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2 China cracks down on rioters! News
at 11 By Muhammad Cohen
HONG KONG - Last week's coverage of
rioting in Hunan province was another example of
how much has changed in China since it became the
world's fastest-growing major economy and a key
financial player in the world. It provided another
snapshot of the often difficult transition from
iron-rice-bowl socialism to the invisible hand of
the market. But perhaps the biggest change on
display, and the most obvious one, went unnoticed.
Domestic and international media differ
about what happened in Zhushan, a rural village
near Yongzhou in Hunan province - most
notably whether there was a
death among the more than four dozen injured - but
the basic outline is pretty clear. It all began on
the buses.
Villagers were angered about
bus fares rising after Chinese New Year just in
time to hit students and migrant workers leaving
the region after their holiday visits. According
to some reports, the bus company tried to impose
extra charges for large bags. Others said the
flash point was doubling fares for
secondary-school students traveling around town.
The fare increases produced allegations of
corruption, since the bus operator is a private
franchise, recently awarded a government monopoly
for service to the provincial capital from Zhushan
and other rural towns. If there wasn't corruption,
collusion or nepotism involved in the award of
such a franchise, then Hunan province would be
unique in China, indeed the world.
The
price hikes struck an especially sour note coming
during the annual two-week meeting of the National
People's Congress. China's nominal legislative
body remains a toothless, impotent tool of the
executive branch, which legislates on its behalf
during the 50 weeks a year when the full NPC is
not in session.
Under President Hu Jintao,
the government has played up the NPC's role as a
representative body of the people to lend the
regime a patina of democratic legitimacy, or at
least democratic aspirations. Even when the
Shanghai stock market's decline triggered a global
panic - which had to swell some sense of national
pride - and it was the top story on every
international news broadcast, Chinese domestic and
international news shows led with the NPC session.
Bridging the gap In current
propaganda, the NPC is portrayed as a key cog in
the central government's drive to narrow the gap
between rich and poor that has grown even faster
than the economy at large.
"We need to
make justice the most important value of the
socialist system," Premier Wen Jiabao declared on
March 9 as the NPC approved new programs for
health care, education and social security.
This rhetoric and any action that follows
has particular appeal in rural communities, where
gains lag those in the large urban centers. And
some villagers in Zhushan apparently took Premier
Wen seriously.
That same day, March 9,
villagers reportedly blocked a bus to protest the
fare hikes. Over the next three days,
confrontations escalated and expanded. At the
peak, 20,000 people were involved in
demonstrations that included occupation of
local-government buildings and burning buses.
By mid-March, 2,000 riot police were
deployed under a declaration of martial law. It's
unclear whether residents began stoning the police
station, burning police cars and chanting "Death
to government dogs" before or after officers beat
residents with batons and steel rods. Whoever
started it, by mid-week order had been restored.
Buses were even running again, with fares
reportedly rolled back to re-New Year levels.
Details about the incidents in Zhushan are
available thanks to the Pan-Blue Coalition, an
Internet-based human-rights group. Villagers
alerted a Pan-Blue member in Yongzhou, who
traveled to Zhushan, compiled accounts of the
rioting, and shared the information with the
international media.
Most Western media
were content to report the story from the comfort
of their Beijing bureaus, sometimes supplementing
information from Pan-Blue with their own local
sources. But by Wednesday a British Broadcasting
Corp (BBC) reporter was on the scene, broadcasting
accounts of the rioting and pictures of burned
buses and police vehicles as well as columns of
police in full riot gear marching through the
streets. Given the history of China and media
coverage of unrest, it was incredible to see an
international reporter allowed in Zhushan to show
China's mechanisms of repression in action.
Imagine how much easier it would be for
Beijing to get the world to forget the Tiananmen
Square unrest of 1989 without that image
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