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Harmonious Society?
All that ACB can so is that this sounds quite far removed from Beijing's idea of a "harmonious society". Care of the Dow-Jones Newswire service.
In central Hunan province Thursday, 5,000 soldiers and armed police converged on a crowd of up to 10,000 people demanding money back from an alleged fundraising fraud, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.
In a separate protest Thursday, up to 10,000 people gathered around a factory in the eastern coastal city of Ningbo after a young boy was injured apparently after being thrown out of a factory window, the center said.
The organization said in both cases violent clashes erupted between angry crowds and authorities, who carried out several arrests and left dozens injured. Local governments did not confirm the claim.
In Jishou city in Hunan, 50 people were injured in rioting and police arrested 20 people, the rights group said.
The Jishou government said in a statement on its Web site that armed police were called in to disperse the crowd. It said no one was hurt.
Car and rail traffic was disrupted during the protests but had returned to normal by Friday, it said.
"The railway station is open today, but yesterday it was blocked by people," said a receptionist at the Tianlu Hotel next to the station in Jishou city.
The local government said the people responsible for the fundraising company that sparked the protests, the Fuda Real Estate Company, were under investigation.
Photos of the unrest were widely available on popular Internet portals in China and showed armed police standing behind shields on railway lines and roads.
Meanwhile Thursday in Ningbo, a crowd of 500 people demanding justice for an injured boy had swelled to 10,000 by early evening as demonstrators began pelting the factory with bottles and rocks, the rights group said.
The demonstration turned violent when up to 500 riot police arrived and began clearing the protesters from the factory premises, according to the rights center.
Up to 20 people including police officers were injured in clashes, while police arrested 10 of the rioters, it said.
The government of Xiangshan county confirmed that a protest had taken place and accused demonstrators of breaking windows at the factory.
The government insisted the boy had jumped from a window after workers found him hiding in the factory, adding that he was in a hospital in stable condition with a broken leg.
Xiangshan police refused to comment on the reported incident.
The protests were the latest in a series of confrontations over social issues in China, where tens of thousands of riots erupt each year, many stemming from grievances over abuse of power, corruption or land grabs.
In June, tens of thousands of people rioted in southwestern Guizhou province over claims that police had covered up an alleged rape and murder of a teenage girl.
If there is one thing that ACB has learned from watching various riots around the world is this: that the size of the disturbance is often more closely related to the level of dissatisfaction and disaffection in the region than it is to the actual trigger event. People who are happy in their lives and with their surroundings can be exposed to a truly heinous act and they will react with shock and reservation, while people who are deeply unhappy with their lot and their place in life will react with explosive fury to an act of everyday callousness by an official, or even (as evidenced by the riots in Paris some time back) an act of stupidity by the victims themselves. Putting this lesson up against the backdrop of China one has to question exactly how disaffected people need to become in order to protest in such large numbers. Often there is a lot more behind these riots than the trigger event implies.
whether or not you believe the press quoted figures of 10,000 Ningbo demonstrators (ACB as noted certain trends in Western media reporting), there certainly seem to be a lot more than the 50-100 people that Beijing proposes were there.
You are such a typical nasty American. Dude, in your country nobody can
even dream of such protests. A few hundred democratic activists tried to
protest at the Republican convention and it triggered a response from
thousands of police troops, they all got arrested for showing some
placards.
And you are a typically rash web poster. If you took the time out to
actually read who I am you would know that I'm not America. I say this
emphatically and often. Maybe you should have read my About Me page first.
Then you wouldn't have embarrassed yourself quite so much.