Mianyang

— The state Xinhua news agency said Tan Li, Communist Party chief of Mianyang in the quake zone, ordered 1.3 million people downstream from Tangjiashan to “evacuate to higher ground”. But Zhou Hua, a Mianyang official who is a spokesman for the lake relief effort, told Reuters that report was “mistaken”.

— In particular, the communist wind of ‘one, equalization, two, transfer” (yiping erdiao) continued to blow in many areas, and land set aside for peasant cultivation (ziliudi) was still being made collective. One outstanding example of such abuses was Tonghaikou commune in Hubei’s Mianyang county: 41 county-level organizations and 25 commune-level enterprises made outright requisitions from production brigades and teams, which in turn preyed on peasants, taking property ranging from land and houses to sickles and chopsticks.