Angry Syrian and Libyan demonstrators threw rocks, eggs and tomatoes at the Chinese embassy in Tripoli to protest China's veto of a UN Security Council resolution urging Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down: more ›

Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where demonstrations are a normal thing. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where marches don’t end in disaster. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) roots out the dirt. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where the government isn’t in bed with business. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where refuge is provided for exiles [from the Tiananmen Protests]. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where June 4 is not forgotten. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where magazines are free. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where you don’t have to scale the [Internet] wall. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where the sense of human rights is strong. Thank goodness there is Hong Kong, where there are prospects for democracy. Thank goodness there is Taiwan and Hong Kong, when the mainland’s back bristles with thorns and no one dares step too far out of bounds! more ›

Lobsang Sangay, Kalon Tripa of the Tibetan government-in-exile, comments on the recent shootouts on Tibetan protestors in the first few days of the Chinese New Year, and calls upon Tibetans to halt celebrations of Losar, the Tibetan New Year. Transcript after the jump... more ›

Chinese military forces are said to have opened fire on a group of protesting Tibetans, killing one and wounding 30 others, according to Free Tibet, an activist group campaigning for self-determination by Tibetans. The incident happened after a large gathering in Draggo (also Drango, or Luhuo in Chinese), some 600km westwards of Chengdu. more ›

Guangdong party chief Wang Yang may have won praise for his light-handed approach in dealing with Wukan, but has he actually opened the floodgates for a wave of land grab protests? Yesterday, 1,000 villagers rallied at the Guangzhou city government headquarters as the provincial people's congress met elsewhere in the city for the closing ceremony of its annual session, according to the South China Morning Post: more ›

Guangdong's Wukan village will re-elect new village leaders after a wave of massive protests which lasted for around 3 months captured nationwide attention. Lin Zulian (林祖恋), the protest leader as well as the chief of a committee running the village after protesters gained control, has been appointed as the village's Party Chief and is to organize the upcoming village election. more ›

Though it's almost 2012, there's still time for more brawls in 2011 right? On December 28th, around 10pm, a pretty nasty brawl broke out between chengguan and some vendors outside a Xujiahui mall here in Shanghai. more ›

Protesters in Wukan, the village that captivated China watchers around the world during their bold stand-off with the Chinese government, have packed up shop and gone home after government concessions. more ›

An encaged performance artist set up shop in front of a Guizhou Province dog butcher shop yesterday to protest the consumption of dogs. Despite the 3 degrees celsius outside temperature, the 40-year-old canine advocate, Pian Shankong, was clad in nothing but a pair of underwear. Throngs of self-proclaimed dog volunteers joined him in the demonstration, chanting "do not eat dog meat." more ›

"For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village now in open revolt." So begins Telegraph correspondent Malcolm Moore's report of what he has personally witnessed in the fishing village of Wukan, Guangdong over the past few days. Enraged over government land grabs, villagers have now overrun local authorities and driven police out. They remain barricaded within their village, roadblocks set up by both police and villagers preventing food and water from entering. Here's a roundup of what's happening. more ›

Filipinos have hit the streets of Manila to protest against their own government for its failure in securing a stay on the execution of an unnamed drug trafficker yesterday. More on the Philippines here. more ›

The current wave of strikes and demonstrations continued this week, as more than 100 workers blocking a Tesco store in the city of Jinhua in Zhejiang province. Shoppers were prevented from entering the shop by the staff, who boldly blocked and barricaded the entrances and exits, while holding up banners with messages, including ''We want to protect our rights...Return our blood and sweat money.'' more ›

On Sunday, a Henanese couple decided the best way to pay off their outstanding hospital bill was to walk the streets bare naked with their children in tow in Dianbai County, Guangdong. more ›

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A Tibetan activist group has released a video that purportedly shows the moment Palden Choetso, set herself on fire and burned to death in a widely publicised self-immolation protest in Sichuan on November 3. More here. more ›

We kid you not: Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off blogger. Bullog.cn founder, and New Oriental English teacher Luo Yonghao tried getting the attention of Siemens via his Weibo when the door of his fridge refused to shut. When the company decided to ignore him, Luo got other angry customers to join him in an action to smash their fridges outside Siemens Beijing headquarters. Not only did Siemens decide to ignore the angry protestors, they called on the cops to clear them out. More on the hilarious story here. more ›

Thousands of workers in Dongguan, Guangdong Province staged a massive strike against new regulations imposed by their factory management on Thursday. Thousands of workers besieged their factory in Dongguan's Huangjiang Township and blockaded the town's main road. At one point, protesters were said to have numbered over 10,000. Conflicts broke out between riot police and protesting workers as the police tried to prevent workers from approaching the government building. Dozens of workers reportedly suffered head wounds after they were beaten by riot police. more ›

Peter Foster of The Daily Telegraph breaks the story of a man who set himself on fire October 21 on Tiananmen Square, but the incident appeared nowhere in Chinese news media. Here's what happened according to a reader who witnessed the incident: more ›

If you thought that deploying geriatrics was a safe way of ensuring your protest will be a success, then think again. Malcolm Moore of the Daily Telegraph reports that on Tuesday, busloads of policemen dealt "briskly and aggressively" to clear a noisy crowd of 300 grandparents protesting outside a local court. The next day, the court sentenced activist grandmother Zhang Weiming, 65, to three and a half years jail for "organising a crowd to create a disturbance". Zhang has been spending the last eight years fighting for the rights of some 100,000 Shanghainese sent to Xinjiang in the 1960s by Chairman Mao. more ›

Last weekend, hundreds of angry homeowners in Pudong faced off riot police and smashed up the office of their real estate developer for offering discounts of up to 30% for units in their apartment complex. Yesterday, a similar, smaller-sized protest took place in Jiading. more ›

Multiple sources have told Shanghaiist that the police have been going around bars -- of all places! -- asking foreigners if they've got anything to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Apparently, the powers that be are worried that intoxicated laowai's might start to Occupy Shanghai? more ›

Taobao has relented slightly in the ongoing e-fued between the massive online retailer and its small sellers, by agreeing to postpone their plans to increase their service fees by nine months and by offering financing of up to 180 million RMB to select shops. more ›

Following eight self-immolations by Tibetan monks this year, a Tibetan nun has set herself on fire and died yesterday. This is believed to be the first case of a female self-immolation in the region. Via RFA:

Tenzin Wamgmo, about 20 years old, called for freedom in Tibet and the return of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader living in exile in India, before succumbing to her burns. more ›

Thousands of small Taobao vendors are engaging in e-activism over a dramatic increase in annual service charges for sellers on the popular online market. more ›

A few links to start out your day. Jordan Pouille has some interesting photos that offer an intriguing glimpse of life in "iPad City" in Sichuan, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers to make Apple's extremely popular product. more ›

Meanwhile, has anyone else started noticing that maps of China now include islands in the South Island Sea? "Vietnamese police detained scores of people taking part in an anti-China rally in Hanoi on Sunday in defiance of a government order to end a string of demonstrations that has stretched three months and put authorities on edge. One witness said plainclothes police forced around 40 demonstrators onto two public buses and drove them away within minutes of the start of the demonstration. A blogger who has chronicled the demonstrations and has contacts among the regular protesters said at least one bus left with 19 people aboard. It was the 11th anti-China rally in an unprecedented series of public protests that have taken place nearly every Sunday since early June against what Vietnamese see as China's violations of their country's sovereignty in the South China Sea." [Reuters] more ›

New on the Sinica podcast -- Kaiser Kuo, Baidu's Director of International Communications; Josh Chin of the Wall Street Journal and Christine Larson of Foreign Policy discuss the recent NIMBY protests against the PX plant in Dalian. more ›