AROUND 5am, Xu Yong awoke to a commotion outside and found in horror that more than 100 policemen had besieged his home and that of his neighbor.

Powerful, blinding spotlights were projected to overwhelm the home owners. Before he could react, riot police broke in, pinned Xu down, dragged him out in handcuffs and shoved him into a police car.

Reeling from the blitz attack, Xu saw his four neighbors, the Hes, also expelled from their house, handcuffed while still in their underwear.

After both houses were emptied of occupants and furniture, bulldozers reduced them to a heap of rubble on October 8.

Xu and his neighbors did nothing to invite this violence, except to live in the "wrong" houses. They are among around 60 households in Baihutou Village in Beihai City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, who refused to sign off on relocation contracts offered by the local government. The compensation, they argued, was paltry by market standards, China Youth Daily reported on Monday.

Beihai authorities had planned to purge its famed beaches of the "eyesore" residential complexes covering 210,000 square meters, and build upscale hotels and commercial developments in their place.

The plan was to resettle all households further inland. But after all conventional means were tried and failed to displace diehard "nail households" (those refusing to move, like a nail head that stubbornly sticks up), some rogue officials bared their fangs. They forced the homeowners' relatives to talk them into giving up their properties.

A local villager surnamed Li is among those who refused to give in to official coercion. But her attitude softened when her daughter, who worked in town as a teacher, tearfully pleaded with her to sign the relocation papers, saying otherwise she would be banished to remote mountainous areas to teach.

A worker surnamed Gao at the local tap water purification plant had been barred from work for six months so that she could spend the time imploring her "nail household" relatives to accept the official terms for relocation.

When interviewed in April over the relocation kerfuffle, Deng Changda, an official of Beihai, conceded that the use of "collateral responsibility" was wrong and promised it would not happen again. Nevertheless, no officials were held to account for their excesses.

'Snakes alive!'

A similar yet even more despicable attack targeting uncompromising home owners occurred about 5am on Tuesday in Kunming City, Yunnan Province, when resident Zhang Wei was awoken by thugs ramming the door of his house.

Zhang gasped at the sight of his kitchen and dining room crawling with at least 17 snakes, apparently thrown in through a smashed window.

He later told reporters that the snakes were deliberately set loose to scare him into abandoning his home, the only one standing in the midst of demolished or half-demolished houses.

Zhang was also shot and wounded by air gun pellets in the incident.

It was not the first time he paid the price for tenaciously holding on to his property. Over the past half year, developers coveting his land but not offering enough compensation even had Zhang's power and water supply cut for some time, in an effort to make him back down. He refuses.

Yihuang backlash

This is despite the State Council's directive, issued in May, that prohibits forcible demolition. The directive didn't get very far, since at least two demolition deaths were reported afterward.

In the latest incident to gain national notoriety, three people set themselves on fire on September 10 in their futile protest against officials dismantling their home in Yihuang County, Jiangxi Province.

The incident left one dead and saw local chieftains - in a brazen cover-up - rushing to physically stop petitioners taking their grievances to Beijing.

The case is notable not only because it brought down several responsible officials for the first time. It also brought out in the open the often opaque official thinking behind forcible demolition.

The open online letter purportedly by a Yihuang official (who remains anonymous) has been hotly debated because of its unapologetic tone over the tragedy, and also because of the blatant assertion that "there would be no New China without forcible demolition."

The author blamed homeowners' intransigence on the fact that soaring home prices have emboldened them to demand ever higher compensation.

The official, who went by the alias "Huichang," went on to assert that residents facing demolition are the biggest beneficiaries of China's urbanization; if they are loath to move, then the government, with the bigger picture in mind, certainly has the right to make them comply.

It's impossible not to be offended by the self-righteousness permeating the letter, as though official transgressions were in the best interests of the people.

So what about the "biggest beneficiaries" in Beihai, who are actually worse off following the relocation - with many deprived of their livelihoods as fishermen or hawkers of sea bounty? Would they thankfully cheer the author on?

People's Daily editorialized on October 14 that all development should increase people's happiness and dignity, and should not impinge on social justice, equality or trample their legal rights.

Much has been written about the reason why Beijing's repeated warnings against forcible demolition have gone largely unheeded in provinces.

Some of the most-cited explanations go as follows: career advancement prompts officials to embrace the GDP fetish like crazy; they are accountable, not to the constituency they nominally represent, but to higher authorities who scarcely bother to ask how GDP growth is achieved; they are eager to acquit themselves in economic management under pressure from faster-growing neighboring rival locales.

Development has thus become an all-redeeming rationale for government brutalities inflicted on the masses, as they are expendable in the quest for the so-called larger good.

One thing the letter's author got right and is particularly revealing is that local finances are unable to support the surge in the number of civil servants, as is the case in Yihuang.

The number of applicants sitting the national and regional civil servant examinations has grown exponentially, swelling already bloated governments. Tens of thousands of "iron rice bowls" that are added each year have to be filled with spoils from, say, land sales to developers.

The discrepancy between shaky local finances and heavy fiscal expenditures has led some to argue that China's regional governments function like giant corporations driven by ruthlessly mercantile motives.

A result of this so-called "corporatization" is that we hear more frequently of civil servants lording it over their less blessed countrymen and proclaiming they know best.

Feng shui furor

In what came to be known as the "feng shui gate" scandal, Wang Yinfeng, Party secretary of Jiangjin District in Chongqing, ordered a real estate developer on August 5 to halt a project because it would "block good feng shui" from his government compound.

In a covert recording, Wang is heard yelling at the developer, "Do you know what is evil? Opposing the government is evil!"

Wang later denied having ever made such remarks. But he was speechless when China Business News, which broke the story, produced the audio evidence.

At a time when the slogan "serve the people" is all but replaced by "serve mammon," we should not be surprised at the moral vacuum evident in many officials like Wang.

Our founding fathers came into power promising a fairer country for all. Their ideal, however, has been downgraded to the earthly pursuit of private comforts or political survival. Where old beliefs unravel, feng shui fills the void, becoming the crystal ball that guides significant decision making.

Guan Yu, a deified general living in the Three Kingdoms era (220-280 AD), is widely respected as the epitome of loyalty and rectitude.

But the city government of Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, has no stomach for his presence. It plans to tear down an imposing statue of Guan perched on a mountain resort, Guangzhou Daily reported on October 10.

The authorities claimed the statue was unauthorized construction. But rumors have it that some officials believe it's bad feng shui to position a martial deity overlooking government buildings.

I dare to presume that a hidden reason they want the statue gone is that they are fearful of Guan as a divine crusader against worldly corruption and depravity.

While Guan's statue now stands tall and above the furor surrounding its fate, the once-invincible cult hero may eventually succumb to bulldozers called in by scheming officials.