The Village That Voted: Wukan’s Brief Dream of Democracy

Luna Tian

I. The Silence After the Shouts

The streets of Wukan are quiet now. Too quiet. Once, these narrow roads in a southern Chinese fishing village pulsed with chants for justice and democracy. Today, they are lined with surveillance cameras, patrolled by plainclothes officers, and watched over by a silence more unnerving than any slogan.

It’s been nearly a year since Lin Zuluan, the village chief once celebrated for leading China’s most famous grassroots uprising, was sentenced to prison. Officially, he is guilty of bribery. Unofficially, he is a symbol made inconvenient. His trial, like his election in 2012, was never really about just one man.

In the village square, where residents once cast the first free votes many had ever seen, the bulletin boards have been stripped clean. No more meeting notices. No more protest posters. Only faded traces remain—of a time, not long ago, when a community believed it could govern itself.

What happened to Wukan? What does it mean when a village that dared to dream is forced back into silence?

This is the story of a promise made and broken, of courage punished, and of democracy’s brief—and perhaps final—whisper in rural China.

II. Seeds of Revolt: Land, Corruption, and Broken Promises

Long before Wukan became a headline, it was just another coastal village in Guangdong province—poor, hardworking, and largely forgotten. Generations of families had lived here by the sea, relying on farming and fishing to survive. But as China’s development raced forward in the 2000s, Wukan’s land became valuable. Too valuable.

Over several years, large parcels of collective village land were quietly sold off to real estate developers. Villagers allege that local officials pocketed the profits—millions of yuan—without consulting the people who had farmed those fields for decades. Compensation, if offered at all, was meager. More often, it never came.

Rumors swirled. Petitions were filed and ignored. What began as murmurs of discontent grew louder as villagers realized that not only had their farmland been sold, but no one was willing to tell them where the money had gone.

By 2011, frustration turned to fury. A younger generation—savvy with mobile phones and emboldened by stories of resistance in other parts of China—began organizing. Community leaders like Lin Zuluan and Xue Jinbo, both respected elders, stepped forward. They weren’t outsiders or professional activists. They were farmers, uncles, neighbors. And they were angry.

“We just want our land back,” one villager reportedly said at the time. “And we want the right to decide what happens to our home.”

It was a simple demand. But in China’s tightly controlled political system, even that was revolutionary.

III. The 2011 Uprising and the Death of Xue Jinbo

The protests began in earnest in September 2011. At first, they were peaceful: villagers gathered in the square, held homemade signs, and marched to local government offices demanding answers. But when officials refused to meet them and police attempted to suppress the demonstrations, Wukan pushed back.

Thousands joined. Children, grandparents, and entire families stood together, demanding justice. The villagers erected barricades and effectively took control of Wukan, expelling Communist Party officials and police from the village. For a brief, remarkable moment, Wukan became self-governed.

State media tried to ignore the situation, but word got out. Microblogs—China’s Twitter-like platforms—spread news and images of the uprising. Independent journalists slipped past police lines to report from inside the village. What they found was not a rebellion, but a community pleading to be heard.

Then came December 2011, and with it, the event that would stain Wukan’s story forever.

Xue Jinbo, one of the protest’s key leaders, was arrested by authorities after agreeing to negotiate. Within three days, he was dead.

Officials claimed he died of cardiac arrest. But photographs leaked by his family showed bruises and marks on his body, suggesting he had been beaten in custody. The village erupted in grief and rage. To many, Xue’s death was not just a tragedy—it was a message.

But instead of folding, Wukan’s residents stood firmer. They held a massive funeral march, attended by thousands. Their resistance, broadcast online and picked up by international outlets, put the Chinese government in an uncomfortable spotlight. Something had to give.

IV. The Democratic Miracle: An Election in China

In a rare turn, the central government blinked.

Faced with growing media attention and fears of broader unrest, Guangdong’s then-party secretary Wang Yang took the unusual step of intervening personally. Instead of sending more riot police, the provincial authorities made a promise: the villagers would be allowed to elect their own leaders in a free and open vote.

It was a gamble—and for a brief time, it worked.

In March 2012, under the watchful eyes of both domestic and international observers, Wukan held its first democratic village election. Ballots were cast, results counted, and candidates debated. It was unlike anything most villagers had seen in their lifetimes. The winner, overwhelmingly, was Lin Zuluan, the soft-spoken retired cadre who had become the face of the protests.

Lin pledged transparency, land reform, and above all, to return power to the people. His administration published meeting minutes, posted financial records publicly, and tried to untangle the murky land deals that had sparked the uprising in the first place.

The world watched in cautious admiration. Foreign media called it a “democracy experiment” and speculated whether Wukan might become a template for local political reform in China. Even some liberal-leaning officials saw it as a hopeful sign: perhaps controlled grassroots democracy could coexist within the Party’s system.

But hope, in Wukan, would prove short-lived.

V. The Return of Control: 2016 Crackdown and Lin Zuluan’s Arrest

For a while, it seemed as if Wukan might truly chart a new path. But governing proved far harder than protesting.

Lin Zuluan and his newly elected village committee soon discovered that reclaiming the sold land was almost impossible. The deals had been finalized, the profits dispersed, and the paper trail—if it ever existed—was buried under layers of bureaucratic silence. Higher-level officials, once eager to defuse the crisis, now offered little help. Promises faded. Frustration returned.

By 2016, the mood in Wukan had soured. Villagers began organizing another petition campaign, demanding real progress on land recovery. Lin Zuluan, now in his seventies, announced he would lead it.

Two days before the petition was scheduled to be delivered, Lin was arrested in a pre-dawn raid. State media quickly aired his “confession,” accusing him of accepting bribes. The timing was chillingly familiar to observers: a leader silenced just before another act of collective resistance.

Once again, Wukan erupted.

For over 80 days, villagers protested Lin’s detention. They held banners, marched daily, and demanded his release. But this time, the government did not negotiate.

In September 2016, hundreds of riot police stormed Wukan in the early morning darkness. Tear gas canisters fell on sleeping homes. Residents were dragged from their beds. Dozens were arrested, many of them teenagers or elderly. The protests were crushed, the village sealed off, and the story scrubbed from China’s tightly controlled internet.

The democratic experiment was over. Wukan, once a symbol of possibility, was now a warning.

VI. Reflections from 2017: What Wukan Taught Us

Today, Wukan is under tight surveillance. Lin Zuluan remains behind bars, serving a sentence many believe was engineered to silence him. Some of the villagers arrested during the 2016 crackdown have since been released, but they speak cautiously—if at all. The banners are gone. The meetings have stopped. The microphones are quiet.

But the memory lingers.

Wukan’s brief window of democracy was never just about land. It was about dignity. About a community daring to speak for itself, to govern itself, to hope. That hope—though battered—still matters. It showed that ordinary people in China could organize, vote, and demand accountability. And it showed just how swiftly that hope could be extinguished.

The lesson of Wukan is not simply that democracy is difficult, or dangerous. It is that democracy, even in its smallest form, is still powerful enough to scare those who fear accountability.

Six years after the first protests, five years after the election, and one year after the final crackdown, Wukan is again a quiet village. But for those who remember, it will always be more than that.

It was a place where, for a moment, a village voted—and dared to dream aloud.