gao, gets to become village chief, stamp out corruption and lead his people to prosperity. In real life, even Gao is plotting to skip town.

“Where is the stairway to heaven?” Gao asked with his head down. “Definitely not here in the countryside.”