after debate on bejamin's report faded away, people are re-focusing on critical questions about taishi affair, like what has happened and why it happened in that way, and perhaps many people are interested in understanding the implications of taishi affair.
while the spokesman of Panyu district government provided a press release last saturday to describe what happened in taishi village, china observers offered different perspectives like this, this, this and this to conjecture the macro political causes that might influenced taishi affair and what happened there. so, we basically have two scenarios:
scenario [1]
according to the Panyu disctrict government, the petition was initiated by one village committee member named Liang Shusheng, who was incompatible with the village committee head. the accusations against the village committee head are mostly imaged or fabricated by Liang Shusheng, and were later confirmed by investigators sent by the Panyu district government. that's why a lot of petitioners withdrew their request after they knew the petition to recall the village committee head was baseless.
scenario [2]
based on what our china observers told us, the petition was not baseless and the local government colluded with the gang of the corrupt committee head and crushed the villagers for fear that the petition and the subsequent demonstrations might lead to a chain of events that damage the "social stability". most petitioners were intimidated by the local government and the gang of corrupt village committe head and withdrew their petition. the central government, even though more on the side of the taishi petitioners, was reluctant to get involved because the guangdong province, where taishi village is located, is somehow not in the control of its fist.
well, there are inconsistencies in both accounts, scenario [1] might have more but scenario [2] is not flawless. here are some of the questions i have with scenario [2]:
1) why the local government wanted to collude with the village mafia? isn't it true that supporting the petition will be most effective and quickest way to "quench the fire"?
2) other than the reason of "keeping social stability", i don't see there are other strong motives for the local government to take the risk of backing a corrupt village official. there is no economic interests involved that could benefit the local government, which is usually a strong motive for forming alliances with corrupt officials and/or business owners. and the village official head is most possiblely a nobody in the eyes of the higher ranking officials of the Panyu district government, not mention the guangdong government. is there other motive that could explain the Panyu district government's approach to "quench the fire"?
3) from the peoples daily editorial and the limitations of on-line discussions on taishi affair, the central government supported the initial petition but was concerned the negative role models that villager played when they went to demonstrations and hunger strikes. but, it's not convincing enough to say that the central government couldn't exert its will in guangdong province because of power struggle or local authorities. and ...
4) in the same vein, why the guangdong authorities took the risk to defend a corrupt village official, provided there is a power struggle between the central and the provincial governments, couldn't that become an excuse for the central government to weaken their power base?
all in all, the second scenario doesn't provide us a consistent and convincing explaination as what happened in taishi. before more details are revealed through independent sources, it's just too early to say we know the real story, not mention to draw conclusions based on a conjectured picture.
provided what our china observers told us are true and seenario [2] is not unfounded, what are the implicatinos of taishi affair? here are some of my thoughts:
1) it's dangerous to generalize in china, not only dangerous to generalize from an isolated case like taishi, but also dangerous to generalize from the 52 cases cited by sun bin, considering the source from which the data was revealed, we don't know whether the 52 cases are good samples to represent the the whole picture.
2) the mental frame of "authoritarian government beats human rights advocate and journalist" seriously hindered some "china observers" from digging into the core of the taishi affair and form sound judgement on what are happening in china.
3) from the story of Lv Banglie, people will cast a doubtful eyes on the belief that village democracy could solve the problems existed before. as a universal value, democracy is without doubt a good thing to pursue, however, it's a different thing to implemente it to solve particular problems in rural areas of china. some chinese people follow the course of their "pro-democracy" counterparts in the west and see it as something like a "jack of all trades", this kind of mentality jeopardize the democracy test in villages and the reputation of democracy in china.
to be continued.