Wukan has been resolved about as well as one could hope, at least for the moment - immunity for the village leaders (better than I expected), arrests of local officials, the land sale at least delayed, lots of language about reform from the provincial authorities, and Wang Yang getting his time in the sunshine.The real question is what things look like in three months time, once the spotlight is off. The Telegraph calls it "a humbling rebuff of [the] administration's authority," but I don't think that's how it's going to play here; if anything, this fits higher government narratives of the top leaders as impartial, fair-minded negotiators of social disputes.
Equally, the FT "The response so far to these challenges demonstrates how few methods, beyond brute force, the ruling party has to deal with rising discontent." But, again, that's not really true; negotiation is increasingly the norm once things break beyond the local level of thugocracy, and there's a big toolkit for dealing with discontent, at all kinds of levels. How effective those tools are, and how compromised by corruption, is another question.
There's also the more pragmatic conclusion that could be drawn by other people in similar circumstance "So that's what you have to do to get the provincial government to pay attention."
Posted by: chjh | December 24, 2011 at 11:50 PM