Allen August 3rd, 2005
The Washington Post has an excellent article (bugmenot) about a recent riot in the Chinese town of Chizhou.
Liu Liang, a slightly built computer student with big glasses,
was home in Chizhou for summer vacation. At about 2:30 on the hot
afternoon of June 26, he was pedaling his bicycle by the downtown
vegetable market on Cuibai Street.
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,
survey 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 crashing to the ground. Almost immediately, witnesses said, Liu,
22, and Wu, 34, 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 muscular bodyguards to burst from the car and beat the
skinny young man senseless, 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 Party’s new fascination with businessmen,
profits and economic growth.
After they saw what happened to Liu, Chizhou’s self-described "common
people" rose up against what they perceived as their local government’s
willingness to side with rich outside investors against Chizhou’s own.
By the end of the evening, 10,000 Chizhou residents had filled the
streets, some of whom torched police cars, pelted overwhelmed anti-riot
troops with stones and looted a nearby supermarket bare.
Wow! Do the peasant-eating mandarins of the Chinese Communist Party have a problem on their hands or what?
On the one hand, they want to court the West and the business opportunities needed in order to keep their tottering regime afloat. And on the other hand they have the proletariats (oh yeah, remember them?) rioting because the Party bosses are siding with the rich "foreigners".
Read the entire article. You will find there a microcosm of China’s past and its future.
Where will it end? In my estimation, I would not want to be a resident of Chizhou. Chinese leaders haven’t exactly shown reluctance to use brutal force to further their goals.
Closing with one of my favorite novels that I find quite applicable here.
But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar
of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked
through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There
were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances,
furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon
and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve
voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question,
now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside
looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again;
but already it was impossible to say which was which.
