Luo Zhifei, a rural government employee, says he was driven out of the country after questioning fake statistics and abuses of farmers.
When Luo Zhifei, a Chinese local government employee in rural Guangdong, produced a non-authorized report on bees in 2023, he never expected to get a visit from police, or be questioned about whether he had any foreign contacts, and threatened with being sent to a mental hospital.
Luo, who fled to the United States last year, recently told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times how he was forced to make up animal farming statistics to match the communist regime’s GDP target. He also alleged that his superiors and colleagues fined farmers on bogus charges to fill local government coffers, and targeted him for speaking out against such practices.
Luo, 40, was born in a rural area in Jiangxi, a southeastern province near Guangdong. Between July 2020 and summer 2024, the veterinary medicine postgraduate worked in Zengcheng District in Guangzhou for the district Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (BARA), first as an administrator in the agricultural law enforcement section, then as an animal farming statistician in the town of Paitan.
For those born to a common rural family, a job in China’s public institutions, commonly described as an “iron rice bowl,” isn’t easy to get. Applicants are required to take an exam and an interview, and they are vetted to make sure they fit a range of criteria; aside from not having a criminal record they mustn’t show signs of opposition to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or socialist ideology.
“To me, working for the government meant job security,” Luo said. “I heard that … the government in Guangdong was relatively transparent, and did more to serve the people. That’s what I thought before I started the job.”
Law Enforcement Abuse
When Luo worked in the agricultural law enforcement section of BARA in Zengcheng District, it was part of his job to produce paperwork for law enforcement cases, and he often received photo evidence from colleagues in the field.
Many of the photos “basically showed how they bullied the farmers,” he said. “When I saw the helplessness and anger in the farmers’ eyes, I couldn’t bear it.”
By Lily Zhou
