Security tight in China riot town

BBC ^ | Thursday, March 15, 2007

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Several vehicles were burned out in the riot

Security is tight in a town in central China following riots that involved as many as 20,000 people.

A BBC correspondent in the town, in Hunan province, has seen riot police and soldiers protecting government buildings and patrolling the streets.

He says it appears the protests began after a local firm took over the town's bus routes and doubled the fares.

Vehicles were burned and several people were injured in clashes with police as the protests climaxed on Monday.

Reports said one person had been killed, although this was denied on Wednesday by the official Xinhua news agency, which played down the incident.

Growing unrest

The BBC's James Reynolds says calm has been restored to Zhushan town, near the city of Yongzhou, and the presence of the security forces is clearly felt.

But, he says, the protesters believe they have won because the bus company has since brought its prices back down.

The firm's decision to raise the bus fare from around 50 cents to $1 during the recent Chinese New Year brought complaints initially from the parents of secondary school children, our correspondent has learned.

They began protesting on Friday and were joined by others over the weekend - reaching a reported 20,000.

But the protests became violent on Monday as around 1,000 police in riot gear clashed with the demonstrators.

Such protests are not uncommon in China's countryside, which has seen growing unrest over the widening gap between rich and poor.

Rural communities have felt left behind and ignored as China's towns have reaped the financial benefits of the country's move towards a market economy.

There are at least 200 protests of differing sizes each day, official figures show, although many do not get any publicity.

The Chinese government is highly sensitive to such manifestations of anger, our correspondent says.

They have introduced a series of measures to try to address the sources of discontent, which includes pumping billions of dollars into the rural economy in the form of farm subsidies, as well as reining in the seizures of farmland for development and tackling government corruption.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

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[Wuli]

As usual, the one thing that would end the riots and solve what caused them - a little democracy to replace the party handouts of rights and privileges to its favored capitalists - will not be given a chance.

So, expect the riots to continue because simply putting bandaids on current problems will not keep the real wound - the people have no say-so - from continually resurfacing as new "errors" continue to take place.

[pburgh01]

There are cracks in the feet of clay which is the Chinese economy. Live by cheap labor with small domestic demand and die by those circumstances. Even though there is a growing middle class in China, it’s not enough to sustain the economy grown primarily on the hoards of peasant laborers earning about 2 bucks an hour US. Wage pressures and raw materials shortages will put the breaks on double digit growth. China can sit there fat, dumb and happy and think they can grow to superiority over the US. But it’s a diversified economy of manufacturing and services which can sustain you in the long run. China is in their America of the 1950’s, the stagflation 70’s are coming, making Tiananmen Square look like cops breaking up a bar brawl.

[Wuli]

The western media is keeping Americans ignorant on China.

The showcase economy is an economy of privileges granted by the dictators, not rights and the hundreds of never reported riots very year reflect that - that no decision on any thing escapes control of the party and, even with all their new privileges, they see and know they are just that - privileges - revoked whenever it suits the powerful in and connected to the party, the only party. The riots are simply the visible part of their sense of helplessness because the people are powerless over getting democratic control of any decision.

[Zhang Fei]

Even though there is a growing middle class in China, it’s not enough to sustain the economy grown primarily on the hoards of peasant laborers earning about 2 bucks an hour US.

It's more like 50 cents an hour. And that's in the wealthy coastal districts.

[Zhang Fei]

One mitigating factor is that rents and food costs are pretty low. It's got nothing to do with subsidies either - low labor costs mean that putting up a brick home costs very little, and it's the same with growing vegetables or raising farm animals. Celery cabbage costs about 15 cents a pound, whereas a really nice cut of beef is around 3 bucks a pound (lean pork, a Chinese staple, is about a buck a pound). Low income Chinese eat a lot of vegetables, with meat as a garnish.

Rents a couple of miles from the center of a bustling Chinese coastal city are about 80 bucks a month for a two bedroom place. This is for a 770 sq foot place. The Chinese garment factory worker making $125 a month could get three roommates and shell out $20 a month for reasonably comfortable quarters. For those with jobs, life is good, or at least much better than it used to be, when everyone was employed by the government.