Across China, many women with rural hukou are systematically denied lucrative village land rights. Village assemblies, ostensibly autonomous local political organizations, decide who is a member of the rural collective and thus...
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often four-character, literary expressions that are the kernel of a larger tale. The following New Era chengyu are all references to infamous...
Lynette Ong, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, joins CDT to discuss her new book Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China. In Outsourcing Repression, Ong investigates the...
A suicide bombing in a rural Guangdong village left five dead and five injured on Monday, March 22. A swiftly imposed media blackout left details of the incident vague but it seems that the attacker, a 59-year-old local, was...
As criticism of land grabs and forced demolitions continues, the Wall Street Journal reports that despite signs of a rebound in the property market, Chinese developers are skittish at land auctions: A number of cities, including...
Wu Si, Chief Editor of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu (炎黄春秋), contributed his thoughts to an online forum discussing the December 22 People’s Daily editorial “What Does ‘Wukan’s Turn’ Mean for...
Hu Deping, son of former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, contributed this commentary to a forum discussing the December 22 People’s Daily editorial “What Does ‘Wukan’s Turn’ Mean for Us?” The discussion was...
As Wukan villagers agreed to postpone a protest march, keyword filtering on Sina Weibo has taken a dramatic turn. CDT staff have been following Wukan-related banned search terms on Sina Weibo since December 14 and have observed...
In the wake of Tibetan unrest, farmers from the Miao (or Hmong) ethnic minority group clashed with riot police over land they claim was illegally seized by a mining company leaving two dead, according to China Worker...
From the Financial Times: The Chinese government has issued a flurry of headline-grabbing edicts over recent weeks to quell popular unrest about spiralling home prices, directing banks to rein in loans and developers to build more low-cost housing. But with much less fanfare, the authorities have been conducting another campaign which may be equally essential […]
From the New York Times: All across China, the fall harvest has ended. But unlike the activity in the country’s vast agricultural regions, where the harvest shapes daily life, the tumult of daily life here in Beijing is reshaping what remains of the harvest. Beijing, after all, is a city of 15 million to 17 […]
From the Financial Times: A lawyer detained for nearly four months because of his role in a landmark attempt to sue authorities in China’s northern province of Shaanxi has been released and returned to Beijing on Tuesday. The detention of Zhu Jiuhu, a lawyer retained by Shaanxi private oil well investors who say the government […]
From the BBC: The battle of Shengyou village has come to highlight one of China’s sharpest social issues – the Communist Party’s complete control of land allocation. More than 66 million Chinese farmers have lost their land in the past 10 years. It is a land grab which has fattened the wallets of government officials […]
From the Guardian: More than 1,000 villagers in inner Mongolia took the local communist party chief hostage yesterday in the latest land dispute to rock the Chinese countryside. Amid signs of division in the government about how to handle rural unrest, the residents of Qianjin village have driven off hundreds of armed police and blocked […]
From Reuters: More than 2,000 disgruntled farmers have clashed with hundreds of policemen in China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia in a land dispute that injured dozens, sources said on Wednesday. The July 21 clash in Qianjin village, a part of Tongliao city about 725 km (450 miles) northeast of Beijing, was one of a […]
From the Economist: A bloody clash this month between peasants and hundreds of armed thugs sent by developers to seize their land has thrown a harsh light on one of the most controversial questions posed by China’s economic development. Who owns the farmland, and what rights do peasants have if it is requisitioned? This topic […]
From Reuters, via KNEB: Hundreds of Chinese farmers protested in a Beijing suburb on Thursday after being forced from their land to make way for an Olympic stadium, the latest in a wave of disputes over property rights. Makeshift signs reading “Support the Olympics, resettle the farmers who have lost their land!” were strung up […]
The Washington Post posted a video clip of the Shengyou attack. (registration required). Editor’s Note: This video contains violent content. washingtonpost.com presents the original, unedited version as it was received. A farmer in Shengyou, China, videotaped hundreds of armed men attacking a group of local farmers. According to witness accounts, the group was resisting government […]
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
CDT is a non-profit media site, and we need your support. Your contribution will help us provide more translations, breaking news, and other content you love.
