China Officials Try New Press Restrictions, Then Back Off

By Weiguo Gong & Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times Staff,  Oct 28, 2009 -

Propaganda officials in southern China were forced to limit the scope of an order requiring journalists to apply for a “special journalist license” before interviews after receiving a flood of complaints online.

The order, titled “Dongguan City Promotes Care and Support for Media; Builds Idea for Positive Environment for Public Opinion,” a summary of which was published in the Guangzhou Daily on Oct. 22, argued that officials from the city’s Propaganda Department were attempting to help journalists by giving them an official certificate so they could do their job unimpeded.

The directive was questioned by bloggers, who wondered why Dongguan City should need the measure, since journalist licenses are already regulated by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), which works closely with the Central Propaganda Department in Beijing.

Some pointed out that in recent years, local regime officials have purposefully set up obstacles for media reporting for fear of having corruption, administrative failures, or popular discontent exposed.

Under the new order, bloggers argued, local officials could stall requests or arbitrarily reject applications. Organizations like the Foreign Correspondents Club of China have documented harassment of journalists in China, where provincial officials send plainclothes thugs to beat journalists or use police to pursue reporters, confiscating and destroying their photographs and video recordings.

The order contains several clauses near the end which outline the conditions of the license. It says that journalists who don’t “follow interview procedures” or who breach security cordons “will be pursued especially seriously according to the law.” It also said that those who don’t “report truthfully” may have their certification rescinded.

In response to the criticism, the Dongguan Propaganda Department on Oct. 25 published an update that the “special journalist license” will be used only for large-scale official conferences.

Before that date, on Oct. 23, officials set up a Web site with simple cartoons and slogans attempting to explain the issue.

The Chinese Communist Party’s control of media in China has been widely documented by scholars,  journalists, and NGOs; propaganda and control of public opinion in China’s current era is thought to be integral to maintaining one-party rule in the country.

- The Epochtimes

Over 2,000 Protest Pollution and Arrests in Southeast China Village

By Gu Qing’er, Epoch Times Staff,  Oct 24, 2009-

An ongoing struggle between residents and a local ceramic factory over pollution has erupted in protesting, arrests, and riot police presence. When a dozen resident activists of Paibian Village, Jiedong County, Guangdong Province were arrested the morning of Oct. 22, thousands went to the local regime officials, demanding their release.

An Epoch Times reporter interviewed villagers at the scene. According to a villager surnamed Lu, there were no legal procedures, and no one knew where the arrested villagers were taken. He said there were more than 2,000 people who joined the protest.

Another protester, surnamed Chen, said that his friend’s husband was not only arrested, but his cash and cell phone were confiscated.

“What kind of policemen were they! They did not show any ID, but just broke down the door and dashed into the house. I saw policemen taking one woman away in her underwear,” Chen said.

“It’s quite chaotic, and riot police are here,” he said. “The head official is not coming out to talk to us.”

Victims of Factory Pollution

Villagers complain that the exhaust from a ceramic factory has been jeopardizing the quality of life and health of local residents.

“The exhaust smells like disinfectants. It’s horrible and makes me dizzy,” Chen said. “My neighbor’s bamboo shoots stopped growing, and the school children have to cover their mouths and noses.”

The ceramic factory in question is located less than 170 feet from a residential area and an elementary school with 900 students. Students are reported to have symptoms of coughing, sore throats, dizziness, and chest pain.

There is no tap water in the village and residents drink from wells they have dug. The factory also releases waste water into the ground, polluting local sources of water. Residents have complained about loud noises from the factory as well.

Even neighboring villages are affected—residents complain that wind-born pollutants have caused a large number of crops to wither.
Taking the Issue into their Own Hands

Villagers at first approached the Bureau of Environmental Protection with their complaints, and were told the factory was being monitored and was unlicensed due to its failure to meet environmental standards. Local government officials took no action to assist the residents, and neither did the factory respond to complaints.

Two months ago, residents of the affected villages determined they would initiate action on their own. Thousands cooperated to set up roadblocks which stopped the factory from transporting materials. They also demanded that the ceramic factory move out of their area.

A fight broke out between residents and the factory owners the evening of Aug. 9. A resident told The Epoch Times that the factory owner threatened to run down residents with trucks. He also threatened to blow up an oil tank in the factory that would cause the whole village to burn.

The resident also reported that the owner bragged he had paid a town hall official a million yuan, and “he was not worried about us.”

- The Epochtimes

Four Held in Farmland Clashes Between Police and Local residents in South China

Radio Free Asia, 2009-10-23 -

HONG KONG— Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have detained four villagers following clashes this week between police and local residents over a disputed sale of farmland which left six people in hospital.

Work on a planned economic development zone in Shuidong township near Guangdong’s Maoming city has halted following the standoff, which villagers said left three people seriously injured.

“The villagers broke through the perimeter wall of the construction site,” a local resident who attended the protest said.

“The wall collapsed. We haven’t seen any workers going in or out, so it seems as if work has stopped for the time being.”

“Things are normal in the village now. No one is protesting.”

Blockade

Clashes broke out Tuesday when more than 100 villagers converged on the construction site to block the way of construction workers and machinery.

An official who answered the phone at the Shuidong No. 1 Detention Center Thursday confirmed that some people were being held there following the clashes.

But he said, “I can’t tell you what they are being charged with or when they will be released. You will have to call the police for that.”

An employee who answered the phone at the local police station declined to answer questions about the incident.

“The government took away our land, so we were going to snatch it back again,” a resident of Dianbai village near Maoming city surnamed Wu said.

“But they wouldn’t let us have it.”

He said around 100 villagers had marched to the site to get in the way of construction work.

“There were older people, of 50 or 60, women, elderly, and children. All went along,” Wu said.

“The clashes started when we tried to stop work on the site. The police were beating up a lot of people, and many were injured. There are still a few people in the People’s Hospital. There were about 50 police officers,” he added……. (More details from Radio Free Asia)

China Officials ‘Ordered Town Drowned’

Radio free Asia, 2009-09-23 -

HONG KONG— Police are guarding local government offices in China’s southern Guangdong province after dozens of villagers tried to storm the buildings in protest at deliberate flooding of their land in the wake of a major typhoon.

“More than 100 people stormed the government offices three times, but they wouldn’t let them in,” said a resident, surnamed Luo, of Chuanbu township near Guangdong’s Luoding city.

“Right now there are more than 100 police standing guard there.”

Luo said local township officials had refused all along to meet with villagers.

“The villagers are very angry,” he said.

“The township Party secretary has even said that it doesn’t matter if 100 or so villagers die. The most important thing is that not a single official died.”

Order to flood

The township government was ordered by Guangdong provincial authorities to flood the countryside around Chuanbu last week after water levels at the township’s Shandong Dam rose to dangerous levels in the wake of Typhoon Koppu, which left at least three dead.

A teacher surnamed Li at the Chuanbu Middle School said the school buildings were only a few hundred meters (yards) from the dam and described scenes of panic as teachers and students fled upstairs from the rising floodwaters.

“The water came in so quickly. Within two or three minutes the entire school was under water,” Li said.

“There was nowhere to run to. Several thousand teachers and students tried to escape to the upper storeys of the school buildings.”

Calls unanswered

“At the time, all we could think about was how to survive. There was no time to grab any belongings. We were running for our lives,” Li said.

“When the water reached the second floor, we ran up to the third floor. Then the third floor went under, so we ran up to the fourth floor. There are only five storeys in the school. We wondered at the time what would happen if we ran out of storeys,” she added.

An official who was similarly stranded at the Chuanbu township government confirmed that a total of 5,000 students at the middle school were left stranded by rising floodwaters, which also destroyed hundreds of houses.

“No one expected the water to rise so fast,” the official said.

“It was as deep as two meters. They were stranded for a whole day and night.”

“The government building was also surrounded by water. We too were very hungry and thirsty. We only had something to eat after the water retreated,” he said, adding that no casualties were reported from among the students.

The mother of Chuanbu Middle School student Qu Mingjie said her son was on the third floor when the waters started to rise.

“They were told to remain in their classroom by their teacher. The water was two meters high.”

Repeated calls to the Chuanbu police station and the Luoding municipal government went unanswered during office hours Wednesday.

Villagers were unable to confirm any deaths, but rumors were rife that dead bodies were carried to government offices in protest, and that a number of teachers and students from a local kindergarten were missing.

Guangdong-based civil rights activist Tang Jingling said local officials were refusing to give out details of loss of life and property caused by the flooding for fear of being held accountable……. (more from Radio Free Asia)

Six-Year-Old Chinese Girl Dreams of Being a Corrupt Official

By Luo Ya, Epoch Times Staff Sep 7, 2009 -

A short video posted on NanDu.Net, a Chinese news website, featuring a six year old girl from Guangzhou City has become the talk of China. When asked about her ideal life, the first grader proudly announced that she dreamed of becoming “a corrupt official, as they have lots of property.” The video was soon being discussed throughout the major media and Internet forums.

By late Sept. 2, the video had already received 14,000 hits, but was soon blocked and later deleted by the website. NanDu.Net had set up a poll for viewers to vote on how they felt about the video; the majority said it “accurately reflected the reality of Chinese society.”

”This six-year-old girl can see the nature of our society,” said Guangzhou attorney Liu Shihui in an interview with The Epoch Times. “I very much admired her vision. She got right to the point. Unfortunately, it also shows how poisoned the next generation of the country has become. These little souls have been led astray; this is awful.”…… (more details from The Epochtimes)

China Hi-tech Manufactory’s Lost iPhone Tragedy

Vivian Wai-yin Kwok, The Forbes, 07.22.09 -

HONG KONG — The design of the latest, yet unreleased, fourth-generation iPhone is top secret at Apple–one so “priceless” that it claimed the life of a young Chinese engineering graduate who was held responsible for misplacing a prototype.

Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old employee of Foxconn ( FXCNY – news – people ), which manufactures the iPhone for Apple ( AAPL – news – people ), jumped from the twelfth floor of his residential building in Shenzhen at 3:30 a.m. on July 16. Ninety minutes earlier, he sent a text message to a friend, saying his apartment had been searched and that he had been beaten up by senior officials of his company, according to Chinese newspaper Nanfang Daily. The story ran Tuesday alongside a picture of Sun’s last text message, shown on the friend’s phone.

Sun also had an online chat with his former university classmate Gao Ge about three hours before his death. Sun told Gao he was suspected by his company of stealing the latest iPhone prototype. During Foxconn’s internal investigation over the missing iPhone, Sun was illegally detained and physically abused by a security manager surnamed Yuan, and Sun’s apartment raided by three Foxconn employees. Sun described the scrutiny as the most humiliating experience of his life.

Sun’s last online chat was posted on Tianya, a well-known Chinese blog, two days after his death. It roused strong criticism of Foxconn among Chinese Netizens and on the Twittersphere.

According to the blog, Sun worked in Foxconn’s Shenzhen production site, the company’s largest, which employs more than 270,000 workers. Sun’s job involved handling product communications with Foxconn’s clients. On July 9, Sun picked up 16 prototypes of Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone from the assembly line and was responsible for shipping them to Apple. In the next few days, he discovered one of the phones was missing but couldn’t find it at the factory, where he thought he had left it. On July 13, he reported the situation to his supervisor.

Meanwhile, as Apple received one iPhone sample fewer than it requested, the U.S. computer giant suspected its highly confidential latest model, which has yet to launch, was leaked out by Foxconn. Apple applied immense pressure on the Chinese manufacturer, and Foxconn’s security manager allegedly instigated unlawful methods in interrogating Sun two days later.

- The Forbes

Flare-Ups of Ethnic Unrest Shake China’s Self-Image

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post Foreign Service, Sunday, July 19, 2009 -

YINGDE, China — Six weeks after a violent confrontation between police and villagers in this old tea farming region, Xu Changjian remains in the hospital under 24-hour guard.

After being hit in the head multiple times by police, Xu’s brain is hemorrhaging, leaving him paralyzed on the right side. He can barely sit up. Local government officials say Xu’s injuries and that of other farmers were regrettable but unavoidable. They say that villagers attacked their police station on the afternoon of May 23 and that the police were forced to defend themselves with batons, dogs, pepper spray, smoke bombs and water cannons.

The villagers, most of them Vietnamese Chinese, tell a different story. They say that about 30 elderly women, most in their 50s and 60s, went to the police station that day to stage a peaceful protest. Four farmers’ representatives, who had taken their grievances about land seizures to government officials a few days earlier, had been detained, and villagers in the countryside of the southern province of Guangdong demanded that they be freed. As the hours passed, several thousand supporters and curious passersby joined them. Then, farmers say, hundreds of riot police bused from neighboring towns stormed in without warning and started indiscriminately pummeling people in the crowd.

The violence in Guangdong was echoed in the far western city of Urumqi, when clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese on July 5 killed 192 people and injured about 1,700. Both incidents have shaken China’s view of itself as a country that celebrates diversity and treats its minority populations better than its counterparts in the West do.

The incidents in Guangdong and Urumqi fit a pattern of ethnic unrest that includes the Tibetan uprising in March 2008, followed by bombings at police stations and government offices in the majority Uighur province of Xinjiang that left 16 officers dead shortly before the August Olympics.

Each conflict has had specific causes, including high unemployment, continued allegations of corruption involving public officials and charges of excessive force by police. But for the Chinese government, they add up to a major concern: Friction among the nation’s 56 officially recognized ethnic groups is considered one of the most explosive potential triggers for social instability. Much of the unrest stems from a sense among some minority populations that the justice system in China is stacked against them. In March, hundreds of Tibetans, including monks, clashed with police in the northwestern province of Qinghai. The fight was apparently triggered by the disappearance of a Tibetan independence activist who unfurled a Tibetan flag while in police custody. Some said he committed suicide, but others said he died while trying to escape.

In April, hundreds of members of China’s Hui Muslim minority clashed with police in Luohe in Henan province when they surrounded a government office and blocked three bridges. The protesters were angry about what they viewed as the local authorities’ mishandling of the death of a Hui pedestrian who was hit by a bus driven by a Han man.

“In the United States and other countries, if a few police beat one person, it is big news; but here in China, it is nothing,” said Zhang Shisheng, 52, a grocery store owner whose right shin and calf bones were shattered during the attacks. Metal rods now support his shin, and he will not be able to walk for at least six more months.

“I feel that Chinese cops can kill people like ants with impunity.”

Xiang Wenming, a local party official and head of the Stability Maintenance Office in the area of Yingde where the clash occurred, said that “if some violence happened, that is because some people didn’t listen to the police.”…… (more details from The Washington Post)

China: 5 TV Station Staff Suspended for Failing to Censor Politically Sensitive Information

Epoch Times Staff,  Jun 25, 2009  -

Five staff members from Guangzhou Cable TV (GCTV) have been suspended for a “political mistake.” They apparently failed on several occasions to censor scenes related to the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the Falun Gong spiritual practice.

Programs from Hong Kong relayed to Guangdong Province normally have between 5-15 seconds delay for monitoring purposes. When Hong Kong TV broadcasts sensitive political information, local stations need to censor it immediately and replace it with other footage.

A Radio Free Asia report on Asia TV (ATV), broadcast a trailer announcing a “Special Series: The 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre” at 7:00 p.m. on May 22, which included the iconic scene of the student blocking the tank. The GCTV failed to censor the scenes at once, and an estimated one million TV viewers in Guangzhou City viewed it. On June 4, when ATV broadcast a special program on religion, including content relating to Falun Gong, GCTV again failed to censor it in time.

In addition, according to the China Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, when GCTV relayed the news at 6:30 on June 5, it failed to censor the scenes of Hong Kong people commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre on the night of June 4. After an investigation by the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department, 2 editors and 3 assistant editors of the GCTV were suspended from their duties, while more employees, including executives of the TV station, may also be reprimanded.

GCTV belongs to Guangzhou TV. One of their previous hiccoughs was when former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, delivered a governmental work report to the National People’s Congress in March 2001. The subtitles introduced him as a “former Falun Gong practitioner.” All editors and the TV executives involved were punished.

In previous years, many provincial TV station programs covering 10 provinces in China had clips inserted of Jiang Zemin’s crimes related to the persecution of Falun Gong, including the countless lawsuits filed against Jiang. Audiences in China said that the program also revealed Jiang’s cover up of the SARS epidemic. The regime’s mouthpiece Xinhua, criticized the inserted broadcast but dared not disclose the nature of the content to the mainland Chinese.

- Epoch Times

Unemployment forces China migrants back to the countryside

Tania Branigan in Miaoquan, Jiangxi , China, The Guardian (UK), Sunday 17 May 2009-

Until a week ago, Liu Xiao was part of the Pearl river delta’s army: one of the thousands of workers streaming along a Shenzhen road, gulping down breakfast, texting, lighting a final cigarette, teasing friends and swapping gossip – rushing rushing rushing to the factory for another shift making bras, computers and plastic toys for the world.

Today she waits patiently at the railway station across town. This region was the motor of China’s economic boom, but plummeting exports have forced it to slow and millions of those who kept it running have given up and gone home. Liu Xiao is one of the latest to return to the countryside: in her case to a village of just 200 people a 10-hour ride – and a world away – from Shenzhen.

For a year and a half she worked 11-hour days checking hard drive casings with no music or chat permitted, but found satisfaction in spotting hairline cracks and other errors. Home was a dormitory shared with seven other girls, crowded but renao (lively and chaotic).

“There were lots of rules, like no cooking and not being loud, but you get used to it,” she says. “It was harmonious, not like other dormitories where everyone quarrels.”

Production began to slow late last year and workers drifted away. Without overtime Liu Xiao’s wages slipped from 2,500 yuan (£240) a month to 800 yuan, barely covering living costs, and leaving nothing for visits to internet cafes or for the shopping trips she had learned to enjoy.

Millions abandoned the city at Chinese new year in late January and a steady trickle continues. When rumours spread that Liu Xiao’s factory would soon go bankrupt, as thousands across the manufacturing region have done, she handed in her notice.

Now she is killing time with a colleague, waiting for the night train. “I’m not too happy,” she says. “There aren’t many factories near my village. It’s too boring; there’s not much entertainment and it’s difficult to get out.”…… (More Details from The Guardian)

Hundreds Missing Children in South China Spark Outcry

Radio Free Asia, 2009-05-04 -

HONG KONG—The disappearance of hundreds of children in southern China has prompted an outcry among parents, who say the government has done little to locate their children or determine what may have happened to them.

Authorities have dismissed as rumor concerns that hundreds of missing children may have been subjected to organ harvesting.

Announcing the return of three out of four missing children in Heyuan city, in Guangdong province, in recent days, Huang Jinlai, director of the Yuancheng district Public Security Bureau, told reporters of the organ-harvesting allegations: “This is nothing but rumor.”

Huang Jinlai’s comments come amid growing concerns from the parents of the missing that their children may be being harmed or exploited by those who steal them.

A mother surnamed Huang in Guangdong’s Dongguan city said she was worried the children may have been crippled and used in begging gangs, or had their organs harvested and sold.

“The police are just like bandits,” Huang said. “They have no idea how we feel about this. I was crying at home last night. Why are they like this?”

“All these years, I haven’t even known whether my child is alive or dead. I’m worried that some of the children have been crippled and left by the side of the road to beg for money.”

“Other people say that they take their hearts for transplant. It makes me scared just to think about it. I can’t sleep, day or night. I just keep thinking about it,” Huang said.

Inaction alleged

Another mother, surnamed Zeng, whose seven-year-old daughter went missing in 2006, said the government didn’t appear to take the problem seriously enough.

“Because you [the government] ignored our cases and didn’t try very hard to solve them, there is little we can do [besides protest]. So many children disappear every year, and it’s because you, the local government, don’t take it seriously,” she said.

“If you did your job of enforcing the law properly, we wouldn’t be losing our children.”

An employee who answered the phone at the Dongguan municipal police department, and officials in the municipal government, declined to comment on the cases.

Repeated calls to the municipal Party secretary’s propaganda office went unanswered during office hours two weeks ago.

Other parents described a police crackdown when they protested last week.

“We wanted to see local leaders, but no leaders wanted to meet us. Therefore we decided to protest,” one woman, surnamed Zhang, said.

“We walked for several hours. There were many police following us and by early afternoon we had clashed with them. Many of us were injured. Some were bleeding,” said Zhang, who said her son, Wang Bin, was missing.

Another mother, surnamed Ye, said her son was abducted when he was nine months old.

“They overreacted by using riot police,” she said of the authorities. “All they need to do was to have police maintain order.” …… (more details from Radio Free Asia)

China: 500 Chinese Lawyers Signed Petition Against Colleague’s Jail Sentence

Human Rights in China, February 02, 2009 -

In the largest joint signature campaign to date by China’s legal community, 511 lawyers in Shenzhen signed a joint petition challenging the prison sentence of a fellow lawyer, Liu Yao (刘尧), and calling for a fair trial.

Liu represented peasants in Paitou Village, located in Dongyuan County, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province, whose land was expropriated by the local government to make way for a new power station planned by the Fuyuan Industrial Group. In December 2007, Liu went with a group of peasants to try to stop work at the construction site, which had continued despite a stop-work order by the State Land Bureau in Dongyuan County. An argument ensued, which resulted in the toppling of a construction frame and the destruction of some timber and steel bars.

In June 2008, Liu was sentenced to four years in prison by the Dongyuan County Court for “intentional destruction of properties.” In protest, 36 lawyers from 10 provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Henan, sent a joint petition to the Heyuan Municipal Intermediate Court in Guangdong, which voided the June 2008 ruling for lack of clear evidence and remanded the case to the lower court. On December 17, 2008, the Dongyuan County Court, without explanation, reduced the sentence to two years. The signature campaign began the next day.

One of Liu’s lawyers, Li Fangping, from the Beijing Ruifeng Law Firm, believes that this is a typical case in which the local authority, with the backing of powerful business interests, manipulates the court to suppress rights defenders. Li said: “If Liu Yao, a professional lawyer, could not even protect his own rights, how can the society expect lawyers to protect the rights of peasants who lost their land?”

“The Chinese government claims that courts in China exercise their judicial authority independently, free from any interference by any administrative organ, organization or individual,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China. “We urge the Heyuan Municipal Intermediate Court to show its independence by giving Liu a trial that will be open to the public.”

- Human Rights in China

China intensifies crackdown on House Churches before Christmas

By Daniel Tang, Sound of Hope Radio, December 24th, 2008 -

With Christmas just around the corner, Chinese Communist officials have pointed their spears at China’s House Churches, with the organiser of the China House Churches Federation, Pastor Zhang Mingxun being abducted on Sunday in Inner Mongolia. Also, gatherings at the Liang-Ren Church in Guangzhou were interrupted by dozens of officials sent by local authorities on Monday.

Rights organisation China Aid reports that Pastor Zhang was arrested by national security officers while he was at the Wulanhaote city of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to conduct a sermon. Pastor Zhang’s current whereabouts is still unknown.

Reporters tried contacting Zhang’s wife, she said her husband has been out of contact since Sunday morning, and suspects he was taken from his car by officials.

On November 28, Pastor Zhang was abducted and taken to the Nanyang Trade Union building. He says over 20 officials claiming to be from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Henan Department of Civil Affairs, the Bureau of Public Security and the Ministry of Religious Affairs made a decision to ban China’s House Churches Federation.

Pastor Wang Dao says his church has already filed a statement of claims to the local People’s Court, and if they follow normal procedures, the court should give a reply before Thursday. He says that if the court rejects the matter, they will appeal, and if all else fails, they will make recommendations to the National People’s Congress to change the constitution.

- Sound of Hope Radio: Chinese Communist regime intensifies crackdown on House Churches

China’s toy juggernaut goes off the rails

Peter Goodspeed, The National Post, Canada,  December 19, 2008 -

Photo: Workers smash an office during a protest at Kaida toy factory in Dongguan, Guangdong province in November in a protest over lay-offs and pay. There were protests in three provinces amid increasing factory closures and government concern about unrest. (REUTERS/Stringer )

There’s trouble in Toyland this Christmas. China’s workshops have been hit by the growing worldwide recession and more than half of all its toy exporters – 3,631 companies – have been forced out of business.

As China celebrates the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s initial economic reforms and its “opening up to the outside world,” the country’s leaders find themselves struggling with the worst deceleration of economic growth in a generation.

On Thursday, the ruling Communist Party threw itself a big party. At a triumphant ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, President Hu Jintao invoked Mr. Deng and emphasized the party’s unwavering focus on economic development. “Only development makes sense,” said Mr. Hu, quoting Mr. Deng.

The boom, which over three decades transformed an isolated and impoverished communist backwater into one of the world’s greatest economic success stories, is suddenly threatening to go bust.

An adviser to China’s cabinet yesterday revealed that 670,000 small firms closed this year. And about 6.7 million jobs vanished, many in the export hub of Guangdong, pushing unemployment well above the official figure of 8.3 million.

Meanwhile, September’s international credit crisis and the most devastating global financial turmoil in a century have combined to slash growth by almost half.

Construction projects are being suspended; consumer confidence is declining; car sales have crashed; property prices have plummeted; China’s stock markets have lost nearly 67% of their value; and the country is bracing for a harsh winter of more factory closures and mass layoffs.

Yin Weimin, China’s Social Security Minister, has described the unemployment situation as “critical” and said the impact of the world economic crisis is still unfolding.

He warns the economic slump will be felt hardest in the first quarter of 2009.

“The global economic crisis is picking up speed and spreading from developed to developing countries and the effects are becoming more and more pronounced here,” Mr. Yin declared in a recent speech. “Our economy is facing a serious challenge.”

Already, the Federation of Hong Kong Industries has said up to a quarter of the nearly 70,000 Hong Kong-owned factories in southern China could close in a worst-case scenario.

Across the border in Guangdong province, a region that has been transformed in 30 years from marshland and low-lying rice paddies into the world’s largest light-industrial zone, officials are predicting 9,000 of the 45,000 factories in Guangzhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen will close in the next three months.

That could see 2.7 million workers lose their jobs as overseas demand for consumer goods and clothes fades.

The government of Chongqing in Sichuan says as many as 180,000 migrant workers employed in coastal special economic zones may soon return home to look for work.

The World Bank recently predicted China’s growth may slow to 7.5% next year, the lowest since 1990 and the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yesterday, the Royal Bank of Scotland and IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn were predicting China’s gross domestic product growth next year would be about five per cent.

Bank experts still predict China’s economy will grow by 9.4% this year, but that is down from nearly 12% in 2007.

Chinese economists insist their country’s economy needs to grow by at least 8% a year simply to provide jobs for the 24 million people who enter the workforce every year.

But while all the economic indicators predict gloom, China’s leaders fear chaos. Violent strikes and protests are soaring as the threat of rising joblessness raises the spectre of social instability.

Last month, hundreds of workers rioted at a toy factory in Dongguan, 80 kilometres north of Hong Kong, in a dispute over severance payments……. (more details from The National Post)

AIDS in China Heading Out of Control: Chinese Expert

Nanfang Daily, via The China Scope, by LLD, Nov. 25, 2008-

A medical expert in Guangzhou warned on Nov 24 that AIDS in China has entered a stage of being uncontrollable.

An 18-year-old college freshman was recently diagnosed with AIDS in a Guangzhou hospital. According to the doctor, the male student was infected through sexual intercourse.

In China, transmission of the deadly disease through sexual activities has dwarfed every other channel of contagion, according to Cai Weiping, an AIDS expert from Guangzhou No. 8 People’s Hospital, in a media interview.

While the liberal attitude toward sex among the younger generation is one of the major reasons for the disease being out of control, migrant workers and the elderly are also vulnerable populations. Although the government has started the AIDS education, the sex workers at the bottom of  society are usually not targeted. Cai said that due to their extremely low income, they cannot afford the cost of condoms.

- The China Scope

Hundreds of workers riot in south China over unemployment: report

AFP, Nov. 26, 2008-

GUANGZHOU, China (AFP) — Hundreds of laid off workers rioted in southern China amid a dispute over severance pay, smashing offices of a toy factory and clashing with police, state press said Wednesday.

The unrest in Guangdong province, the heartland of China’s export-oriented light industry, is the latest in a series of protests that have flared across the country amid rising unemployment linked to the global economic crisis.

The riot occurred Tuesday night in Dongguan, one of Guangdong’s major export hubs, after as many as 2,000 workers gathered to protest over their severance pay, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

“(Rioters) smashed one police vehicle and four police patrol cars… fought with security guards… and entered factory offices breaking windows and destroying equipment,” the paper said.

Five people were injured in the violence, it said, with the report also published on a news website run by the government. There were no reports of arrests.

The riot occurred at the Kaida Toy Factory, a company owned by a Hong Kong firm in Dongguan’s Zhongtang township that is in the process of laying off workers, according to the Guangzhou Daily.

The report said that up to 500 workers rioted, while 1,500 others “looked on.”…… (more details from AFP)

Factories shut as economic crisis hits China

By James Reynolds, BBC News, Guangdong province, southern China, Nov. 19, 2008-

Outside the An Jia baby cot factory in Dongguan, a group of factory workers surrounds a single policeman on a motorbike.

“Where are the three people you arrested?” they shout at him. “Give them back to us!”

The officer looks uneasy and he decides to retreat.

Right now, factory workers here are angry. The world’s financial crisis has begun to hit them.

It is easy to understand why: since the West can’t afford to buy as much, China isn’t able to sell as much. In better times, the An Jia factory would ship its baby cots to the US. But now its workers say the US has stopped buying. Their wages have been cut by up to 75%.

One man waves two wage slips, typed on small pieces of paper. The slip for May shows that he earned 2,523 yuan ($370; £248) that month. The slip for September shows that his earnings were cut to 445 yuan ($65).

“Our boss wants us to bail him out,” shouts Li San Le, one of the workers.

“When things were good, the boss didn’t give us a raise, but now that he’s in trouble, he wants us to rescue him,” adds a woman standing in the crowd.

Jobs dry up

At a nearby job market, groups of men stand around looking gloomy. Mr Lou, a craftsman, needs a new job. This is the first time he has ever had to go out and find one.

“What kind of pay are you looking for?” the job market organiser asks him.

“I know things are tough – but I need a job which pays more than 3,000 yuan.”

“You won’t get that here,” the organiser replies.

Men like Mr Lou have spent their lives working in a country which never seemed to run out of jobs or money. But now things have changed.

This year growth has slowed, and more than 60,000 businesses have closed down. Reports say that more than 50% of toy factories have closed down.

In the corner of one abandoned furniture factory in Dongguan, there is a pile of half-finished table legs. The only person at work is a woman quietly collecting bits of wood to sell as scrap.

Outside the factory, the workers’ dormitories are empty. Cheap posters of Chinese pop stars are still stuck to the wall – many of those who used to work here were teenagers who had come in from the countryside to get a better life.

Going home

Next door, a shoe factory is still going. Workers pack up boxes of sandals to be shipped to Europe.

“Everyone is quite worried. Not just owners, but workers as well,” says Sergio Sum, the director of Top Sun Manufacturing Co Ltd.

Many workers are now having to go back home to their villages.

Amid the queues of passengers at Guangzhou railway station, one group of young women sits on top of piles of bags and cases. Each of them has the same frizzy hairstyle.

One sends text messages on her mobile phone, which is decorated with pendants. These women used to work in a television factory, until the factory started running out of cash.

“We used to work overtime,” says one of the workers, who declines to give her name. “But then, we were told to work one day and take one or two days off. Finally, we weren’t even getting a basic salary.”

The long lines at this railway station will make China’s government nervous.

The Communist Party has stayed in power partly because it has made poor people richer. But now the world’s financial crisis has arrived.

So, what happens in this country if hundreds of millions of workers no longer feel they can get a better life?

- BBC News: Factories shut as crisis hits China

Thousands attack police in southern China: state media

AFP, Nov. 7, 2008-

BEIJING (AFP) — Thousands of people attacked Chinese police in the southern city of Shenzhen from Friday afternoon to early Saturday morning, state media reported.

Xinhua news agency reported the unrest in an “urgent” report, quoting Shenzhen city’s government saying a police car was burnt when thousands of people protested the death of a 31-year-old motorcyclist on Friday.

The report said the motorcyclist died after driving through a police checkpoint set up as part of a crackdown on illegal motor vehicles in the city’s Bao’an district.

A police officer threw his “interphone” at the passing motorcyclist, the report said, “who reeled down to an electric pole, got injured, and died with futile rescue efforts.”

A subsequent Xinhua report, quoting the city’s police authority, said no police were at the checkpoint and it had been set up by a subdistrict office of Bao’an district.

However, a police patrol was nearby and relatives of the dead man attacked it, blaming the police, the later report said, as 400 people gathered while another 2,000 looked on.

The police car was burnt as the crowd became angry, while some of the onlookers threw stones, Xinhua said.

The later report made no mention of injuries and said the crowd had dispersed by 2:00 am Saturday (1800 GMT Friday).

An official with the subdistrict office had been detained by police, the report added.

Shenzhen is a booming coastal city just over the border from Hong Kong.

It has a population of about eight million people, according to its official website, which made no mention of the violence.

China sees thousands of such disturbances each year as marginalised segments of society rise up against what they see as the heavy-handed practices of local governments, police or powerful businesses.

In June, tens of thousands of people rioted in southwest Guizhou province over claims police had covered up an alleged rape and murder of a teenage girl.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said that over 10,000 people took to the streets in that protest, with up to 150 people injured in clashes with police.

- AFP

China official sacked after web video triggers outrage over assault on 11-year-old girl

Jane Macartney in Beijing, Times Online, UK, November 5, 2008-

Internet outrage has forced the dismissal of a senior Chinese Communist Party official after video footage from a restaurant security camera showed him shoving the father of an 11-year-old girl he had allegedly assaulted.

It was a moment that stirred fury among parents concerned for the child and touched a chord among the tens of millions of Chinese angered at abuse of power that has become increasingly blatant as prosperity has offered more opportunities for officials to profit from their positions.

Armies of netizens have taken part in numerous online manhunts in China in the past couple of years, but this appears to be the first time that a search by “human flesh engines” has resulted in the sacking of a senior government official and even a police investigation.

The incident began last week when a male diner at a seafood restaurant in the southern city of Shenzhen asked a young girl walking past his table to direct him to the lavatories. Closed-circuit television footage shows a pot-bellied man in a white shirt following a little girl with a ponytail across the room. A couple of minutes later the girl is seen running back alone.

Reports on the internet say the child told her parents that the man grabbed her by the neck and tried to force her into the toilets. She ran for help. The video shows her reappearing with her parents to look for the man. He returns to the dining room and into the frame, where he is seen shoving away the girl’s father when challenged to explain his behaviour.

Even state media said that the man then shouted: “Yes, I did it. So what? How much to you want? Just tell me. I’ll give you the money.”

The two men argue and the older man points and tries to push away the father. He shouts: “Do you know who I am? I am from the Ministry of Transportation in Beijing. I have the same seniority as the mayor of your city. So what if I grabbed the neck of a small child? You people count for fart! If you dare challenge me, just wait and see how I will deal with you.” When the father calls the police, the man leaves with his female companion.

Chinese websites reported that the police said the man had drunk too much, did not remember anything and, with no witnesses to the girl being assaulted, there was no evidence that he had behaved indecently.

An online furore soon led to his being tracked down and identified as Lin Jiaxiang, party secretary of the Shenzhen Maritime Bureau. Photos of Mr Lin, 58, receiving various government awards, including a commendation on behalf of his “Civilised Work Unit”, were soon plastered across the internet.

He was dismissed on Monday. The Ministry of Transport party committee said that his “wild words and behaviour have had an extremely negative impact on society”.

Online commentators were enraged about the incident. One wrote on the website sina.com: “It looks like organised crime and the Government should swap places. In this case organised crime seems more righteous than the Government.”

- The Times Online