Xinhua tells us we should all relax. The only reason for the recent carnage in Guangzhou was the dastardly work of hooligan “instigators,” whom the masses blindly followed. The government was blameless.

Hundreds of villagers incited by a few instigators violently attacked a wind power plant on Dec. 6, and assaulted the police, the Information Office of the city government of Shanwei in south China’s Guangdong Province said here Saturday. In an investigation report of the incident, the office called the armed assault a serious violation of law.

According to the official recount, the instigators led by Huang Xijun engineered and organized some villagers in Dongzhoukeng and Shigongzhai to illegally besiege and attack a local wind power plant at noon on Dec. 5 and Dec. 6.

The first assault on Dec. 5 caused a seven-hour suspension of the plant’s power generation. In the second onslaught, over 170 armed villagers led by instigators Huang Xijun, Lin Hanru and Huang Xirang used in the attack knives, steel spears, sticks, dynamite powder, bottles filled with petroleum, and fishing detonators.

Police moving in to maintain order were forced to throw tear shells to break up the armed besiege, and arrested two insurgents. However, Huang Xijun mobilized over 300 armed villagers to form a blockade on the road to Shigongzhai Village to obstruct the return passage of the police, in attempt to threaten the police to release the arrested insurgents. For a moment, many besiegers intended to quit following the persuasion shouted by the police. However, they were forced to stay in protest under the threat reinforced by the instigators, according to the report. Instigator Lin Hanru shouted through a loudspeaker that they would throw detonators to the police and blow the wind power plant, if the police refused to retreat.

It became dark when the chaotic mob began to throw explosives at the police. Police were forced to open fire in alarm. In the chaos, three villagers died, eight were injured with three of them fatally injured. Concerned government departments are still investigating in the exact cause of the death.

The Information Office said that the instigators with Huang Xijun at the core had incited villagers to join in armed protests since June, using villagers’ discontents over a land requisition of a coal-fired power plant in Dongzhoukeng Village as the excuse. They frequently formed armed protests in the construction ground of the coal-fired power plant, blocked public traffic, attacked government offices and even illegally detained people and vehicles passing through the village to threat the local government to approve more compensation fund in land requisition.

In order to magnify the effect of their protests, the instigators hatched the assault of the wind power plant in Shigongzhai Village, which had no relations with their former request for fund concerning the land requisition in Dongzhoukeng Village. The provincial government of Guangdong pays great attention to the Dec. 6 Incident. A special work group has been established to investigate in the incident, according to the Information Office.

I’m glad a special work group has been set up. See, the governemnt does care.

But I have to ask: Would these villagers simply follow the “instigators” blindly, to the point ot taking up arms and attacking the power plant and risking their lives, simply because the instigators said it would be a cool thing to do? Would they do this without a lot of pent-up rage behind them, rage at local officials for their lack of concern over the pollution the power plant threatened to create? Rage over the government’s casual seizure of their land?

I don’t know. Looking at other reports, I’d say there may be a bit more to this story than Xinhua’s letting on (and I realize Lisa has covered these things in her earlier excellent posts).

“We are really scared. We need your help. The riot police are at the entrance of our village. There are several hundred of them, between 400 and 500,” one villager said in an interview that was cut off several times. “They were firing shots. But they were afraid to move in. We had blocked the roads with water pipes, gasoline and detonators,” another villager said. “And there were about 10,000 villagers there. We tried calling the central government several times for help. But all we got was answering machines.”

Riot police have now crashed through roadblocks set up by villagers and dismantled their tents near the power plant. Villagers have retreated back to Dongzhou village, they said. Li Min, deputy mayor of Shanwei and chief of public security, asked to comment by phone, said only, “I don’t know” and hung up. Guangdong provincial public security offices and the Guangdong provincial government went unanswered. A duty officer at the Dongzhou police station said, “I am not familiar with the situation.” Asked to confirm that two villagers had died, he said, “There is no such thing,” and hung up.

Forthright and transparent as ever, the local government dispays the compassion and willingness to share that has made it the darling of its citizens. Thank God the little people are in such capable hands. God knows, they need all the protection they can get from those instigators, who would dare to place the health and welfare of the people above the need for what really matters: ensuring harmony and seeing that officials get their fair cut of bribes from ventures that will poison their citizens and further destroy the environment. Reform marches on.

Update: Howard French has another update on this horror story, with plenty of gruesome details.

Dongzhou, however, is close to Hong Kong, whose television signals reach here easily, and news of the killings has spread rapidly, despite the officially imposed silence in Chinese media. In the last 24 hours, Chinese language Web sites have carried abundant reports on the killings, often picked up from foreign news outlets, and commented upon them endlessly and often angrily.

Dongzhou’s villagers, with little hesitation and much outrage, recounted more details of the events in numerous telephone calls on Saturday. Still, most asked not to be identified. Their accounts suggested a range of possible casualties. They identified four dead villagers, three of whom they said were taken to a local clinic, and said the fourth body was taken to a hospital in Shanwei. But they also spoke with conviction about other casualties, though often with sketchier details.

“I was not at the scene that night, but after I heard some people were shot dead, I went to the clinic and saw three dead bodies there,” said a man who gave his name only as Chang. “The next day, I heard there were several bodies lying by the road, where tragedy took place. I went there and saw seven or eight bodies lying there in a row, surrounded by many policemen, who were denying the families’ attempts to claiming for the bodies.”

Numerous accounts said that the authorities had thrown corpses into the sea and burned bodies after the killings. Villagers said they had counted 13 bodies floating on the sea. Villagers also said that several times over the last few days, female residents had approached the police, who are still present in Dongzhou in large numbers, to beg that the bodies of relatives be released. Others said that people had quickly buried the bodies of their relatives so they could not be destroyed by the police to cover up evidence of the killings.

In another reported episode, six unarmed men from the village fled the violence, climbing a nearby hilltop, where they were pursued by the police and shot, leaving only one survivor, whose account was repeated by villagers on Saturday. Some of the dead, the account said, were wounded from afar and then killed by the police at close range.

The confrontation on Tuesday was the culmination of months of tension over the construction of a coal-fired power plant. Villagers said they had not been adequately compensated for the use of their land – less than $3 per family, one said – and feared pollution from the plant would destroy their livelihood as fishermen. The plans called for the village’s bay to be reclaimed with landfill.

Municipal officials here have been circulating the area, blaming the villagers for initiating the violence. They said that the villagers used fireworks, blasting caps and other small explosives, and that they had rejected a generous settlement for the use of the land.

“I’m a good friend of Dongzhou people,” one party official said by megaphone as he toured the village on Saturday. “Nobody wants to see anything like what happened here on the night of Dec. 6, but the people of this village are too barbaric. We were forced to open fire.”

A 16-year-old boy who said he was in the crowd when the police began to fire said: “We didn’t use explosives, because we were too far away. Someone may have tried, but there’s no way we could have reached them.”

I’m wondering, once we learn more, who will be shown to be the “barbaric” ones.

The AP reports:

Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of ri0t p0lice sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 10 dem0nstr@t0rs and were searching for the pr0test organizers, villagers said Friday…

…P0lice fired into the crowd and ki11ed a handful of people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. Accounts of the death toll ranged from two and 10, with many missing.

Although security f0rces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse dem0nstr@t0rs, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd…

…State media have made no mention of the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment. This is typical in China, where the ruling Communist Party controls the media and lower-level authorities are leery of releasing information without permission from the central government.

All the villagers said they were nervous and scared and most did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. One man said the situation was still “tumultuous.”

A 14-year-old girl said a local official visited the village on Friday and called the sho0tings “a misunderstanding.”

“He said (he) hoped it wouldn’t become a big issue,” the girl said over the telephone. “This is not a misunderstanding. I am afraid. I haven’t been to school in days.”

She added, “Come save us.”

Another villager said there were at least 10 deaths.

“The ri0t p0lice are gathered outside our village. We’ve been surrounded,” she said, sobbing. “Most of the p0lice are armed. We dare not to go out of our home.”

“We are not allowed to buy food outside the village. They asked the nearby villagers not to sell us goods,” the woman said. “The government did not give us proper compensation for using our land to build the development zone and plants. Now they come and shoot us. I don’t know what to say.”

It will be interesting to hear what sorts of responses come out of the local and central governments. The fact that such uses of force remain rare in China has to be a reflection of central government policy – and one to their credit. With pr0tests on the rise throughout rural China, one wonders if this escalation of force marks a turning point in official policy or is yet another example of a local government running rampant over the r1ghts and lives of its citizens. Coming hard on the heels of the Harbin crisis, will the central government respond in a way that increases confidence? Or instills fear?

UPDATE AP has updated the death toll to “as many as twenty.”

H0ward Fr3nch reports on the latest unr3st:

Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by p@ramilitary p0lice in an unusually violent cl@sh that marked an escalation in the widespread social pr0t3sts that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting. It is the largest known use of force by secur1ty forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around T1@n@nm3n Squ@r3 in l989.

Rest of the article continues below…let me know if this creates any access difficulties…

UPDATE: An irate poster (if I am not overstating his response) comments that this sounds like another one of those stories which was overstated in the early reporting (a la that notorious UK Guardian piece a couple months back). I meant to add a disclaimer to the effect that it is really too soon to know for certain what has happened here. But French’s reporting is usually pretty solid. So we’ll see.

(more…)

A press release titled ‘China: Don’t believe the hype’ and a report released by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to coincide with the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong claims, in stark terms, China’s ‘brighter than bright economic miricle has blinded admirers to its dark side’ i.e. that China’s rise in social inequality is unprecedented in history. And, in turn, the country has become the sweat shop of the world as huge numbers of agricultural and former state enterprise workers, deprived of any real representation, chase work in the cities.

700 million people live on less than two dollars a day. More than 15,000 people die in industrial accidents each year. Millions of workers do 60-70 hours per week, earn less than their country’s minimum wage and live in dormitories of up to 20 people in each room. Inequality is rising and there are almost as many recently unemployed people as in the rest of the world combined.

These statistics are normally not associated with something that is dubbed miraculous, but in the case of China these facts have been overshadowed by the hype.

The reasons cited include deeper integration into the WTO which has, in turn, stalled the eradication of poverty in China. For instance, over 75% of rural households are expected to suffer a cut in real incomes between 2001 and 2007. Also, the government’s relentless drive to attract foreign technology and investment and maintain an attractive and disciplined workforce that is able to produce US$30-50 DVD players.

The report states that the winners of WTO membership in China are those are already benefiting from economic reforms: government officials, private capitalists and white collar workers. The losers are blue collar workers, farmers and unskilled office workers, “whose income has remained stagnant for the last 10 years”.

“China might be on the path to full integration in the world economy but it is still far from the road to democracy. As China becomes further integrated into global trade, increased focus must be put on respect for basic human, social and political rights. As long as it fails to do so, the country won’t be achieving miracles for its people.”

China will have to create create over 300 million new jobs over the next 10 years in order to make up for job losses in agriculture and defunct state-owned enterprises. It goes without saying that this requirement is “much higher than China’s current job creation capacity”. As long as the CCP maintain a long-held policy of securing a larger share of global trade, then unemployment and inequality will continue to rise – and China’s people will continue to lose big-time.

I’m not sure what to make of this:

Four years after the death of Mary Kay Ash, nearly 350,000 Chinese women are emulating the icon, some earning big money selling TimeWise cleansers and facial whitening masks.

In every province, they’re reading her books, which have been translated into Chinese, and singing her songs, like “That Mary Kay Enthusiasm,” in Mandarin.

This fall, a few began driving her car, a pink Cadillac.

A decade after Mary Kay entered the country, China represents its second-largest market, even though a 1998 ban on direct sales threatened to ruin the venture. Within another 10 years, executives predict, this Asian giant could surpass the United States to be the No. 1 market.

The direct seller of skin care and cosmetics owes much of its success to an amazing marketing feat.

In a nation still coming to terms with memories of Mao Zedong and his Communist teachings, Mary Kay has gotten Chinese women to identify with a Caucasian cosmetics mogul with big hair.

This article, from the Dallas Morning News (and what city would better understand Big Hair?), had me alternately chuckling and shaking my head in the sheer wonder of just how weird the world can be. It profiles several Chinese Mary Kay distributors, some of whom are making six figure incomes. And it explains some of the adjustments that Mary Kay has had to make for the Chinese market:

In a country lacking religious freedom, Ash’s mantra – “God first, family second and career third” – became “Faith first, family second and career third.” “Principle” is often used instead of “faith”. And unlike in the United States, prayers are absent from large company gatherings.

The company also discovered it needed to broaden the appeal of its culture. In addition to Ash’s principles, such as her belief in the beautiful potential inside each and every human being, it added Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” to its employee training seminars starting in 2000.

But one of its biggest challenges involved something much more mundane: where to hold its annual seminar.

The seminar, modeled after the one held every summer in Dallas, brings together the company’s managers and thousands of its sales force members for award ceremonies, executive speeches and educational sessions. The event helps motivate Mary Kay’s sales force each year.

Two years ago, the Chinese government, which is suspicious of large gatherings, told Mary Kay it couldn’t hold its seminar. It wanted the company to conduct smaller meetings around the country. But that would have defeated the seminar’s purpose.

So Mary Kay moved the event last year to Hong Kong. This past August, attendance reached 16,000.

But many of Mary Kay’s traditions have been transplanted to China intact. The pink cadillacs, for example. Mary Kays’ books and songs (including “That Mary Kay Enthusiasm”), translated into Mandarin. And this:

The day Hao officially debuts as a national sales distributor is filled with ceremony.

Twenty-one lower-level Mary Kay distributors, women Hao helps, form a circle around her. The lights go out. And the smell of melting candle wax begins to fill the air.

With her husband and 7-year-old daughter looking on, Hao calls out the name of each distributor. She gives each a hug, a personal note and a candle in the shape of a small ball of pink roses.

A few distributors silently cry. Others dab at their eyes. Gradually, a glowing circle of pink lights appears in the middle of the room.

Then, Hao picks up a tall pink candle and places it at the bottom of a giant heart-shaped candleholder. Her distributors follow her, setting their lit candle balls in the slots around the pink heart.

Everyone gathers around the now burning symbol of love, clasps hands and silently makes a wish. Together, the women blow out the candles and clap.

The Jamestown Foundation has a must-read article concerning the human and economic cost of China’s progress. Not to be missed.

According to a recently People’s Daily online special, over 5 million public accidents occurred in 2004 alone, causing the death of 210,000 people, injuring another 1.75 million, and resulting in the immediate economic loss of over USD $57 billion (455 billion Chinese yuan). It is estimated that the direct annual cost of such disasters for China is more than USD $81 billion (650 billion yuan) on average, equal to 6% of the country’s annual GDP. To state the obvious: most of China’s economic growth each year is simply cancelled out by the immediate sacrifice of human lives and long-term damage to the environment.

China is no doubt one of the countries in the world that is seriously affected by natural disasters, which are large in volume, high in frequency, and severe in losses. The lives of more than 200 million people, or one-seventh of the Chinese population, are routinely disrupted by natural disturbances. 70% of China’s major cities, more than one-half of the Chinese population and more than 75% of China’s GDP are spread across the eastern part of the country where climate, water, and earthquake disasters cause considerable damage.

Also, be sure to check out another well written Jamestown article, Beijing’s strategy to counter U.S. influence in Asia.

I would say that compentancy in the global language of business, English, isn’t one of China’s strengths. However, a global IT research company, Gartner, reckons that China, which is ‘aggressively working on improving people’s English language proficiency’ will soon challenge India’s domination in the information technology sector. Not only in the IT industry either:

The Chinese government is stressing on English language learning as Beijing city is all set to host the 2008 Olympics that year. Moreover, the government is supporting Chinese IT companies to learn from India’s experience in the software sector and replicate it here.

“The Chinese mainland will have the largest English speaking capability by 2008, with a significant impact on business and IT globally. Removing the language barrier will enable mainland companies to work in a wider range of markets and segments. While English will become the preferred language of business in China, the context will remain in Chinese and the cultural barriers will remain.” Dion Wiggins, vice president and research director at Gartner, said.

Stressing the English language is all very well but I can’t see it going quite so smoothly. For example, most managers than I have come into contact with, mainly those over 40 years of age, speak little or no English at all. Fortunately, I don’t have to speak English here but I would say that the general level isn’t particularly good, certainly when compared to places like India.

Shenzhen Ren comes up with a very thoughtful post regarding a much-discussed subject on TPD – China’s ‘copycat culture’ and general lack of home-grown innovation. However, he points to several positives in China’s favour all of which certainly bode well for the future.

Hum@n R1ghts Watch released a new report today stating that thousands of Chinese citizens who petition authorities for the redress of grievances are attacked, beaten, threatened, and intimidated. Please visit this link to the news article to find a further link to the report (the link to the report is blocked here).

The 89-page report, “We Could Disappear at Any Time: Retaliation and Abuses against Chinese Petitioners,” is the first in-depth look at the treatment of Chinese citizens who travel to Beijing to demand approval of or answers to their complaints of mistreatment by officials. Research was carried out in China.

Petitioners, many of them rural people with minimal education or resources, often come to Beijing fleeing local violence and seeking a venue of last resort. Yet while they wait for their petitions to be addressed in Beijing, many are ambushed by groups of plainclothes security officers on the street, beaten, and kidnapped. Many are taken back to their home provinces, imprisoned, and even tortured. A few petitioners who spoke to Hum@n R1ghts Watch had lost the use of limbs due to torture in detention. The perpetrators of these abuses are usually government employees or agents who act with impunity.

China’s system of petitioning the centre is as old as the Chinese empire itself. According to the report, most grievances these days concern police brutality, illegal land seizures, poor infrastructure, and corruption. Although 10 million petitions were recorded in 2004, a recent study found that only 3 out of every 2,000 petitioners surveyed had their problems actually resolved.

As many of the grievances are politically-charged, it’s obvious to all that government accountability lies at the heart of the problem. Lacking basic freedoms, individual rights and any kind of local system of redress, citizens are faced with an often heavy-handed, secretive and usually corrupt administration that remains wholly intolerant of dissent. Petitioning the centre is the only channel open for ordinary citizens to air their grievances. The fact that millions of petitions are raised each year despite the dangers and likely lack of success would support this premise.

According to the unlinkable SCMP, eight villagers were reportedly shot dead by Guangdong police on Tuesday when officers were sent in to break up a protest connected to, you guessed it, a land requisition dispute. Since then, police and government officials in Shanwei have refused to comment despite repeated attempts for confirmation. Here’s the quote of the week:

“It’s not a simple case, because in such a harmonious society, our armed police won’t presume to open fire on villagers,” a spokesman for Shanwei city government said. Officials from the Shanwei Public Security Bureau said they were “not clear” about the incident.

One villager said yesterday that his brother, Lin Yutui, 26, was among the victims shot by police during the protest:

“He died at the scene immediately because one bullet hit his heart and another his pelvis. We call on the central government to help us and allow overseas media to report what’s happened because local media won’t report our story,” the villager said.

Protesters are complaining that they received inadequate compensation for land taken from them to build a coal-fired power plant. Also, the villagers claim they will lose access to Baisha Lake if the construction goes ahead, adding they relied on the lake for fish and power generation.

Villager Huang Tingting, 16, said her parents and other villagers had tried to take local officials to court over the power plant project, but claimed that the legal channels had been blocked by the government.