From Cover, issue no. 347, December 24, 2007
Translated by Zuo Maohong
Original article: [Chinese]

Life goes on as usual in Baitangkou, a tiny village tucked on the periphery of Tianjin's Jinan district-- residents are unstirred by a recent government decree ordering the redress of massive land misuse.

Four months have passed since the Tianjin municipal authority directed the removal of illegally constructed factories on land designated for agricultural use in Baitangkou, which tops the list of land abuse cases nationwide and was made public by the government a year ago.

But now, the dust seems to have settled.

All Talk, No Action
Any stranger stepping into Baitangkou will likely be regarded as a potential client looking for factory to rent. Although the community leaders have recently received numerous inquiries on the legality of its factories' operations, the village's party secretary, Du Fuqi, replies: "We have been under inspection since 2006. Even back then, the authorities called for demolition (of the factories), but it was all talk and no action."

When the EO reporter disguised herself as a potential client and got in touch with Yang Xinghua, another village official, the latter promised that an agreement could be arranged in private and that it would be unaffected by the government's order.

He tried to convince the reporter by saying he had just sealed several deals in the past days. He said in a reassuring tone: "There's absolutely no risk of demolition. These talks have been going on for a year but nothing has changed."

In the mean time, a villager hopeful of retrieving his farmland after learning about "Intervention from Beijing" in the newspaper is now in a state of uncertainty. He has "put away the firecrackers" soon after hearing the good news, and has also set aside copies of a news report entitled, "Ten Typical Cases of Land Abuse Exposed by the Ministry of Supervision and Ministry of Land and Resources", which appeared in the People's Daily on December 10th. Copies of it have been widely circulated amongst the villagers.

Based on investigations by the two ministries, the Baitangkou village committee was found to have illegally rented out 803.02 mu (each mu is 1/15 hectare) of collective-owned farmland in 2004. Between 2004 and 2006, the town level Xinzhuang Economic Development Center, without government approval, had bought collective-owned land in Baitangkou amounting to 600 mu, of which, 400 mu had been leased out for non-agricultural use.