Tea Leaf Nation

Could a village in mainland China be more democratic than Hong Kong? With Wukan’s village elections recently complete and Hong Kong’s controversial election for Chief Executive on the way, iSun Affairs (阳光时务) has created a compelling pictorial suggesting the answer is “yes.” iSunAffairs.com [Chinese] describes itself as a magazine that covers economy, politics and culture in [...]

It’s official: Wukan 2.0 is taking place in Panhe (泮河), a small village of about 5,000 souls in coastal Zhejiang Province.  As Tea Leaf Nation reported on February 7 and February 8, based on reports circulating in the Chinese blogosphere, and as now confirmed by the Global Times, at least 200 villagers staged three protests [...]

Perhaps Wukan may be what many netizens are calling “the spark that sets the prairie ablaze.” As Tea Leaf Nation recently reported, China’s blogosphere is abuzz with rumors of a citizen uprising in Panhe Village in Zhejiang province. As with last year’s Wukan uprising, citizens there allegedly grew infuriated over the local government’s sale of [...]

[Readers can see an update to this post in Wukan 2.0? Evidence Mounts Panhe Uprising Is Real in these pages.] Could it be the “Wukan effect?” That’s what @城道 has used to describe recent rumors of another uprising in Panhe’s East and West Village in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province that have recently circulated on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. Stop [...]

On February 1, Wukan held its village elections. Wukan exploded in an uprising late last year after village representative Xue Jinbo’s death in police custody. The new elections held following the uprising have caught the eye of China’s blogosphere because, as The Telegraph reports, “villagers believe [it] is China’s first wholly transparent, completely open, democratic [...]