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Week Around the Ists
Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Cinematheque: Mulan is finally Chinese again! (and other film news)
The Guardian today reports on another riot in rural China:
Thousands of Chinese villagers have clashed with police over access to irrigation water, leading to at least one death and five injuries, the local media reported yesterday. Amid a rise in violent rural unrest, the authorities used water cannon and tear gas to break up an angry protest in the village of Bomei the southern province of Guangdong.According to the South China Morning Post, the villagers used homemade weapons, including petrol bombs, to keep more than 1,000 police officers from tearing down a sluice gate they had built in September to divert water to their fields.
The Economist today says:
Zhou Yongkang, has said that “actively preventing and properly handling” mass incidents was the main task for his Ministry of Public Security this year.According to Mr Zhou, there were some 74,000 protests last year, involving more than 3.7m people; up from 10,000 in 1994 and 58,000 in 2003. Sun Liping, a Chinese academic, has calculated that demonstrations involving more than 100 people occurred in 337 cities and 1,955 counties in the first 10 months of last year. This amounted to between 120 and 250 such protests daily in urban areas, and 90 to 160 in villages. These figures are likely to be conservative.
The Guardian article finishes by telling us there were "230 riots a day" in China last year. If China has officially 35 total areas including provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, then there are 6.5 "riots" every day in every province/region/municipality? We haven't seen any in Shanghai (apart from the anti-Japanese one), so that's 2372.5 more that would have to be apportioned out to the other seemingly revolutionary provinces in the year. We haven't heard from any of our friends living in Beijing, Chongqing, or the other big cities that riots have taken place, which means even more of these "riots" are happening in more concentrated pockets. Is there a Shanghaiist reader out there in Guangdong province who is hunkered down while the trucks over-turn and the bombs go off down there in war-torn Southern China?
We can't be sure of the above definitions of a "riot". Maybe they just mean a heated argument at a bao zi fang dian? Because then we can definitely believe that there are millions of riots in the "you owe me 1 jiao" / "this bao zi is very slightly smaller than the others" area.
The Carnegie Endowment tells us that the definition of a "riot" or a "protest" include "sit-ins, riots, strikes and demonstrations". Now that's more like it. We don't doubt that there is social unrest in the rural areas of China, and that it is a serious issue, but the Western media -- this time The Guardian being the culprit -- seems to paint a picture of a social situation equalling the hottest parts of downtown Baghdad. It seems to be quite fashionable to paint the picture of some kind of "migrant uprising" on the horizon, and to debate when the next revolution will take place. The more you know Chinese people from the countryside, the more you might realise that before anything else -- they are Chinese. They -- the Chinese Shanghaiist has encountered, at least -- might want to get rid of the local leaders, but they would never question the flag and the legitimacy of the boys right up top (unless they are taxi drivers taking a laowai home on the small hours of the weekend).
We had thought better of The Guardian, but their word choice and their slant on this simply tar them with the same brush as the rest of western media's scare-mongering. The Economist uses the title "The Cauldron Boils", but it could just be that the cauldron has a peaceful sit-in while it reads the paper, sips tea and knits gloves. An important point is raised though. As Hu And Wen say that social unrest is a problem now and they vow to create a new socialist countryside, they talk about the issue as if they are mere commentators rather than the people that can make it happen. They did recently talk about new rural reforms, but will these actually deal with the people's concerns? Time will tell.
You know on second thoughts, as we type this in Ruzzi on Huahai Lu, there is a baby crying very loudly, and a Chinese man 'talking' even more loudly. Get ready for riot number one, Shanghai.
Related (from The Guardian):
Chinese villagers seize party chief
Chinese paramilitary chief held after village killings
Land seizures threaten social stability, warns China's leader
China activists 'vanish' amid protests
China vows to create 'new socialist countryside'
Photo from Economist's View.
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several points:
i would bet that some of the events that i attended relating to the housing protesters would count. they were mass gatherings--i think over 5 people or something without approval counts as illegal mass gathering. in the summer that happened every wed. in front of the portman. on other days of teh week, these ppl would flock en masse to the city government, and although ostensibly waiting in line to get cases heard, this agian might be considered one such riot or protest.
the point is, a lot does occur under the radar--most Shanghainese are not aware of the housing protests. they know of the issue, but not of the protests, of what these people do. it's not reported in the media, and it's only via word of mouth that they may know about these things. frankly, some of these people don't care because they think the protesters are just whiners that got a shit deal on their demolished homes (which is not altogether false).
i think the CCP is afraid they will go down Poland/Solidarity (or some other e. european country's) path. They don't want to be one party among many. There is just too much at stake--not the flag, perhaps, and not the history--but a helluvalotta perqs. It's a safe and familiar system--get into the old boys club and stay there. they'll make sure you have enough to eat, your kids go to school, and you have a pension. If i had been born in China and could deal with all the boring, conformist people whose every word is rimed with bullshit i might very well have been a strapping young Party member myself.
I saw the housing protests last year but it is impossible to tell whether these people were mistreated or just wanted more money. Anyway, they soon stopped... for some reason.
Is the CCP still frightened ot the solidarity thing? They were 50 years ago, but I can't believe that they are really frightened now, they have such a complete and unquestionable grip on things.
We can't be sure of the above definitions of a "riot". Maybe they just mean a heated argument at a bao zi fang dian? Because then we can definitely believe that there are millions of riots in the "you owe me 1 jiao" / "this bao zi is very slightly smaller than the others" area.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! That's a riot!
Media workers covering China must be called on for fear-mongering and xenophobic reporting—and Shanghaiist is doing a great job covering the Intel story—but it does this debate great injustice, Mr. Withycombe, to write about specific cases about which, as you indicate in your comment above, you're rather uninformed.
The CCP is scared shitless things will go the way of the CCCR.
Hilarious article, but you forgot this quote from Economist:
"...and all but the very richest complain bitterly about a government that, despite strong and growing revenues, has presided over the collapse of affordable health care and education."
I did not write about specific cases. I quoted what The Guardian had stated.
I do not think any injustice is done by questioning the credibility of The Guardian statements (as all I was doing was 'questioning', which is never wrong to do) seeing as they themselves made the greatly misguiding statement of 230 riots a day.
I hope that completely clears it up, Mr. Feng 37.