Last month, in a rural county far from Beijing, the mask fell from the face of Hu Jintao, and this “reformer” was exposed as a tried-and-true Communist in the bloody tradition of Mao Zedong (the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and the anti-rightist campaign), Deng Xiaoping (the June 4 massacre), and Jiang Zemin (the Falun Gong War). Hu’s ticket to this infamous club came in the massacre of Hanyuan County, Sichuan Province—a massacre committed by the Communist military under Hu’s command.

Reacting to the crippling energy shortages in the eastern provinces—i.e., seeing an opportunity to make a corrupt fortune—local cadres in Hanyuan looked out across the Dadu River plain and saw a hydroelectric dam. They quickly went to work. They relabeled the fertile farm land as hardscrabble dirt to justify the massive land seizure, and reduce the already pitiful amount of compensation owed the displaced farmers. Then, in a pattern known all too well to residents of Beijing’s outskirts, Shanghai’s older districts, and all over the rural interior, the local Communists began seizing land, demolishing homes, and building the dam. By the time the dam is finished in 2011, all of Hanyuan County will become a lake, over seven thousand acres of farmland will be flooded, and 90,000 people will need new homes. Meanwhile, the local cadres took half of the already reduced compensation funds and pocketed it for themselves, leaving the displaced in even more dire straits.

Local residents responded by following the acceptable methods of petition and appeal. The local cadres would have none of it. Desperate, the farmers marched on the dam itself demanding its partial operations be shut down. The cadres sent in riot police, who beat several protestors and killed one. If the cadres hoped this would intimidate the farmers, they were in for a shock; over 100,000 people marched upon the dam and local offices, shutting the government down.

At this point, Beijing intervened, and in typical Hu fashion, the public relations were perfect: the county party boss was fired, dam construction was suspended, and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee—the most powerful political organ outside of the Central Military Commission—to the area, supposedly to broker a solution.

After the international attention had passed—and Hu had burnished his faux “reformer” credentials—the truth seeped out: Hanyuan would not see a deal, but a wholesale slaughter. With the help of military units from as far as Liaoning Province, paramilitary police fired into the unarmed crowd until it was “dispersed.” According to one local resident, the death toll was higher than 10,000. Meanwhile, Hanyuan’s cadres insisted all was well, and there was no military presence anywhere in the county.

The massacre achieved the Communists’ objectives: the people were terrorized into silence, and dam construction continued despite the pledges of the national cadres.

What makes this massacre different from other recent demonstrations-turned-killing-sprees is the man in charge throughout the outrageous slaughter: Hu Jintao. Having outmaneuvered Jiang Zemin into retirement, Hu was in control of the Central Military Commission for almost two months when the Hanyuan massacre commenced. For years, Hu had portrayed himself as more populist and open than Jiang, and like ambitious Communists before him, he used hints of pluralism to add luster to his ambition to replace the old guard. He spoke of “intraparty democracy”—hoping no one would notice it meant little for the over 1.2 billion non-party members in the People’s Republic. He paid lip service to the impoverished peasants in the rural interior, while doing nothing of substance to help them. Still, Hu’s gambit worked like a charm: he was hailed as a fresh face and “reformer,” notwithstanding his bloody rule over Tibet from 1988 to 1992 or the fact that in his capacity as Tibetan party boss he was the first cadre to congratulate Deng Xiaoping for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

After Hu finally consolidated power by taking the CMC Chair, he revealed his true self. Independent-minded newspapers and magazines in Guangdong and other areas felt new pressure or were shut down. The persecution of Falun Gong continued apace, with no end in sight.

However, he could still claim to be one with the impoverished peasants—until Hanyuan. Then, when push came to shove, and the rights of the people interfered with the voracious eastern appetite for power and the get-rich-quick scheme of the dam-building cadres and their “businessmen” hangers-on, Hu made his decision—and thousands of farmers died.

The Hanyuan massacre will go down in history as the incident through which Hu was exposed as having only one real difference from Jiang Zemin. At least Jiang had a decent signing voice.

D.J. McGuire is President and Co-Founder of the China e-Lobby , and the author of Dragon
in the Dark: How and Why Communist China Helps Our Enemies in the War on Terror.

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Editor’s Note: In last week’s issue we published a commentary by Zheng Li that reported 17 confirmed dead from the shooting in Hanyuan County. On November 25, the Voice of America reported a claim that there were 10,000 dead, which is the number D.J. McGuire uses in this piece. The Epoch Times reporters have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to verify independently what exactly happened when the Chinese troops fired on the Hanyuan farmers. The Party in China is keeping such strict control over Hanyuan that no information is getting out, and this effective information blockade is itself an important part of this story. It helps explain why so little international media attention has been paid to this act of terror. The Epoch Times will continue reporting on this event as circumstances permit.