csua.org/u/cvy -> news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&e=3&u=/washpost/20050801/ts_washpost/a_chinese_city_s_rage_at_the_rich_and_powerful
Washington Post Foreign Service Mon Aug 1, 1:00 AM ET CHIZHOU, China -- Liu Liang, a slightly built computer student with big g lasses, was home in Chizhou for summer vacation. At about 2:30 on the ho t afternoon of June 26, he was pedaling his bicycle by the downtown vege table market on Cuibai Street.
Click Here Driving down the same street in his new-looking black Toyota sedan was Wu Junxing, deputy manager of a hospital in nearby Anqing. Wu, accompanied by a friend and two bodyguards, had come to Chizhou that day to attend opening ceremonies of a new private hospital and, associates said, surve y the market to judge whether he should invest in his own facility. Liu's bicycle and Wu's shiny four-door sedan collided, sending Liu crashi ng to the ground. Almost immediately, witnesses said, Liu, 22, and Wu, 3 4, began arguing over who was at fault. In the heat of the dispute, they said, Liu damaged one of Wu's side-view mirrors, prompting Wu's muscula r bodyguards to burst from the car and beat the skinny young man sensele ss, leaving him bleeding from his mouth and ears. The beating, part of a minor traffic incident on a slow Sunday afternoon, ignited a spark of anger. The spark became a riot, evolving over eight chaotic hours into an expression of rage against the Chinese Communist P arty's new fascination with businessmen, profits and economic growth. After they saw what happened to Liu, Chizhou's self-described "common peo ple" rose up against what they perceived as their local government's wil lingness to side with rich outside investors against Chizhou's own. By t he end of the evening, 10,000 Chizhou residents had filled the streets, some of whom torched police cars, pelted overwhelmed anti-riot troops wi th stones and looted a nearby supermarket bare. The violence in downtown Chizhou startled the leaders of this forward-loo king city of 120,000, set in the rich alluvial farmland of Anhui provinc e near the Yangtze River, about 250 miles southwest of Shanghai. Dismaye d city officials deplored the impact on their campaign to attract invest ment and broaden Chizhou's economic base. But the riot here, like a growing number of flare-ups in other Chinese ci ties, was in fact directed against the flourishing alliance of Communist Party officials and well-connected businessmen that runs Chizhou. Befor e calm returned to the streets, the disturbance had become a political r ebellion against the increasingly intimate connection in modern China be tween big money and Communist government. "When anger boils up in your heart so long, it has to burst," said a Chiz hou man who was part of the crowd that night. As the Communist Party strives to continue the swift economic growth that has become its new ideology, the official partnership with private busi ness has generated resentment among those left behind: farmers whose fie lds become industrial parks, workers whose socialist-era factories go un der, youths with assembly-line jobs at $60 a month. In their eyes, the party that assumed power in China 56 years ago as a ch ampion of peasants and workers seems to have switched sides, backing cap italist businessmen instead of the poor as part of a new get-rich ethic in which bribery plays a big role. Recently, the resentment has exploded into violent protests, despite drac onian laws against attempts to challenge the party's rule. Although pres s censorship prevents an independent count, the government-funded Ta Kun g Pao newspaper said Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang estimated th at 376 million Chinese were involved in 74,000 "mass incidents" during 2004.
Hu Jintao and his lieutenants, who regularly call for stability as a condition for further economic progress. If the viole nt outbursts get out of control, they could undermine China's boom and, ultimately, the party's grip on power. Wu and his companions had just finished a long, beer-soaked lunch at a si dewalk restaurant when the collision with Liu occurred, according to Cao Yefa, an official at the Chizhou Communist Party Propaganda Department. Wu's two bodyguards were security personnel from Xie He Hospital in Anqin g As described by witnesses, both wore their hair in military-style bru sh-cuts and their black T-shirts exposed muscular arms decorated with ta ttoos. As Liu fell to the street, the two guards continued kicking him with poin ted-toe shoes, the witnesses related. Three dozen shopkeepers from the n earby vegetable market and idle motorcycle taxi drivers gathered around and shouted at the pair to stop. Wu's Toyota, they pointed out later, carried license plates identifying i t as registered in neighboring Jiangsu province. Wu, it seemed, was one of the rich outsiders Chizhou's investment-hungry leaders were eager to seduce. Moreover, when policemen from the nearby substation showed up to investigate, officials and witnesses reported, Wu and his bodyguards re fused to cooperate -- the first signs of an arrogance that participants said helped spark the violence. Wu, still in his vehicle, waved off questions impatiently, witnesses reca lled, saying: "Don't touch me. The policemen, two duty officers and an auxiliary, put the badly beaten L iu into a taxi and dispatched him to Chizhou People's Hospital, where do ctors later said he had a broken jaw, a broken nose and multiple contusi ons. According to witnesses and official accounts, the policemen ordered Wu and his three companions to follow them to their substation: about 3 30 yards down Cuibai Street, a right turn at the Donghuadong Supermarket and 54 yards down Quipu Street. Agitated by Wu's attitude and the sight of Liu's bloody injuries, the mot orcycle drivers and vegetable merchants followed on foot, joined by a gr owing number of bystanders. Members of the crowd pulled out their cell p hones to call friends and relatives, swelling their numbers further. By 3:30, witnesses recalled, several thousand people were gathered around t he station. One of those who showed up was Liu's father, who, witnesses said, began a rguing with Wu and the bodyguards. Enraged, he grabbed a motorcycle lock and, swinging it over and over, shattered Wu's windshield, the witnesse s reported. Police officers, who numbered only three, did not react. The anger was nur tured by rumors, passed along in person or in cell phone conversations t hat, in the absence of official declarations, were the only source of in formation. Many were told that Liu was a 16-year-old student on his way home from fi nal exams, and that he had died of his wounds before reaching the hospit al. Others were told the two bodyguards had stabbed a motorcycle driver who was trying to protect the injured youth. And most were told that Wu was heard telling police there was nothing to worry about because, by ha nding $35,000 to Liu's father, he could make the problem go away. The actions of Wu and his companions further enraged the crowd, witnesses said. Cao, the party propaganda official, said the four men openly defi ed the three policemen and, within earshot of the crowd, cursed them in accents that identified them as outsiders. "Maybe it's because they are rich people, rich but without education," Ca o said in a telephone interview. "They don't know how to behave, and the y look down on others." Members of the crowd, which was still growing as the confrontation contin ued, demanded that the three police officers turn Wu and his companions over to them, according to several people present at the time. But the two bodyguards retur ned to the car and took out long knives, presumably to protect themselve s, according to witnesses and official accounts. "These guys tried to kill one of our sons," people in the mob shouted, ac cording to those present. The outnumbered police officers persuaded the two toughs to give up their knives and bundled them into a police van to be transported to the cent ral jail. But in a gesture that further outraged the crowd, they were no t handcuffed. To many of those standing in the street, the two were bein g taken away for their safety, not for punishment. people shouted, according to accounts from several witnesses. A motorcycle driver who was i...
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