Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

Brutal taxes and levies
The Ding story looks like a story that ends well: justice was done and
the central government took measures to reduce the peasants’ tax
burden. But decisions made in Beijing are one thing; whether they are
implemented throughout the country is another. This is illustrated by
another story from the same province Anhui where Chen and Chun
made their study. Zhang Guiquan, who had been convicted of rape
and corruption, was appointed village head before he had even
finished his prison term. When the villagers organized a team to investigate
amount of levies Zhang collected and his methods of collection,
he and his sons killed four members of the investigative team. Again
to cover up the grave tax and levy situation the country newspaper
and television station reported the news as a village feud and the death
of four men as the result of manslaughter.
The three Wangs
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
The third story started in 1993. The party secretary of a village
committee, Gao Jianjun, took away Wang Hongchao’s television set
because the latter did not pay the 6 RMB demanded for what was
claimed to be a school building construction fee. Wang Junbing and
Wang Hongchao went to the xiang (township) government to
complain, but their complaint was ignored. The two Wang’s plus Wang
Xiangdong then went to the county government demanding a reappraisal
but were rebuked and physically pushed out of the reception
office before they could even say what they had come about. After
organizing a couple of protest marches involving several hundred
villagers to the county town, to no avail, the three Wang’s decided to
take their complaint to Beijing. Though the authorities in Beijing, after
hearing their case, gave instructions to rectify the situation, and though
the country authority under pressure from Beijing ordered the village
committee to refund to the villagers all the illegal levies, nothing was
actually done at the village level. Moreover, Wang Junbing was sacked
from his land management job at the township and the other two
Wangs were beaten up by xiang government personnel.
What followed looked like fiction, but unfortunately was real. One
dark night a team of five men consisting of local police and security
guards went to arrest the three Wangs. The villagers were quickly alerted
to the late night raid. Many of them got up quickly and surrounded the
intruders, who would not admit that they were sent by the xiang government
officially to arrest the three Wangs. The villagers disarmed the five
men but later let them go after they admitted that they were actually
police. But that was enough for the county government to send a police
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