The Telegraph gets over-excited over a notable, but not unprecedented, instance of local officials being driven out by popular action here. "For the first time in record" my arse; Jamie's blogged a couple of previous instances of the authorities temporarily pulling back or compromising with local leaders before. And unless it involves, say, artillery brigades being called in to put down the rebellion, you're nowhere near your level of even 1970s Cultural Revolution action.
Anyway, my guess is that the local officials end up sacked/having their bank accounts uncomfortably closely examined/moved to other cities, some gesture is made to the villagers, a few of them end up in jail, and new and smoother party leaders get helicoptered in from outside.
Addenda: Jamie here. Something very like the Wukan incident happened in Shantou on an even larger scale in 2007, when nine counties around the city temporarily turfed out the local CPC apparat. Report of that incident here, B&T coverage here.
The difference this time is that there’s a journalist inside the event. See also ChinaGeeks for constant updates.
Cheers Jamie, that was the one I was thinking of.
ChinaGeeks wisely points out that the villagers are at least partially running a classic "rightful resistance" strategy - appealing to the central government for righteous intervention to save them from local corruption.
Posted by: JamesP | December 14, 2011 at 02:32 PM