In the Chinese village Wukan, violence between the authorities and protesters took place when farmers resisted land transaction 2011. Wukan is one out of about ten thousand local protests annually in China, but unique in the modern Chinese history since it resulted in suspension of land transaction and the leaders of the protest where elected into the village committee, in an election which is considered by external observers as the most democratic in China. The aim of this paper is to understand destructive and constructive processes emerging out of interaction between protesters and the authorities. The focus is on how the actors (the authorities vs. protesting farmers) interpret their opportunities to: a) understand the intention of the other, b) be understood by the other, and c) influence the action of the other, in the different phases of the conflict. The conclusion is that when actors respond to disagreement with discursive closure, the destructivity increases, and vice versa.