jisangNY1, China needs 10 more people ... you still want to volunteer? Source BEIJING - Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting demonstrators and searched for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd — as they did in putting down pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 near Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed. During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant. Police started firing into the crowd and killed several people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. The death toll ranged from two to 10, they said, and many remained missing. State media have not mentioned 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. The number of protests in China's vast, poverty-stricken countryside has risen in recent months as anger comes to a head over land seizures, corruption and a yawning wealth gap that experts say now threatens social stability. The government says about 70,000 such conflicts occurred last year, although many more are believed to go unreported. The clashes also have become increasingly violent, with injuries sustained on both sides and huge amounts of damage done to property as protesters vent their frustration in face of indifferent or bullying authorities. All the villagers reached by The Associated Press 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 Friday and called the shootings "a misunderstanding." "He said he hoped it wouldn't become a big issue," the girl said by 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 riot police are gathered outside our village. We've been surrounded," she said, sobbing. "Most of the police are armed. We dare not 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." One woman said an additional 20 people were wounded. "They gathered because their land was taken away and they were not given compensation," she said. "The police thought they wanted to make trouble and started shooting." She said there were several hundred police with guns in the roads outside the village Friday. "I'm afraid of dying. People have already died." "These reports of protesters being shot dead are chilling," Catherine Baber, deputy Asia director at Amnesty International, said in a statement. "The increasing number of such disputes over land use across rural China, and the use of force to resolve them, suggest an urgent need for the Chinese authorities to focus on developing effective channels for dispute resolution." Amnesty spokeswoman Saria Rees-Roberts said Friday in London that "police shooting people dead is unusual in China and it does demand an independent investigation." Like many cities in China, Shanwei, the city where Dongzhou is located, has cleared suburban land once used for farming to build industrial zones. State media have said the Shanwei Red Bay industrial zone is slated to have three electricity-generating plants — a coal-fired plant, a wave power plant and a wind farm. Shanwei already has a large wind farm on an offshore island, with 25 turbines. Another 24 are set for construction. Earlier reports said the building of the $743 million coal-fired power plant, a major government-invested project for the province, also was disrupted by a dispute over land compensation. Authorities in Dongzhou were trying to find the leaders of Tuesday's demonstration, a villager said. The man said the bodies of some of the shooting victims "are just lying there." "Why did they shoot our villagers?" he asked. "They are crazy!"
Man, if our gov't was run like China's, most of the posters on this board would be locked up by now. At least those not showing complete support for the gov't.
Space Ghost, jisangNY1 is of Korean heritage and has no relationship to PRC. Why do you feel the need to bash him using a tragedy occurred in China? The thread title is misleading at best, inflammatory at worst. First of all, it's not even of the title of the original article. Secondly, the number of the deaths isn't verified by the reporter and it varies wildly from two to 10 or more. Thirdly, it's very objectionable of you to exaggerate the event with the word "massacre" (not "massacure" BTW). You wouldn't characterize the shooting death of innocent Iraqis at checkpoints by US troops as Massacre, would you? Finally, the reporting itself is very one-sided, to say the least. While I object to Space Ghost's ill-purposed thread, I unequivocally denounce the uninhibited greed of the local Chinese government that initiated the land seizure, and the senselessness and brutality of the riot police that shot the helpless villagers. As indicated in the article, it is extremely rare for security police to fire directly at demonstrators, unless the situation is completely out of control. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no excuse to use the deadly force. I hope the involved officials and personnels are held accountable and justice serves them to the full extent. Chinese governments at all levels should to re-examine their economic policies to see whether there is any shred of creed left to serve the mass who need the most help to survive.
First, let me state that I unequivocally despise the central comitee and all the Chinese Communist Party Apparatchiks. That having been said I'm not sure that they hold any direct blame in this instance. From everything I can gather, most of the really horrid abuses of power (and they are many) occur on the regional/city level. The one place where the CCP is particularly vocal and active in criticizing internal Chinese issues is in terms of regional corruption/idiocy. The problem is that the issue is (and to some extent always has been) a major issue in China. From personal experience, I own several Chinese stocks and all of them have suffered some sort of overt extralegal powerplay by regional authorities. Here is one of the more notable examples involving a stock that I don't own called China Yuchai, which used to own a significant portion of the Yuchai Machinery Company who manufacturers diesel engines, with the local government being the other major shareholder. From Motley Fool: [rquoter] The Chinese management of Yuchai and the management of China Yuchai have not been seeing eye-to-eye on matters. Not only have dividends been withheld from China Yuchai but also Yuchai has attempted to pull stunts such as not permitting board meetings to be held, not implementing board decisions, and even attempting to give a sweetheart loan to another Coomber-controlled company. When China Yuchai began to complain about these goings-on, the State Holding Company tried to bring the whole thing crashing down by having China Yuchai's ownership stake declared illegal. This is a time-tested practice in China -- if the foreign partner gets a little too big for his britches and doesn't let the locals do what they please, the government tries to pressure him with threats of invalidating the whole shebang. [/rquoter] The problem in this instance is that the longtime Communist-style extra-legal power games and governmental ownership of industry has been mixed with a more modern Capitalist-style ruthless pursuit of profits, and the situation is muddled by no clear seperation in these local official's minds between the affairs of the company and the affairs of the government. It's not so much an "economic policy" issue as much as a clash between new style economic policy and old style social methodology. Imagine if Enron had also been the central apparatus behind the City of Houston and Harris County and you begin to get an idea how there might be problems. I definately don't know what the answers are for China, however, I don't think this one can be particularly blamed on the Chinese government anymore than LAPD abuse and racism issues directly reflect on the Federal Government's approach to law enforcement. The CCP is clearly concerned about the issue but hasn't been able to really find the solution.
1)Any intentional shooting at an unarmed crowd would be considered a massacre. 2)Please show me the D&D rules that state the thread title must be the same as the article that posted. 3)This is the internet. Jisangs heritiage, yours, or anyone elses doesn't matter.
I sure didn't place the blame directly on PRC central government for the death of local villagers, since there is no indication that the shooting was ordered from higher up, as in the quelling of massive student protests in 1989 at Tian'an Men Square. In the earlier days of economic reform under the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, the provincial governments were more prudent in their dealings with the local people as the majority of the work force were state employed. The scale of reform was limited and the geographical locations were carefully selected. In later years the reform started to shift into full gears and the central government gradually relaxed its grip on many local matters. Still, PRC isn't a much decentralized federalist country -- the provincial heads "report to" the central government one way or another. The cause of the said tragedy apparently stemmed from the increasingly pressing need for energy. On surface it is supposed to benefit everyone. However, with a more closer look one does not find it difficult to relate it to classic redistribution of wealth. Things of this nature are happening everyday in China. Unfortunately either laws are not on par with the rapid economical and social transitions, or the existing laws are not strictly enforced. The ultimate responsibilty IMO squarely rests upon the central government. Although it is not to stipulate the details of land acquisitions and compensations at local levels, the central government should establish clear guidelines for such cases while at the same time be careful not to let the economy overheat and already widened wealth gaps to worsen. The villagers are aware of the values of their land and are fully justified to demand fair compensations. With increasing number of industries turning privatized, semi-privatized, or joint-ventured with overseas investors (including those from Hong Kong and Taiwan), more and more Chinese realize they should be less dependent on the government, whether they are willing or not. While I agree with you that the complexity of different forms of ownership contributes to the muddiness of overall situation, I think in this particular case the overtaking of land was done by the local government to build more utility plants to be owned by the government. Even if there was no severe casualties as the result of the confrontations, the callousness on the part of the local government should not go unnoticed. As you observed, the ruthless pursuit of profits is nothing short of staggering, enough to make Adam Smith spinning in his grave. Finally I have to admire your adventurous investing in uncharted territory. It seems to me you are eager to learn about China in some interesting way. I am not too familar with Chinese stocks, but recently I heard the much heralded Baidu - Chinese version of Google traded in NASDAQ - was somewhat of a bust.
So you are saying US troops have been massacring Iraqis all along. There may not be any rules on this BBS stating you can't take an unproven statement [by the article's author] and use it as the thread title in an exaggerating manner, I expect some kind of self-control on your part to post more responsively. It appears you had no intention to expound on the claim other than to inflame. There has been a thread started by jisangNY1 on why he dislikes the current state of affair in America and tries to seek a better place to live elsewhere. If you think this article is a perfect example to rebut jisangNY1's positive bias towards China, why not posting in his thread -- did it ever occur to you he wouldn't bother to read, let alone respond to your painstakingly searched article in an entirely different thread? If on the other hand, you feel it's your time to bash China, you can still do it freely without calling him out. Regardless, your opening statement, which is the only one coming from you, is rather tasteless. Even if there were indeed 10 village people died during a clash with local police in some rural area, it is still not even remotely possible a foreigner like jisangNY1 would die in the hand of CCP. One thing I can assure you, CCP treats its foreign guests far more friendly than it does to its own people. Sometimes too nice, I think. BTW, it's spelled heritage.
Insurgents/Iraqis/Muslims/terrorists/dark skin ... is this what you are referring to? Last I heard, it was insurgents and terrorists, with a few accidents here and there. I really don't care to get into the facts in this thread on whether they were accidents or not. Hey brah, did it ever occur to you to check the source? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051209/ap_on_re_as/china_protest_shootings Let me break it down for you just in case you're having trouble. "20051209" means december 09, 2005, which is the day this incident happened and the day the article was published. "news.yahoo.com/s/ap" is front page news for yahoo. So while i was enroute to check my email, i "painstakingly" came across this article on the front page of www.yahoo.com. So yes, I spent many hours trying to find an article just for jisang I understand you want to be an Online Tough Guy like some of the people here and bully them around by correcting their typos and make assumptions of their behavior, but really, you should think before you post.
Neither of you guys would last .002 seconds with a ninja. Well, wnes might last 1 second, but that's only because he's Asian. Asians usually know kung-fu.
If this were another thread of late, in two days there would have been only .25 of a person killed by the Chinese government.
There are grey areas of every issue, The enforcement of iminent domain by an unelected government in the a radically evolving society rooted in a culture with thousands of years of complex protocol, has so many possible issues, characters, and side plots that it could be the subject of several books. We have to take this report for what it is; a possible, plausible version of an unfortunate event that needs further investigation. We can't really make any value judgements from it either way.
[playing along] So if the victims are dark skinned and the aggressors are light skinned, then massacre doesn't apply? How about "Kent State Massacre"? [/playing along] LOL Ghost, I enjoy seeing you taste a dose of own medicine. Do you feel somehow threatened by a volunteer spelling checker? So sorry, I should've been more gentler on you tender soul.
China Blames 'Instigators' in Deadly Siege China on Saturday blamed a deadly confrontation between authorities and demonstrators in a village near Hong Kong on "a few instigators" who organized an attack on a wind power plant, prompting police to open fire. China said in its first official comments on Tuesday's confrontation that three villagers were killed. Residents, however, said as many as 20 people were killed. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said police opened fire on villagers in Dongzhou, a village in Guangdong province, after a mob formed a blockade on the road and began throwing explosives at officers. Three villagers were killed and eight were wounded, Xinhua said, quoting the Information Office of the neighboring city of Shanwei. However, residents told The Associated Press that as many as 20 people were killed when police opened fire on a crowd of thousands protesting against inadequate compensation offered by the government for land to be used for the new power plant. Villagers said dozens of people were missing. A Hong Kong newspaper quoted villagers accusing Chinese officials of trying to cover up the killings. It was the deadliest known use of force by Chinese authorities against civilians since security troops opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands. Although police often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd. The clash in Dongzhou also marked an escalation in social protests that have convulsed the Chinese countryside over land seizures for factories, power plants, shopping malls and other projects. Farmers often say they are paid too little and some accuse officials of stealing compensation money. Authorities called the assault by villagers "a serious violation of the law" and said a special group was formed to investigate the incident, Xinhua said. Before the fatal attack, police used tear gas to break up a mob of about 170 villagers armed with knives, steel spears, sticks and explosives, Xinhua said. Two villagers were arrested. The report said the instigators then formed a mob of 300 villagers to blockade a road leading to a neighboring village to force police to release the suspects. Police opened fire after the villagers began to throw explosives at police and one of the instigators threatened to blow up the power plant, Xinhua said. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper Saturday quoted Dongzhou villagers as saying authorities were trying to cover up the killings by offering families money to give up the bodies of the dead. "They offered us a sum but said we would have to give up the body," an unidentified relative of one slain villager, 31-year-old Wei Jin, was quoted as saying. "We are not going to agree." Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control in 1997, but the former British colony maintains a high degree of press freedom. Its proximity to Dongzhou gives local reporters good access to events there. One woman in the village told The Associated Press by telephone that police were holding some bodies of dead protesters and refusing relatives' pleas to give them back. Another villager, who identified himself only by his last name, Chong, said many of the victims' families had gone to a local police station seeking compensation for the deaths but had been turned away. None of the villagers wanted to be identified, fearing official retaliation. Residents said they remained under siege, with authorities surrounding the village and refusing to let anyone leave. On Friday, residents said troops armed with guns and shields were searching for the protest organizers. Before Saturday's report, state media had not mentioned the incident in Dongzhou and both provincial and local governments repeatedly refused to comment. Telephone calls to the local police station went unanswered. Protests by farmers - the ruling party's historical base - are an extremely sensitive issue in China. The number of protests in China's vast, poverty-stricken countryside - home to about 800 million people - has risen in recent months as anger comes to a head over land seizures, corruption and a yawning wealth gap that experts say now threatens social stability. The government says about 70,000 such confrontations between officials and rural residents occurred last year, although many more are believed to go unreported. The clashes also have become increasingly violent, with injuries sustained on both sides and huge amounts of damage done to property. Alarmed by such conflicts, President Hu Jintao's government has made a priority of easing rural poverty, promising to spread prosperity to areas left behind by China's economic boom. But in many regions, families still get by on the equivalent of a few hundred dollars a year. Dongzhou is on the outskirts of the city of Shanwei. Like many cities in China, Shanwei has cleared suburban land once used for farming to build industrial zones. State media have said the Shanwei Red Bay industrial zone is slated to have three electricity-generating plants - a coal-fired plant, a wave power plant and a wind farm. Shanwei already has a large wind farm on an offshore island, with 25 turbines. Another 24 are set for construction. Earlier reports said the building of the $743 million coal-fired power plant, a major government-invested project for the province, also was disrupted by a dispute over land compensation.
