According to residents, terrified town officials barricaded themselves inside the building on Aug. 17 before 30 truckloads of armed policemen arrived to disperse the crowd. At least one farmer was severely beaten in the melee, and more than a dozen others were carted away. When word of the Yuandu protest spread, thousands more angry farmers rampaged through neighboring towns in this impoverished region of south-central China's Jiangxi Province, breaking windows and even attacking the homes of some officials.
Farmers say the police are still searching for leaders of the protests.
Such disturbances are increasingly common across this vast agrarian country, where as many as 900 million people still depend on the land for their livelihood. The peasant class, whose dissatisfaction has driven governments from power throughout China's history, is growing restive again, swelling the ranks of the country's disaffected along with laid-off workers, struggling pensioners and the millions of Chinese who have migrated from the countryside to cities where they eke out a tenuous existence. Farmers in central Anhui Province complain that they cannot survive because of high taxes, and farmers in Shandong Province in the east report that the police beat those who refuse to pay their fees. In northern Shaanxi Province, tens of thousands of farmers are lobbying for relief, and their lawyer has been jailed for allegedly inciting the peasantry to revolt. Despite Marxism's promise of abolishing class distinctions, the old feudal pattern is back in force, this time with local Communist Party bosses playing the role of oppressor.