What's trending?

#承包千亩地收割时遭村民哄抢

The story of a brazen harvest heist has been viewed 78 million times on Weibo. In the central province of Henan, China’s agricultural heartland, 160 acres of contracted cropland was looted by villagers at harvest time, with authorities apparently powerless to intervene.

What's the story?

Hundreds of pillaging villagers looted 160 acres of peanuts fields at night using headlights, robbing a contractor of its harvest for the third year in a row. The peanut crop in the village of Daliwang in Henan could not be defended, said one local official who explained that calling the police was of “no use,” according to local media Xiaoxiang Morning News.

In late October, a Zhumadian county contractor surnamed Yuan reported that his fields were bare when starting harvest on the land he managed in Daliwang.

Yuan said that since 2017, the land contracted to him and his friends to grow peanuts, sweet corn and wheat had been robbed at harvest time. In 2020 the land acquired for an investment of 3 million yuan saw “Hundreds of people come … Some used headlights to keep looting at night.” Yuan said he had been willing to give villagers leftover peanuts after the harvest. A Daliwang village cadre said residents of nearby villages were to blame, but that there were too many people for authorities to be able to “take back control.” The cadre said he hoped media reports would appeal to locals, educating them that “theft is illegal.”

In contrast to land in urban areas, which is exclusively owned by the Chinese state, rural land is “collectively” owned by farmers, with township governments and village committees acting as caretakers. Farmers are allowed to lease out rural land for farming under a contractual land system and many who leave the countryside to take up employment in the cities and towns do so. A Caixin report in 2016 wrote that according to Liu Shouying, an expert on urban-rural development, 60% of cases of social unrest in China are linked to land disputes.

What are people saying online?

“Gang robbery should not be condoned,” agreed many people on Weibo. However, land disputes are an age old problem in China, which led large numbers of Weibo users to ask, “What era are we in that this kind of thing still happens?” As one commentator put it, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think this happened 100 years ago.”

Although many felt that the answer probably lay with the local police, “who were probably drunk,” a large number of Weibo users reasoned that “Poor mountains and evil waters make [bad] people.”

With the harvest looting taking place in Henan, regularly reviled in Chinese society, social media was full of comments such as, “no smoke without fire” and “Henan again.” One popular comment gave a little more perspective to this prejudice, writing “Oh it’s the Northeasterners again. No? Sorry! It happened in Henan this time? If it occurred elsewhere in China, you’d say it was bad locals, but in these two places, there is always a discussion about regional traits instead. What if it were just down to the individuals involved?”

Editor Flynn Murphy (flynnmurphy@caixin.com)

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