Posted on 05/02/2005 6:44:40 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
- Kathleen E. McLaughlin, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Shanghai -- Anti-Japanese demonstrators who drew global attention as they marched -- and sometimes rampaged -- in China's large cities in recent weeks are part of a growing climate of dissent in the country, analysts say.
Despite its rising prosperity, China has seen a dramatic increase in public demonstrations after several years of nervous quiet followed the violent government crackdown on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. The number of protests grew to more than 58,000 in 2003, when an estimated 3 million Chinese took to the streets to air their grievances, said Scot Tanner, senior China analyst with Rand, citing police statistics.
While more recent figures are not yet available, Tanner and other analysts agree that spreading civil unrest presents a striking challenge to the Communist government.
"For the past 10 years, this has been going up every single year and it is, by all accounts, driven not by one type of problem or two or three types but by a dozen different types of sparking problems," Tanner said. "There are clearly a number of much bigger forces that are propelling unrest in this society."
For example, even as 20,000 anti-Japanese protesters who massed in Shanghai on April 16 made headlines worldwide, a larger and far more volatile crowd staged an uprising in Huaxi, a village in coastal Zhejiang province a few hours south of Shanghai. Upset over environmental contamination from local chemical plants, 30,000 residents demonstrated in the streets, clashing with police after authorities tried to stop their peaceful protest and seizing control of the town.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Ping!
Nothing like having a few million more boys than girls running around. China's got a rough road ahead, I think.
"In a lot of ways, what we're hearing about in Zhejiang is more typical of what is happening all over China," Tanner said. "They have more problems than they have money and political systems to cure them."
I thought money was part of the problem. It is much easier to maintain rigid controls over an impoverished society.
I'm waiting for the Chinese to borrow the European excuse..."It's the fault of America.."
Hopefully a revolution is in the works.
Memo to the CIA: Get Busy!
"Everyone knows they are playing with fire," Davis said. "Mass anger continues to bubble up from below, and it could boil over at any time.''
China reminds me a bit of pre-ww1 Russia....a fast-growing economy with internal dissent growing. What will be the spark to set it off? Or will China start a militaristic foreign policy to stave off internal collapse? Should be interesting to watch.
Keep your enemies busy inside their own borders and he will leave yours alone. A distracted chinese government is good for us.
Hmmm. Maybe communist Chiner is on the verge of a USSR style "revolution"?
I just talked with a very capable young man over the weekend who was offered a major project as an executive for a steel company to help them build their Chinese market share. That would be considered a major career boost for someone in the steel business, given that the Chinese are using more steel than any other country right now. It would have required frequent travel to China.
He turned the job down flat. He didn't want to commit to being in a place with rabid anti-Americanism, constant riots, medling Communist apparatchiks, blatant graft and payola, and all the rest of the guff that goes with working the Chinese market. Might this be a growing trend?
The prospects are much better for doing money laundering for crooked officials and businessmen. :-)
Quote: He turned the job down flat. He didn't want to commit to being in a place with rabid anti-Americanism, constant riots, medling Communist apparatchiks, blatant graft and payola, and all the rest of the guff that goes with working the Chinese market. Might this be a growing trend?
I'm afraid not. There are many americans that would do this job. They have no scruples that they are short changing the american dream.
My brother has a client in michigan that was bragging that he sent his own company to china and hired 1500 chinese at 53 cents per hour and the less skilled ones at 37 cents per hour. He said the chinese even gave him a parade and treated him like a king. What about the americans that gave him a start by buying his product and the employees who helped him out all throught the years.
They essentially have. They have a modernization program they call Assassin's Mace that is designed to make their military competitive against ours..
The many coal and hard rock mine disasters are an indication of just what the CCP elite think of the "people". The government could fall but what direction is still up in the air. If the intense anti-Japanese and anti-American attitudes intensify as the CCP falls, it is not necessarily good for us. The undercurrent in China is complex and I doubt anyone can really forcast the future there.
Considering how many Chinese girls are adopted by Americans, they may have a point. ;-)
ACLU?
Russia tried the militaristic foreign policy approach, and lost to the Japanese in 1905, and to the Germans in WWI. I think we won't see the Chinese get really aggressive until the internal dissent really starts to ramp up.
Along those lines, the recent anti-Japanese stuff is rather convenient, doncha think? I suspect that the Chinese government is behind it.
Time for another brutal crackdown on public protestors, that the Chicoms won't put in their own history books.
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