[Marxism] China faces up to growing unrest

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China

China faces up to growing unrest
By Paul Mooney/Asia Times Online

BEIJING - Government officials were shocked when a traffic incident erupted
into pitched street battles between majority Han Chinese and ethic Muslims
in a small village in Henan, an impoverished province in east-central China.
The government put the number of people killed at seven, with 42 injured.
The New York Times, quoting unnamed local sources, said that some 148 people
were killed in the disturbance, including 18 policemen.
The incident was just the latest in a string of protests that have taken
place in recent weeks around China, and that have deeply worried central
government leaders.

In October, as many as 50,000 demonstrators lined up in front of government
offices in a small town in Sichuan province and set a police van on fire to
protest the beating of a migrant worker, allegedly by a government official.
Ten days later, in Hanyuan county, also in Sichuan, an estimated 100,000
farmers stormed a government building and battled police over land lost to a
dam project and what they called inadequate compensation. Order was not
restored until martial law was declared and paramilitary forces were
scrambled to the scene.

On October 29, hundreds of heavily equipped security forces imposed a curfew
on university campuses in Inner Mongolia after a planned concert by a
popular Mongolian rock band was canceled, according to the Southern
Mongolian Human Rights Information Center in New York.

And when security guards this month stopped Uighur Muslims in Guangzhou
selling fried mutton from a street mall, fighting erupted between riot
police and angry Uighurs, leaving several people injured,

Despite 25 years of economic growth that has made China the envy of its
neighbors, income disparities are growing and corruption is spiraling,
resulting in mounting anger and a sharp rise in the number of disturbances
around the country.

Outlook Weekly, a Communist Party mouthpiece, reported recently that China
experienced more than 58,000 major incidents of social unrest in 2003 - up
15% from a year earlier - with more than 3 million people taking part in the
protests.

Another indication of the scope of the problem is China's Petition Office,
which hears public grievances, and which was inundated with more than 10
million petitions last year. According to the Southern Weekly, just two out
of every 1,000 cases were resolved. While legal experts argue that the
Petition Office should be replaced by rule of law, others are concerned that
the dismantling of the system could exacerbate the situation by blocking the
release of pent-up anger.

Making matters worse for the government, China's "new media" appear to be
reaching a critical mass. While news of unrest is usually blacked out of the
Chinese media, word is now spreading quickly via the widespread use of
modern communications, including mobile phones, faxes, instant messages and
the Internet, reaching Chinese nationwide. Activists in China have also
become more adept at communicating with the foreign media. Within the past
year, for example, dissatisfied Chinese citizens have begun to contact
foreign journalists directly using mobile phones, short messages, faxes and
e-mail.

Dru Gladney, professor of Asian studies and anthropology at the University
of Hawaii, said its difficult to tell whether the string of recent
disturbances represents an increase in unrest or whether we're beginning to
learn about more such incidents.

"I think the real new dimension is that activists on the streets and across
the country are communicating with each other, and this didn't happen
before," said Gladney. "Really, what's different now is the transregional
coordination and awareness, rather than an increase" in unrest.

And, Gladney told Asia Times Online, bottling up these channels of
communication won't be as easy. "This is clearly of concern to the
leadership, but I'm not sure the government can prevent it," he said. "We're
dealing with the cell-phone generation where people are in communication
more than before. You can't turn back the clock on that."

Enver Can, vice president of the World Uyghur Congress based in Germany,
agreed. "The communist government ultimately will not be able to change the
tide of globalization and keep its people immune from the free flow of
information," said Can. "The Chinese Communist Party will misjudge the
situation if it still believes that its key weapon is the control of
information."

Can, an ethnic Uighur from Xinjiang, told Asia Times online the situation is
spinning out of control. "I have expected such disturbances for years," he
said, adding that the government has up until now maintained stability
through a "hardline" policy. Can said the rising gap between the new rich
and poor, regional economic disparities, the crackdown against minorities
and religious groups and the migrant-worker problem all spell continued
trouble for the Communist Party.

"I would say that the government will face more and more unrest in the
coming years," he predicted. "The string of recent protests might very well
be the beginning of nationwide civil unrest."

"This is not a big threat to the party's control," countered Ren Wanding, a
veteran political dissident who spent 11 years in prison for his activities.
"China is an autocratic state and it is very strong," he told Asia Times
Online.

Thomas Bernstein, professor of political science at Columbia University,
said the countryside is under-policed and the situation could become serious
"under certain conditions". However, he explained to Asia Times Online that
these "conditions" do not yet seem to be present and that the People's Armed
Police force is large enough to deal with the problem. "I would think a
country the size of China could tolerate widespread but localized unrest,"
said Bernstein.
..........continue..
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FK16Ad01.html

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