Los Angels Times
November 18, 2008
Thousands, angered over a plan to raze a city center, burn cars and battle police with rocks, iron bars and axes. A Communist office is overrun and 60 officials are injured.
Reporting from Beijing -- An angry crowd of 2,000 rioted in northwest China's Gansu province over a government plan to demolish a downtown area, torching cars and attacking a local Communist Party office, injuring 60 officials, state-run media reported Tuesday.
At one point, rioters met a surging wall of armed police officers with a hail of rocks, bricks, bottles and flowerpots. The crowd later confronted police with iron bars, axes and hoes as they tried to hijack a fire truck and smashed windows and office equipment in two government buildings.
The violence, one of the most marked instances of social unrest to grip China in recent months, was sparked by government plans to relocate the city of Longnan's administrative center after May's devastating earthquake, according to the Xinhua news agency.
State-run press has reported on numerous pickets and demonstrations that have broken out across China in recent weeks, including a two-day strike by disgruntled taxi drivers in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing.
Earlier this month, a crowd of 400 in the southern boomtown of Zhenzhen threw stones and set fire to a police car after officers tried to stop a motorcyclist at a checkpoint. The cyclist fled and was killed when he hit a lamppost.
In June, 30,000 people demonstrated in the southwestern province of Guizhou, setting fire to cars and the local Communist Party building following rumors that officials had tried to cover up the death of a teenage girl.
Activists warn that tensions over the sudden downturn in the Chinese economy could provoke similar public outbursts, even though police have made efforts not to immediately resort to violence in quelling the riots.
"The government's emphasis on maintaining a harmonious society just extenuates the levels to which it is worried about these kinds of threats to social stability," said Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong manager of research at the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group.
"I don't think we're even close to seeing the real impact of the global financial crisis on Chinese society. I'd be surprised if the government wasn't very concerned about the increasing level of social unrest all over China."
Chinese economists say that rising wages throughout China have led many laborers to expect better working conditions and residents to demand more accountable government. "The local government has become the front line of conflict," said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
"But there is no channel to allow people to express their will. They lack the right to speak, the right to organize and unionize to represent their interest, therefore they can only use an irrational way by demonstrating or rioting to solve problems."
But government officials have recently began to forego a decades-old policy of swift repression to meet public demonstrations. Following a two-day strike, Chongqing taxi drivers were able to air their grievances in a three-hour meeting with government officials that was available online across China.
And officials in Zhenzhen moved quickly to counteract claims of police violence following the motorcyclist's death -- promising compensation of nearly $30,000 to the victim's family.
"In these cases, as well as labor and factory strikes, the government policy now seems to involve much less police response," said Rosenzweig. "Fewer labor leaders have been detained and prosecuted for criminal offenses. There's much more emphasis on trying to mediate disputes."
The melee in Longnan began when about 30 angry residents gathered Monday outside the party office, but the crowd soon swelled into the thousands, Xinhua reported.
He Zhouwa, manager of a local machine brick factory, said people were ready to use any means possible to stop the government plan to relocate the city center.
"People are still at the municipal party office compound," he said late Tuesday. "I did not dare to go there, but everyone is talking about this. There were hundreds of petitioners there last night and this morning."
A Longnan city government statement said the protesters, many of whom had come to petition government officials over the loss of their homes and land, were "incited by a few people with ulterior motives."
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