Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    ON Jan. 19, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s top public prosecution agency, issued a circular vowing to crack down on local tyrants and clan forces in rural areas by making full use of procuratorial functions.

    This draws public attention to a little-known aspect of rural life in some parts of China: “cunba” controlling villages or towns, oppressing fellow villagers.

    The Chinese term “cunba” refers to local despots in a village or a town. A local despot may be a clan chief with a paramount position or economic power, who bullies other villagers using his status and power. It may also be a rascal, who rules a gang and exploits fellow villagers via intimidation and violence.

    But in most cases, local despots are those village cadres such as the Party chief or village head. They invariably came to power by manipulating or ripping the grass-roots election. Their “advantages” may be the dominance of their family or clan in the village or their overwhelming financial power.

    Unlike rural societies of 20 or 30 years ago when the farming population was still in dominance, today’s Chinese rural communities have been withering with most of the young and able labors flocking to cities for better opportunities. The remaining young and old are in no position to resist the brutality of the despots.

    With the stick and the carrot, the tyrants see village power as theirs for the taking and once with power in their hands, they perpetrate every conceivable evil: violating laws, running casinos, hogging public resources for their own use, raping women and beating whoever refuses to obey them.

    Their horrific atrocities are beyond words. A former deputy to the National People’s Congress (NPC) of a city in Jiangxi Province, also an ex-convict, ran amuck in his community for 20 years, utilizing his title of NPC delegate and his family’s economic clout, in defiance of laws. He relied on a large criminal syndicate consisting of his clan members and idle loafers, which committed countless crimes. They even threatened the safety of the local government personnel.

    Around the end of 2016, the wife of the Party chief in a village in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region died in a traffic accident. The ferocious man insisted on burying the driver responsible for his wife’s death alive. It was with the intervention of 130 policemen that the driver was rescued from the gangsters.

    The Party chief and head of a village in Henan Province extorted money from the villagers in every deal possible, including farmland leases, drinking water resources, and even villagers’ wedding and funeral ceremonies.

    Some despot-controlled villages even became drug producing and trafficking centers. On the early morning of Dec. 29, 2013, backed by helicopters, gunboats and armored vehicles, hundreds of armed policemen stormed the village of Boshe in Lufeng City of Guangdong Province, busting 18 drug gangs, destroying 77 drug-producing workshops, seizing 2.9 tons of “Ice Drug” and hundreds tons of drug-making raw materials, and nine guns with hundreds of bullets.

    The drug lord was none other than Cai Dongjia, Party chief of the village. Cai had engaged in drug producing and trafficking for many years and acted as a protective umbrella for the drug traffickers in his village since he was made Party chief.

    His support emboldened his fellow criminals and his village soon became the largest drug den in China. From his house alone police seized 350 kg of drugs.

    Many may wonder why these village despots can make their villages their own territory with no fear of the law.

    It is because they have their own protectors at higher levels. Some town and county governments do not supervise or punish the village tyrants, instead, they indulge and even collude with them.

    So, the key to curbing the rampancy of village despots is to remove their protective umbrella, which has been made the main goal of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. Those law-breaking despots must be brought to justice. Grass-roots administration should be strengthened with new blood — promoting young, law-abiding and upright cadres to the leadership of villages.

    The most important thing is to raise the legal consciousness of villagers, empowering them to protect themselves.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)