Riots in China, June – September 2011
This was put up on libcom, back in the summer of 2011
It’s followed by some comments put up on that site, mainly by me
A roundup of recent riots, mostly by migrant workers, across China.
The conflicts began Friday June 13th after a fracas between security officers & a pregnant street vendor in Xintang, Guangdong province. Most protesters were migrant workers like the vendor. Last week 100s of migrant workers clashed with police in Chaozhou, also in Guangdong, following a dispute over unpaid wages. In Lichuan, Hubei, as many as 2,000 protesters attacked government headquarters June 10th after a local politician who’d complained about official corruption died in police custody. Inner Mongolia recently saw its biggest street protests for 20 years, over the killing of a Mongolian herder trying to halt coal trucks trespassing on grasslands.
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Police quell migrant riots in ChinaZENGCHENG, China (Reuters) – Riot police poured into a southern Chinese factory town crowded with migrant workers Monday, a day after militia fired tear gas to quell rioting over the abuse of a pregnant street hawker who became a symbol of simmering grassroots discontent.
Hong Kong television showed crowds of workers and stall holders, many from the rural southwestern province of Sichuan running through the streets of Zengcheng in Guangdong province over the weekend.
The rioters smashed windows, set fire to government buildings and overturned police vehicles, bringing to a climax anger over security guards who had set upon the hawker, Wang Lianmei, Friday. Footage showed riot police firing tear gas and deploying armoured vehicles to disperse the crowds, and handcuffing protesters.
By Monday evening the unrest had subsided. But hundreds of riot police guarded the streets, and continued arriving by the busload, while wary workers watched on street corners.
Though protests have become relatively common over anything from corruption to abuse of power, the ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any possible threat to its hold on power in the wake of the protests that have swept the Arab world.
Guangdong is also a pillar of China’s export industries, and persistent unrest there could unnerve buyers and investors.
Witnesses said more than 1,000 protesters had besieged at least one government office in Zengcheng.
“People were running around like crazy,” a shop owner in the area told the South China Morning Post. “I had to shut the shop by 7 p.m. and dared not come out.”
News reports said the incident was sparked Friday night when security personnel in nearby Dadun village pushed pregnant hawker Wang, 20, to the ground while trying to clear her from the streets.
“The case was just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people, but was used by a handful of people who wanted to cause trouble,” Zengcheng Mayor Ye Niuping was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper.
Other clashes have erupted in southern China in recent weeks, including in Chaozhou, where hundreds of migrant workers demanding payment of their wages at a ceramics factory attacked government buildings and set vehicles ablaze.
Last week, protests erupted in central China at the death under interrogation of an official.
Over the weekend, state media said that two people were slightly injured in an explosion in Beijing’s neighbouring city Tianjin, set off by a man bent on “revenge against society.”
Despite pervasive censorship and government controls, word of protests, along with often dramatic pictures, spreads fast in China on mobile telephones and the Internet, especially on popular microblogging sites.
In 2007, China had over 80,000 “mass incidents,” up from over 60,000 in 2006, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Many involved no more than dozens protesting against local officials over complaints about corruption, abuse of power, pollution or poor wages.
No authoritative estimates of the number of protests, riots and mass petitions since then have been released.
Guangdong’s Communist Party boss, Wang Yang, is one of the ambitious provincial leaders who may win a place in China’s next central leadership, after President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao retire from power from late next year.
In past months, Wang has sought to cast himself as a moderate leader willing to heed ordinary citizens’ gripes, and has said his priority is improving the public sense of wellbeing — a gentler message than the hardline one that domestic security officials have pushed.
“Use rule of law to protect and realise people’s democratic rights,” Wang told a meeting in April, according to the official Xinhua news agency. “People don’t fear poverty; what they fear is not having the market conditions for fair competition so that they can achieve prosperity.”
Also in April, the Communist Party committee of Guangdong heard a lecture from Sun Liping, a sociologist from Tsinghua University in Beijing who has bluntly warned that corruption, inequality and divisions threaten to “rupture” Chinese society.
Other links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/china-riots-enter-third-day
http://www.timesonline.com/news/world/asia/protesters-burn-police-vehicles-in-southern-china/article_1111c134-457e-5331-a873-c7f3cb5c29bf.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/5137990/Police-struggle-to-quell-riots-in-southern-China
Comments
KriegPhilosophy
“Use rule of law to protect and realise people’s democratic rights,” Wang told a meeting in April, according to the official Xinhua news agency. “People don’t fear poverty; what they fear is not having the market conditions for fair competition so that they can achieve prosperity.”
Samotnaf
Quote:
– from here.
Consider the above in the context of the fact that China is possibly going to bale out Greece:
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Samotnaf
And this, from Loren Goldner in September 2008, seems pertinent:
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– here.
Samotnaf
In the city of Xintang/Zengcheng (same place, different spelling) :
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– here.
Samotnaf
The Chinese State has to give a traditional method of appearing to change by punishing a couple of bureaucratic personalities, all the better to distract people from the continuation and development of bureaucratic social control using other individuals committed to the bureaucracy. Popular contempt, even hatred, of bureaucracy is taken up at the top, providing a reassuring familiarity to the spectator that some of the big shots at least are not too out of touch. Attacking “corruption” – the use of power for personal gain – and rapidly punishing any bureaucrat who steps outside the code of professional conduct, promotes an image of an equality of sacrifice made for the common good. This is the strategy of Guangdong/Zengcheng’s Communist Party boss, Wang Yang who, as quoted previously, believes that “People don’t fear poverty; what they fear is not having the market conditions for fair competition so that they can achieve prosperity.”. So throwing a couple of obviously corrupt Party officials to the wolves aims to create the appearance of these “market conditions for fair competition”. See this, from yesterday:
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– from here.
So, as part of giving an image of fairness on the part of the powers-that-be, the 11 arrests are “balanced” by the sackings of the 2 top bureaucrats.
Samotnaf
Quote:
– from here.
Samotnaf
Quote:
– here
Samotnaf
China police station attack leaves several dead in Xinjiang. Further eruptions in China in Xinjiang, which the State is presenting as Muslim terrorism. There’s certainly an ethnic aspect to these riots – with some people calling for independence for the Uighurs, but even if there’s a standard nationalist-political dimension to them, there’s also clearly an independent anti-State aspect as well. The Chinese State is increasingly dependent on Xinjiang for oil, gas and coal to power the economy.
See also this:
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Also:
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http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/international/159456-clash-in-chinas-xinjiang-kills-20-protesters-says-exile-group-.html
Steven.
Thanks for these continued updates!
Samotnaf
Quote:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-07/27/content_12989230.htm
Samotnaf
The following, taken from Shanghai Daily, talks of riots and rioters attacking and killing people, but in fact doesn’t mention a riot at all; one suspects the word “riot/rioters” has been used to describe individual (or group) acts of terror:
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AT least 15 people died in a weekend of violence in Kashgar in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Four suspected rioters were shot dead by police yesterday afternoon. Four others were caught, while police were hunting another four following a violent incident at 4:30pm yesterday in which three people were hacked to death and more than 10 pedestrians and police officers injured.
On Saturday night at least seven people were killed by rioters in the city. Two suspects hijacked a truck at 11:45pm, fatally stabbing the driver and ramming into pedestrians.
The pair later jumped out of the truck and hacked at bystanders.
Six people were killed at the scene and 28 others were injured.
One of the rioters died while fighting with local residents, the other was apprehended.
Before the incident two explosions were heard. The first was at about 10:30pm from a minivan, the other at almost the same time from a food street where the men had hijacked the truck.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s incident, Kashgar’s streets were almost deserted, and residents were still shaken by the tragic events.
“I can’t believe this happened,” said a tearful Yang Hongmei. “One of my colleagues died.”
Yang said many people were gathered on the square outside her office when the suspects rushed into the throng and began attacking them. “Our security guards tried to save the residents while our manager attempted to subdue an attacker by holding him, but the man had a knife and stabbed him in his abdomen,” she said.
The manager was taken to the hospital but later died.
“There were cries and blood everywhere,” Yang said. “Terrified people flooded into our office to hide.”
Li Fu was repairing motorcycles by the road when Saturday’s violence erupted. “I saw a blue truck speed through the crossing and plough into the crowd,” he said.
At first Li thought it was an accident.
“But soon I heard people screaming ‘someone is killing people.'”
Xinjiang, home to China’s Uygur minority, has long been under terrorist threat.
Police shot 14 rioters who attacked a police station and killed four people in Xinjiang’s Hotan City on July 18.
The attack left four people dead and at least four others injured.
Police said the incident was “a severely violent terrorism case.”
There was a major riot in Urumqi, the capital, on July 5, 2009, where rock-throwing and knife-wielding rioters looted shops, torched vehicles and killed nearly 200 people.
In March 2008, five months before the Beijing Olympics, police arrested a 19-year-old Uygur for a terrorist attempt on a passenger flight.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=478617&type=National
Samotnaf
China orders petrochemical plant shutdown after protests
Samotnaf
Calm Returns After Riots in China:
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