Chinese Peasants Battle Police

[FreeChechnya]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/washpost/20050613/...is_rare_victory (http://news.yahoo.com/s/washpost/20050613/ts_washpost/for_chinese__peasant_revolt_is_rare_victory)

[Patchy]

Heck yeah. More of this needs to happen.

[TC]

Please, this is a triumphalist interpretation of those events from the rightwing Washington post. The government conceded all of the peasent's demands *before* there was any violence, the villagers attacked the cops after they had already gotten what they had wanted...Nothing like that would ever happen in the US or other capitalist states and it just shows how responsive and responsible the Chinese government is.


For instance the Post first characterizes the protests as:

But then says:


It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government.

The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest.

But when going into more detail clarifies:


The Huaxi Elderly Association sent its gray-haired protesters back to live in the tents and the firecrackers once again were readied to sound the alarm.

In other words they just made up the "spontanious" aspect to make a purely propagandistic anti-communist point.



But several thousand angry villagers swiftly surrounded the police contingent, refusing to allow some of the officers to get back into their cars. Ultimately, the policemen were allowed to leave unhurt, a participant said, but several of their vehicles were not released until that evening.

The tone had been set for the confrontation to come.

By the next day, farmers from several of Huaxi's rough-hewn villages showed up to build even more tents. Nineteen were erected within hours, several villagers recalled. About 200 people, most of them elderly, began living in them full time, defying police warnings.

During the first week of April, villagers recalled, the protesting old farmers received a day-long visit from Chen, the Dongyang mayor; Tang Yong, the Dongyang Communist Party secretary; and a high-ranking Zhejiang provincial official. The officials cajoled the protesters in a friendly tone, witnesses said, urging them to leave and promising that polluting factories would be closed.

At the same time, the witnesses added, the officials warned that the protest constituted an illegal disturbance of the public order. Moreover, an activist reported, eight villagers were detained after the officials left, accused of setting off firecrackers to announce that the high-ranking officials had arrived.



So they'd already gotten everything they wanted (after having attacked the police who maturely didn't respond with violence)

The police officers only entered the tents in response to fireworks the protestor's set off...a protest that was entirely irrelevant and merely for the sake of disruption because the government had already agreed to shut down the factories as they wanted.



When two trucks tried to sneak around the tents and get into the industrial park with factory supplies on May 12, villagers said, the fireworks immediately crackled and about 10,000 villagers hurried to the scene. With police help, the villagers said, the farmers forced the trucks to back away. Police officers warned the drivers that if they tried again, they would be accused of disturbing the public order, witnesses recounted.

Eager to avoid trouble, a police checkpoint on the outskirts of town posted a large sign saying, "Trucks carrying factory supplies forbidden."

Six of the 13 factories were ordered to move out of Huaxi for good, and Dongyang authorities organized "working groups" of local and outside officials to visit peasant homes and urge that the protest be ended on that basis, according to Chen, the city government spokesman

Can you imagine the police enforcing protestor's demands against a factory in the United States?

Throughout the entire article the Washington Post has a rightwing editorial slant and frankly contradictory reporting, such as "The elderly farmers, along with younger men leading the fight, figured police would be reluctant to wrestle with old men and women. They were wrong...The police arrived at lunchtime, when many of the elderly protesters were gone, dragged away remaining protesters and torched the tents, the villagers recalled." The "they were wrong" statement is contradicted by their statment in the very same paragraph that the police arrived when the elderly protesters were gone. For that matter it seems like the young male protesters were using the elderly farmers as 'human shields.'

I think the Chinese police acted with really increadible restraint, trying to avoid confrontation and violence in many instances even when the protestors were violent, never resorting to rubber bullets or pepper spray or tear gas or mass arrests. Cops in the US would never act like that, they use those tactics even when demonstrators are peaceful and legal, which these were not...nor would any western government ever order police to shut down factories just because local villagers demonstrated for it.

[Sons_of_Eureka]

Good to see the chinese peasants are finaly doing something about those clowns in goverment.

LONG LIVE OUR ETERNAL CHAIRMAN MAO!!!

[FreeChechnya]

Ya I didn't care for the Source, right-wing evangelists. I’m actually sorry I even brought it up. Can someone erase this Thread?

[Severian]

The source is the Washington Post - a liberal capitalist paper not "right-wing evangelists" - and it's an illuminating glimpse of the class struggle inside China today. I've seen a number of accounts of massive demonstrations including large-scale fighting with cops and protests. The Post is probably right that this one is unusual in the clear-cut victory by the peasants.

[TC]

There are protests everywhere, they don't nessessarily represent 'class struggle' between classes. This was about pollution not the economy. While some Chinese workers exploited in western owned factories, Chinese farmers tend to support the government because Chinese land was never privitized, local villiage councils controlled by farmers continue to allocate publically owned land.

[Severian]

Ah. So only economic issues count. I am englightened. So much for that whole Marxist idea that all of history can be understood as part of the class struggle.

[TC]

Marx only meant the history of social and economic change not all recorded events. Communism is for instance an "end of history" in that its a theoretical end of class struggle and therefore end of social change, but it obviously wouldn't be the end of recorded events. Using "because marx said so" arguments especially beyond the scope that Marx was talking about is kindof dogmatic.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 01:41 AM
Ya I didn't care for the Source, right-wing evangelists. I’m actually sorry I even brought it up. Can someone erase this Thread?
Not a chance. :)

And why would you want to delete it? It's an excellent illustration of the class nature of the present Chinese government.

For reasons not clear to me, you buried it in Chit-Chat with a non-committal thread title like "Interesting Development"...practically begging people not to look at it.

Aren't you glad that I rescued it, gave it an appealing title, and put it where people can see and comment on it?

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[nody]

I can not see how China is a example of good comunism in any way. One of my freinds has been to China and explained how there were so many poor areas, where people were forced to eat scraps and beg for money. I cannot see how this is happening in a nation with such economic promise. A few people in China are definetly more equal than others.

[anonymous red]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2005, 11:58 AM
I can not see how China is a example of good comunism in any way. One of my freinds has been to China and explained how there were so many poor areas, where people were forced to eat scraps and beg for money. I cannot see how this is happening in a nation with such economic promise. A few people in China are definetly more equal than others.
this is what is known as capitalism. ;)

[nody]

LOL i know that(Dnt mean to sound rude). But they are lefties who support the way China is ruled.

[anonymous red]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2005, 12:40 PM
LOL i know that(Dnt mean to sound rude). But they are lefties who support the way China is ruled.
i know, and it's confusing is it not? :wacko: from a highly authoritarian political system to an increasingly free market economy - china is definitely not my idea of a socialist example.

anyway, i was just cracking a little joke. =D

[nody]

Yeh i know you was jokeing.

[Severian]

Another incident - (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/14/AR2005061401542_pf.html) peasant protestors in Shenyou attacked by hired thugs - six reportedly killed - but the thugs are driven off and the peasants retain control of the land.

BBC has a video of the Shenyou fighting. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4097950.stm)

[viva le revolution]

China's way of government, shifting back towards capitalism, is a disgrace. The greatest threat to communism and socialism is not imperialism but the attitude of the next generation of leaders.
As far as the peasant battles with police are concerned, they were justified. No such thing as communism in China anymore, it died with chairman Mao.

[TC]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2005, 06:30 PM
Another incident - (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/14/AR2005061401542_pf.html) peasant protestors in Shenyou attacked by hired thugs - six reportedly killed - but the thugs are driven off and the peasants retain control of the land.

BBC has a video of the Shenyou fighting. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4097950.stm)
Organized criminals, probably working for corrupt local officials in a rural area, tried to chase farmers off their land. Thats really not the fault of the Chinese government, thats a kindof problem that could happen in any rural community; China happens to be big enough that the chacnes that some criminals will work with some small-time officials some of the time is pretty high. There is no way this can be made out as being the fault of the Chinese government though.

The attack was widely reported in Chinese state media, the local officials were immediately fired including the mayor and the party cheif and they're launching a criminal investigation...The Chinese government isn't behind those actions they are trying to stop it from happening again, they basically took the side of the farmers in the dispute.

One really telling comment in the article you linked is this one:



"We want to know who gave the orders, who sent them to attack us," said Niu Zhanzong, 50, a bald, wiry farmer who made a video of part of the battle before men knocked him down, smashed his camera and broke his arm. "We hope the central government will come and investigate. We believe in party central, but we don't believe in the local police.

In other words the problem as at least he sees it isn't that the central government is oppressive or whatever but that the central government isn't extensive enoguh, its not exerting enough control. He identifies the problem being with local police (who weren't involved in the attack but didn't respond quickly enough to prevent it) and the corrupt local officials not with the Communist Party or the government in Bejing.


So please stop putting these incidents in terms of farmers, anarchist in all but name, fighting the big evil oppressive chinese government.