[Reader-list] more china protest news

[Ravi Sundaram]

from the NYtimes. Compare to the Orissa firing reports here surely 
one of the most under reported stories in India. Seizure of property, 
local protests -death.  Its a familiar story.

Ravi

________
January 20, 2006


Pace and Scope of Protest in China Accelerated in '05

By 
<http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JOSEPH%20KAHN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JOSEPH%20KAHN&inline=nyt-per>JOSEPH 
KAHN

BEIJING, Jan. 19 - Chinese took to the streets to protest land 
seizures, corruption, pollution and unpaid wages in record numbers in 
2005, the national police said Thursday, with mass incidents that 
involved violent confrontations or attacks on government property 
surging at the fastest rate.

The number of "public order disturbances" rose 6.6 percent last year, 
to 87,000. Mass protests that involved "disturbing social order" 
jumped 13 percent, while those that "interfered with government 
functions" surged 19 percent, the Public Security Bureau, the 
national police, told Chinese reporters at a news conference on 
Thursday that was reported by the New China News Agency.

Although the mounting social disorder has not slowed 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>China's 
economy, which continues to power ahead at nearly a double-digit 
clip, it does present a major challenge to the Communist Party, which 
has struggled to resolve the grievances of those left behind in the long boom.

Peasants, migrant workers and former employees of bankrupt state-run 
factories in the cities - collectively the overwhelming majority of 
China's 1.3 billion people - have tended to benefit far less from the 
prosperity than the budding urban middle class and the party elite.

Most legal scholars say that courts are too weak and tightly 
controlled to resolve grievances that ordinary people have against 
the government or the party.

In 1994, the police recorded about 10,000 protest incidents, but the 
statistics show that both the frequency and the scale of the unrest 
have increased rapidly every year since, even as the economy has 
expanded faster than that of any other major country.

Unrest has worsened especially quickly in the last several years 
because the government has seized millions of acres of rural land, 
which peasants can farm but not own, to make way for factories and 
real estate developments. Compensation is very low and many peasants 
say they have no choice but to protest to win attention for their claims.

The scale of unrest is extraordinary for any country in peacetime, 
with an average of 240 incidents each day. In 2004, when the country 
had 74,000 recorded protest events, 3.76 million people were 
involved, the police said. They were no figures provided for the 
total number of protesters in 2005.