Residents of a village in Qingdao, China, say dozens of acres of farmland have been excavated and filled with construction debris, household waste, or sludge, while nearby hillsides have also been dug up and enclosed. They say repeated complaints to authorities have failed to resolve the issues.
Villagers in Xiatun in the Chengyang District told The Epoch Times that the excavation began in November 2023 and left some fields unusable for cultivation.
They are demanding that authorities disclose land-use approvals, records of soil sales, and how the resulting revenue is handled. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
Farmland Excavation, Alleged Embezzlement
One villager told The Epoch Times on Oct. 18 that roughly 10 acres of land had been excavated to a depth of about 6.5 to 10 feet. The topsoil was removed and sold, after which construction debris and household waste were dumped into the site, he said.
Another plot of less than two acres was excavated and filled with sludge, according to the villager. A separate area was left as a water-filled pit and has not been restored for farming.
“It has just been left there. Some of the soil was dug out, and now nothing can be planted,” he said.
The villager said the affected land was designated as basic farmland and that the excavation had not received the necessary approvals. These allegations cannot be independently verified by The Epoch Times.
He estimated that the earth and rock removed from one site could be worth millions of dollars. He also accused those involved of keeping the proceeds.
“They embezzled the money from selling the soil, digging up the soil, and selling the earth and rock themselves,” he said.
The villagers are calling for the disclosure of land approvals, the volume of soil removed and sold, and records showing where the proceeds went. They also want regime authorities to excavate the affected sites to determine whether waste was buried underground.
Residents also provided materials to The Epoch Times alleging that hillside areas near Xiatun had been enclosed and excavated over several years.
According to the materials, an area north of Zhengyang West Road was fenced off in 2012. Cold-storage facilities, buildings, and a pavilion were subsequently constructed inside the enclosed area.
The villagers also said another hillside was excavated during the installation of high-voltage power lines in late 2022.
They said they did not know where the excavated earth and rock had gone and wanted authorities to disclose the construction boundaries and records documenting the material’s disposal.
They also said the relevant financial records had not been made public.
Complaints Yielded Few Results
The villager said residents had repeatedly raised their concerns with authorities in Chengyang District and Qingdao, as well as officials in Shandong Province and Beijing. However, he said the complaints were ultimately referred back to local authorities.
“We went there several times, but in the end, the local government handled it. We couldn’t get beyond the local level,” he said.
He said more than 10 people initially participated in the efforts to raise the complaints, but only three or four remained involved.
“I was detained by the police station for 24 hours,” he said, suggesting that the detention was due to his continued efforts to report the land issues.
The villager also said a local social media account had published material about the dispute, but the post was taken down on the day it appeared. Some Chinese journalists subsequently visited to investigate, he said, but their reports were never published.
He accused local officials of shielding those responsible and allowing the issues to remain unresolved. The villagers are seeking public disclosure of land approvals, soil-sale, and financial records, as well as a written response addressing the alleged farmland contamination and hillside excavation.
Xu Yiyang and Gu Xiaohua contributed to this report.
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