According to Article 16 of the Organic Law on Villagers’ Committees, if more than 20 per cent of the voters in a village wish to dismiss a member (or members) of the village committee, the village committee “should promptly convene a Villagers’ Meeting” and let the villagers vote for or against dismissal. If more than 50 per cent of the village’s registered voters vote for dismissal after hearing the relevant committee member’s own statement, then the impeachment and dismissal procedure is formally and legally completed. Nowhere in the Law is it stated that the villagers’ reasons for proposing the dismissal of an elected official must be “valid” or “reasonable”. Rather, the purpose of convening the villagers’ meeting is to determine precisely that issue. Moreover, according to Article 28 of The Procedures for Village Elections in Zhejiang Province (a set of regulations issued in October 1999 by the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress),

“If, within one month of receiving an impeachment and dismissal request, the Village Committee fails to convene a villagers’ meeting to vote and decide upon the issue, then the People’s Government at township and county levels should provide prompt assistance in the convening of such a meeting.”

Villagers in the small rural village of Dazhu, near to the prosperous coastal city of Ningbo, elected several representatives who then formed a “committee for the protection of villagers’ rights” in order to undertake this impeachment procedure. On 11 December 2003, more than 200 villagers (Dazhu village has 340 registered voters) signed a request asking the county government, as specified in the Organic Law on Villagers’ Committees, to assist them in holding a formal meeting of the village in order to dismiss Zhu Yuanchao, the Deputy Chair of the Dazhu Village Committee.

The reasons the villagers gave for the proposed dismissal included several allegations against Zhu Yuanchao of corruption and the fraudulent reporting of village accounts. The villagers claimed that Zhu had untruthfully reported the area affected by a government infrastructure project (designed to reclaim and redevelop an area of land adjoining the village’s river), in order to swindle the government’s compensation fund. He was also accused of handing over to his acquaintances some 20 acres of village land and of spending public funds on personal holidays and socializing. Finally the villagers insisted that Zhu had failed to promote any significant economic development in the village as a whole during his time in office.

The following day, on 12 December, Chen Haiyan, the head of Changjie Township’s political section, refused their request on the grounds that the dismissal of a village committee chief “would create bad publicity for the local government”. Chen also argued that since Zhu Yuanchao had served over half his term of office, the villagers should continue to tolerate him until the next due election date. Chen also claimed that Zhu had not done anything explicitly illegal, despite the evidence to the contrary presented by the Dazhu villagers.

However, the villagers continued to seek the support of the local authorities to dismiss Zhu Yuanchao from office. Despite repeated requests for meetings, officials from both the town and county government refused even to discuss the issue with them. The villagers finally informed the township government that if it continued to ignore their request they would present a collective complaint to the government and publicize the case to the local media. In addition, they said that unless the township government promptly repaid them an existing debt of three million Yuan in compensation for previous land requisitions, then they would take their land back and halt any further government construction work on it. Faced with this ultimatum, on 4 January 2004 the local government finally agreed to send an investigative work team to Dazhu Village.

However, on 6 January when the team arrived in Dazhu, it went directly to the village chief’s home and refused to meet with any of the villagers. Dismayed by the government’s response, on 19 January the Dazhu villagers put out posters calling for a villagers’ meeting to impeach Zhu Yuanchao on 31 January.

On 29 January, local government officials visited the homes of villagers one by one, trying to persuade them that the dismissal of the village chief would make their village “lose face”, and threatening that the villagers would be “held accountable” for any government response to their action. The next day, rumors were circulated around the village that any attempt to hold a dismissal meeting would be violently broken up. In the morning of 31 January, the “committee for the protection of villagers’ rights” wrote to the township government asking it to stop sending officials to the village to intimidate the residents and expressing its determination to protect the villagers’ legitimate rights to dismiss and elect their own officials. At noon that day, the group was told by existing village officials that the meeting would not be allowed to proceed. Local reporters also contacted the villagers saying that they had been officially warned not to report on the event and therefore would be unable to attend it. The Villagers’ Meeting on 31 January was then cancelled.

On 5 February, after studying the text of the The Procedures for Village Elections in Zhejiang Province, which clearly states that villagers can, in the absence of government participation, hold a formal impeachment hearing and hold new elections, the villagers decided to press ahead with their plans for a village meeting to dismiss Zhu Yuanchao despite the threats from officials to break up any such action.

At 6 pm on 13 February, villagers held the formal Village Meeting to discuss and decide upon Zhu’s dismissal. Over half the eligible voters of the village turned up. At the meeting, Zhu Liangye, a villagers’ representative standing for the role of village chief (with the support of over 200 villagers) read out the reasons for seeking Zhu Yuanchao’s dismissal and – in the absence of any statement in self-defence from Zhu, who failed to appear – the villagers proceeded to vote.

At 9 pm, the votes were counted. Out of the 340 votes (mobile ballot boxes had also been set up in the village), 230 villagers voted for dismissal, 30 voted against and 80 abstained. Zhu Yuanchao’s dismissal was then announced, and the villagers started to prepare for the election of a new village chief on 20 February.

The villagers informed the local government of the meeting’s outcome and of their decision to hold a new election. Local government officials, in defiance of the provincial regulations, again stated that the villagers were acting illegally and that no election could be held without the permission and participation of the government. One official, Mr. Yan, visited the village to formally announce that the election was illegal, and he threatened the villagers with legal repercussions if they continued to insist on holding a fresh election.

In several interviews with CLB, Dazhu villagers and their representatives expressed fears that the planned election meeting would be forcibly broken up. However, the villagers discussed their response to any government intervention and agreed that in the event of violence the villagers would disperse peacefully and refuse to respond in kind to any provocation by the authorities. They informed us that their main aim was to avoid any violence, and to continue to push for a new election.

The villagers’ candidate for the post of new village committee chairman, Zhu Liangye, informed CLB that Professor Yu Depeng, the Ningbo University law expert, had provided them with valuable legal advice on how to conduct the election meeting. Candidate Zhu also said that Professor Fan Yi (the Ningbo People’s Congress representative, local delegate to the National People’s Congress and Dean of Ningbo University’s Faculty of Foreign Languages) had showed great concern for the villagers’ situation and had pledged his full support for the upcoming election. On behalf of the villagers, Fan Yi had also made some urgent calls to the chairman of Ningbo’s Political Consultative Conference and to the Secretary-General of the municipal government, in the hope that they could persuade the local authorities not to infringe or crack down upon the lawful electoral rights of the Dazhu villagers. People’s Delegate Fan Yi also conveyed to senior municipal officials his determination to raise the case in the forthcoming NPC meeting in Beijing in March if any unlawful countermeasures were taken against the forthcoming Dazhu village election.

CLB also learned that on 19 February, the county government had held an urgent meeting to discuss the villagers’ election, at which it decided that the election must be prevented at any cost and that no media exposure of the attempted election would be allowed. We also spoke to an official from the Changjie Town Government, who stated that although he was not aware of the planned election, he was “sure that the government would not allow it”. He could offer no legal grounds or explanation for this viewpoint. Again in stark contrast to the above-mentioned provincial regulations, another official from the Civil Administration Department of Ninghai County government informed CLB that no villagers’ election would be legally recognized unless it had first been authorized by the government. CLB also spoke to staff at the Changjie Police Station who stated that they would take no action if the election was peaceful, but if they believed it might lead to instability then they would intervene to halt the proceedings.

In addition, a Mr. Su from the Grassroots Governance Department of Ninghai County, told CLB that the local government did not accept the dismissal of the previous village chief and therefore would not view any new election as being lawful. As noted above, Article 28 of The Procedures for Village Elections in Zhejiang Province states clearly that if a village committee fails to convene a public meeting within one month of the villagers’ request to dismiss a committee member, then “the township and county-level governments should provide prompt assistance in the convening of such a meeting.” In other words, it is the duty of local government to support and facilitate any such meetings, not to obstruct them. According to Mr. Su, however, any such election could only take place after prior approval from the Party authorities, and therefore what the Dazhu villagers were doing had “violated due legal procedure”.

A few hours before the 20 February election meeting was due to start, CLB again contacted Candidate Zhu Liangye, who reiterated his confidence in the rule of law in China and his hope and belief that the village election would be allowed to go ahead without official interference. The election meeting began at 6.30pm, and by 7pm it was over – violently broken up by scores of armed police. More than 200 Dazhu Village residents had gathered in the village hall, preparing to elect their new village chief. However, thirty minutes into the meeting, according to eye-witnesses, more than 100 officials and armed police sent by the Changjie Town government burst into the hall and forcibly dispersed the meeting. They first ejected from the hall the Director of the Ningbo branch of the official Xinhua News Agency who was there to observe the election, together with Professor Yu Depeng from Ningbo University’s Law Department, who had acted as the villagers’ legal consultant. They then violently broke the ballot box into pieces and ordered all the voters to leave forthwith. The villagers peacefully left the meeting hall and made no attempt to resist the police.

The Dazhu villagers remain defiant in the face of this outright suppression of their lawful rights to elect their own village officials, and they are determined to press ahead with their plan to hold an independent election for the now-vacant post of village committee chairman. No date has as yet been set for the election.

26 February 2004