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Media Work / Trends Bulletin / January 2006: China responds to increasing social unrest with greater repression

January 2006: China responds to increasing social unrest with greater repression

Recent news reports published outside of China suggest that deepening social unrest in China's countryside may be the impetus behind the government's renewed efforts to boost combat effectiveness and tighten control over media coverage.

Government's public recognition of growing unrest

On January 19, 2006, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced that there were 87,000 cases of disturbances of public order recorded in 2005, which is an increase of 6.6 percent over 2004’s figure of 81,600.[1]

Further breaking down "public order disturbances" into categories, the MPS figures revealed the following significant increases:

Crimes that interfered in government business (妨害公务) are up 18.9 percent;
Mass gatherings that disturbed social order (聚众斗殴), up 13 percent;
Incidents of provocation and stirring up trouble (寻衅滋事), up 11.8 percent; and
Mob fighting (聚众斗殴), up 5.8 percent.

However, the MPS provided no details on the definitions of these crimes.[2]

The upswing in incidents of social unrest first became publicly apparent in July 2005, when Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang revealed that the number of "mass incidents" had risen by 30 percent in 2004 to 74,000, and that a total of 3.8 million people had participated in these demonstrations. The minister's use of the term "mass incidents" included any riots, demonstrations and protests that involved more than 100 people.

The Ministry's use of differing terminology in these two sets of statistics complicates direct comparisons between them. Furthermore, in previous years the government had not provided statistics on protests and demonstrations or publicly referred to specific incidents. In a speech at the State Council on December 29, 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao for the first time acknowledged mass incidents as a significant social order problem, and as a threat to "building a harmonious society" – a key aspiration of President Hu Jintao's leadership.

Growing inequality fueling protests

The causes of the increase in protests range from illegal land grabs, local corruption, the closure of state-owned factories, and industrial pollution of farmland. In particular, some of the most high-profile incidents of unrest have resulted from land seizures by corrupt local officials, who have failed to give adequate compensation to villagers.

The widening gap between rich and poor is commonly seen as a major underlying force in rising social tension. The UNDP's China Human Development Report 2005 reported that in a survey of Chinese public perception of income distribution, more than 80 percent of the respondents felt that China's current income distribution was either "not so equitable" or "very inequitable."[3]

Many commentators interpret this public perception of inequality as fuel for igniting more radical and more organized mass demands for social justice. A number of grassroots protests have shown a high degree of strategy and coordination, while some protests have turned violent when local officials are perceived as unwilling or unable to meet protestors' demands. Given that violent incidents often occur after weeks or even months of simmering unrest, it appears that protesters resort to confrontation when alternative means of redress prove futile or unavailable.

Tougher official line

He Weifeng, a renowned law professor at Peking University, noted recently that the government has become increasingly intolerant toward protests. He commented, "After some large and violent protests broke out last year, the top-level leaders were deeply shocked and decided to take a tougher line."[4]

This observation is supported by events over the past six months:

On July 28, 2005, People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's official mouthpiece, ran a front-page editorial headlined, "Maintaining Stability to Speed Development," and warning that protecting stability should come before all else.
On August 18, 2005, the government announced the establishment of special heavily-armed "anti-terror" and riot police units in 36 major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin.[5] These units, responsible for dealing with violent crimes, riots and disturbances, are equipped with everything from batons to armored vehicles. The first 500-strong squad was formed in Zhengzhou, the capital of impoverished Henan Province, where there have been regular reports of protests. Riot police armed with batons were called in to deal with a protest in Sanjiao, Guangdong Province, in January 2006.
On January 1, 2006, the influential Party magazine Qiushi published an article contributed by two senior generals, People's Armed Police (PAP) commander Wu Shuangzhan and political commissar Sui Mingtai, reaffirming that PAP should "truly become an extremely combat-effective force to deal with sudden incidents." However, the article fails to clarify what constitutes "sudden incidents."[6]
On January 8, the State Council issued a national plan on emergency response, which addresses the prevention and handling of various domestic incidents. "Social safety incidents," referring specifically to terrorist attacks, are among the four major types of emergency incidents. The plan also highlights the central role of PLA and PAP in dealing with all emergency incidents.[7] There has been no elaboration over whether protests or incidents of public order also fall into this category, leaving the necessity for emergency response open to arbitrary interpretation.

Apart from boosting combat efficiency, the government has imposed stricter controls on media reports relating to petitions and other incidents of unrest, most notably:

Yannan [yannan.com], a popular web forum among academics and public intellectuals, was shut down by the authorities in October 2005 after carrying extensive coverage of a protest in Taishi Village, Guangdong Province.
In December 2005, the chief editor of the outspoken Beijing News, Yang Bin, and his deputies Sun Xeudong and Li Duoyu, were sacked after bold reporting on various instances of land grabs and local corruption.[8]

This tougher approach to unrest appears to supplement earlier efforts to alleviate public grievances. In May 2005, the government reformed the "Letter and Visits" system, attempting to deal with a tidal wave of petitioning in Beijing since 2003. While promising that petitions will be more efficiently handled by top officials, the revised petitioning rules require complainants to submit their petitions at local levels, and impose strict punishments on petitioners who fail to observe the rules.

In July 2005, China announced its Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), which shifts its economic emphasis from strengthening large cities to a plan for National Economic and Social Development aimed at agricultural areas.[9] Development rhetoric attributes social tensions to "economic struggles" among marginalized groups such as poor peasants and rural migrant workers, and advocates investment and preferential policies in agriculture to ease grievances among these groups.

Recent Incidents

April 10, 2005
20,000 peasants drive off more than 1,000 riot police in Huaxi, Zhejiang Province, in a protest against pollution from a chemical factory blamed for ruined crops and birth defects.

June, 11, 2005
Six farmers die in a fight with 200-300 armed men in Dingzhou, Hebei Province, following a land requisition by a state-owned power plant.

July 3, 2005
About 400 laid-off workers in Inner Mongolia block the entrance of a state-owned enterprise over unpaid salaries and unreasonable compensation; several are injured when police are called in to clear the crowd.

July 29, 2005
Around 1,500 villagers in Taishi, Guangdong Province, try to oust a corrupt village head; dozens are injured in violent clashes that develop when more than 500 armed police are called in to disperse the protestors.

August 4, 2005
Thousands of residents of Daye in central China riot after police use dogs to break up an earlier protest over plans to downgrade Daye's status from a city to that of a district.

September 4, 2005
More than 50 petitioners clash with armed police at Tiananmen Square while demanding that the government stand up for justice.

October 10, 2005
About 100 owners of a private housing development project stage a protest in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, against local government's failure to monitor private housing projects; 30 riot police are called in to disperse the crowd.

November 10, 2005
More than 300 farmers from a village in Yueyang Township, Sichuan Province, stage a sit-in protest over land grabs and clash with local officials who attempt to disperse them; thousands of riot police are sent to the village.

December 6, 2005
More than 300 villagers clash with police over land grabs in Dongzhou [ken/Shanwei], Guangdong Province; at least 20 villagers are reported shot dead by armed police.

January 14, 2006
Armed police break up a land grab protest in Sanjiao, Guangdong Province.

Further References

Murray Scot Tanner, "China Rethinks Unrest," The Washington Quarterly 27, No. 3 (2004):137-156.

Wenran Jiang, "The Dynamics of China's Social Crisis," China Brief 6, No. 2 (The Jamestown Foundation: 2006).

ENDNOTES

[1] PRC Ministry of Public Security Press Conference, "Press Release: 公安部召开新闻发布会通报2005年全国社会治安形势暨火灾形势 (Ministry of Public Security Report on the Trend of Social Order and Disaster in 2005)," January 20, 2006, http://news.mps.gov.cn.

[2] PRC Ministry of Public Security Press Conference, "Press Release: 公安部召开新闻发布会通报2005年全国社会治安形势暨火灾形势 (Ministry of Public Security Report on the Trend of Social Order and Disaster in 2005)," January 20, 2006, http://news.mps.gov.cn.

[3] United Nations Development Programme and China Development Research Foundation, China Human Development Report 2005, (Beijing: UNDP, 2005), http://www.undp.org.cn.

[4] "Data Show Social Unrest on the Rise in China," Financial Times, January 19, 2006, http://news.ft.com.

[5] "China Rises to Combat Growing Unrest," Taipei Times, August 19, 2005, http://www.taipeitimes.com.

[6] Wu Shuangzhan, Sui Mingtai, "努力建设政治可靠的威武之师文明之师 (Great Efforts to Strengthen the Effectiveness of People's Armed Police)," Quishi, January 1, 2006, http://www.qsjournal.com.cn.

[7] "National Plan on Emergency Response to Public Incidents," People's Daily, January 8, 2006, http://politics.people.com.cn.

[8] "老總停職新京報編輯部怠工中宣部著眼「政治安全」下令改組 (Reporters on Strike after Chief Editor Sacked and Party Propaganda Unit Order an Overhaul to Ensure Political Correctness)," YahooNews, December 29, 2005, http://hk.news.yahoo.com.

[9] The plan was announced at the Fifth Plenary session of 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party.