ABSTRACT
The giant success of economic benefit won by the migrants’ at the erosion area of the Dahe dam under the leadership of Teacher Xu and Tailor Wang has brought envy and comparison from the peasants of Baiyang 16 group in Shanyang township in which the Dahe hydropower station occupied land. Peasants of Baiyang 16 originally got compensation of a relatively higher standard, but they rashly put forward a much higher standard of compensation in March 1990. When the government turned down their request, peasants of Baiyang 16 unit launched an attack at the Dahe hydropower station. However, lacking the leadership of individuals like Teacher Xu and Tailor Wang who were good at troubling skills of boundary-spanning, Baiyang 16 simply and violently sabotaged the production of the hydropower station, causing severe economic loss to the station and dreadful political influence on the prefecture. The behaviors of Baiyang 16 hit the government’s bottom line. Instead of agreeing with their requests, the prefecture severely punished the leader and key figures of troublemakers according to law. Witnessing government’s soft measures in handling peasants at the erosion area and its tough measure in cracking down on peasants at the land-occupied area, the migrants of Dahe hydropower station finally stopped petitions which had lasted for over a decade. However, back to reality, the ending of the migrants’ petitions at the Dahe dam was only a prelude of a larger scale of petitions by the migrants at the Three Gorges Dam. The drama of ceaseless petitions repeated again and again in post-Mao China.
