China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [116]
Such resentments have led to widespread tax resistance. In a survey conducted in Xinjiang in 2001, tax resistance was found prevalent among peasants in 40 percent of the villages surveyed.133 In many areas, peasants simply abandoned land as a form of protest. In one Hubei township, where this problem was considered serious, 25 percent of the farmland was abandoned by peasants who could no longer afford to till the land because of taxes, high costs of seeds and fertilizers, and low prices of grains.134 In another Hubei township, according to its party secretary, peasants abandoned almost two-thirds of the township’s arable farmland in 2000.135
As a result, collecting taxes and fees has become increasingly difficult. In most areas, this has become practically the predominant administrative task performed by local officials in rural areas, consuming 60-70 percent of their lime.136 A report issued by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that, in its survey of six counties in Xinjiang in 2001, about 70 percent of the village cadres thought collecting fees was the most difficult task.137 In response, local authorities, which depend on such taxes and fees to support themselves, adopted various collection methods.138 Officials in many areas recruited thugs as their collection agents. Such a practice has resulted in illegal imprisonment, torture, and the deaths of peasants who were unable to pay. In Guangxi province, local officials even forced middle-school teachers to collect taxes from peasants who had refused to pay. Because teachers arc highly respected among peasants, they usually were able to collect back taxes. Such tactics were used in many areas where tax resistance was high.139
The persistent and rising tensions between local authorities and the peasantry accelerated rural political decay, which in turn added to bad governance in the countryside and became another source of social discontent. In its most extreme form, rural political decay has led to the emergence of local mafia states. In his study of forty Hunan villages that had been labeled “out of control” (shikong), Yu jianrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reported that rural township officials deliberately allowed mafia-type criminal elements to penetrate village governments. These officials used such elements to counterbalance other organized criminal groups or intimidate local peasantry and facilitate tax collection. In some cases, township officials themselves had turned into criminals and effectively formed their own mafia groups. Of the forty villages that were considered controlled by local mafia groups, the chairmen of the villagers committees in half of them were connected with organized crime and won their elections with the support of the mafia.140
At the other end of the spectrum, peasant resistance had led to a virtual collapse of government authority in villages. The following two examples from Anhui province are illustrative. A party secretary in Wugou township in Anhui gave this description of the conditions in his jurisdiction in the late 1990s:
The township was known for violating the family planning policy and for sending petitioners to higher authorities. Peasants there refused to pay the agricultural tax. When local officials and police tried to enforce government orders, they were surrounded by villagers and forced to write self-criticisms before they were released. In 1998, the three inspection teams dispatched by the provincial family planning commission were attacked by the villagers and forced to flee. Hoodlums ran amok. The township’s party secretary and mayor were repeatedly assaulted; the attackers were never punished. In 1998, the township government was reelected. All six candidates sent down by the higher authorities lost. The leaders of the city and county led 13 work teams to try