Word: lianjiang
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...posting to Lianjiang doesn't seem like a promotion. The rural county's neighborhoods of tight wooden houses lean toward the concrete banks of the Ao River like drunkards looking for support and not finding much. But winning the job of Communist Party Secretary there was Huang Jingao's big chance. He'd oversee the completion of renovations to the county town's riverfront and then could reasonably expect promotion to a bigger town in his coastal province, Fujian. The county's top position was a reward to the 52-year-old cadre for exposing corruption and braving death threats...
...been drawn into a bigger one. In an essay called "Why Have I Worn a Bulletproof Vest for Six Years?" he accused fellow officials in Lianjiang of corruption. The article appeared on a website run by the Party's flagship People's Daily and became a must-read among knowledgeable Chinese?even though it was wiped off the Internet within 24 hours and Chinese media were barred from covering the case. The misconduct Huang alleges is almost banal?he says local officials deprived residents of their homes and manipulated land prices. What makes the case sensational is the rare dragon...
...corruption is never far away?especially when local officials are chronically underpaid (the salary of a typical township magistrate in China is about $250 a month before bonuses and adjustments). For a local official to crack down on corruption can mean that cherished development projects get delayed. Indeed, in Lianjiang, Huang's expos? has stalled the county's first apartment complex financed by outside investors. "If this becomes a big scandal, nobody will want to invest there again," says a senior Party member in Fuzhou, the provincial capital, who has seen minutes of meetings regarding Huang's case...
...received death threats and his own deputy was beaten to death in an orange grove. The city issued him a bulletproof vest that he wore proudly around his office. The investigation led to jail terms for five prominent Party officials. On the day Huang reported for duty at Lianjiang in January 2002, a hundred residents stopped him to say the government had torn down their homes and rescinded promises of compensation. Huang concluded that the city had transferred riverfront land to a developer for half its real value. The giveaway was greased, Huang says, by gifts from the contractor...
...government's rebuttal hints that Huang himself "violated rules of honest governance" but provides no details. "He ran the town like a king, with no regard for the law," says Zhou Hongwen, the vice chairman of Yuansheng Real Estate Corp. But back in Lianjiang, residents say they glued posters supporting Huang on the wall of Party headquarters. They were removed. "Eight people lived in my mother's house, and now where will they go?" asks one woman living near a Christian church, also slated for destruction. "Officials are stuffing themselves on our rice, and we're going hungry...
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