A demo turns bloody

China

Dec 14th 2005 BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

But, for once, an admission of error

THERE was nothing at all unusual in the fact that hundreds of villagers in Dongzhou, in southern China's Guangdong province, launched a protest earlier this month after being forced to give up their land to make way for a new power plant. In today's China, where fast-paced growth keeps the economy humming but can also cause dislocation and discontent, such incidents have become common. Nor was it unusual that local security forces moved quickly to suppress the incident. As the frequency of such protests increases, the authorities are ever more fearful that unrest will spin out of control. The only thing that was unusual about the episode in Dongzhou was the way it ended on December 6th: in a volley of automatic-weapons fire by police.

Amid conflicting reports, the death toll remains unclear. Dongzhou officials say three people died, but local villagers have told the few foreign journalists to have made their way through roadblocks and into the town that as many as 20 were killed. If so, it could be among the most serious known use of force by Chinese authorities against civilians since June 4th 1989, when army units cleared demonstrators out of Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and killed hundreds—at least—in the process. In the nearly 17 years since then, China's government has never wavered from its insistence that it acted correctly on that fateful day. Indeed, it has always been deemed dangerous political heresy to suggest anything otherwise.

However, in yet another unusual aspect of the Dongzhou case, the government quickly admitted that “the commanding officer at the scene mishandled the situation and caused unintended deaths and injuries.” That unnamed officer, according to a government statement, now faces criminal prosecution. This move cannot but give other police commanders pause when they face decisions about how to handle unruly situations.

As many no doubt will: officials say that the number of “mass protests” taking place throughout China each year has risen from around 10,000 in 1994 to 74,000 in 2004. Although they have left a great deal unsaid about how these incidents are defined and counted, and how serious they are, it seems clear enough that their occurrence is on the rise.

So is China cracking under the strains of its breakneck growth? Not necessarily. Yu Jianrong of the Rural Development Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences—China's premier semi-official political think-tank—reckons that most protesters are agitating for the redress of very specific grievances, not because they want to overthrow the system. In the past these were often to do with the levying of unfair taxes, but more recently they have centred, as in Dongzhou, on inadequate compensation for the loss of land.

In an article early this year, Mr Yu said these conflicts do not by their nature “challenge the basic social structure” of China. The key, he said, will be whether the government is able to appreciate the significance of farmers' complaints. Rural conflicts will either “provide opportunities for reform” or “initiate social instability”. The ball, in other words, is in President Hu Jintao's court.

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