From BBC News: In China huge cities are springing up and city jobs are being created for more than 500 million agricultural workers who are no longer needed in the fields. One village in south west China has been designated as the new capital of remote Wuxi county. But progress has not been as smooth […]
From Time.com: Liang Yumin killed himself, after village-level bureaucrats made his life hell. His offense? Being democratically elected to replace them What I remember most about the four farmers who showed up at TIME’s Beijing bureau back in 2001 was the new shirts they wore. These men were trying their best to blend in to […]
From The Economist: Grassroots democracy in China, which began to show faint signs of life three years ago, is struggling. On November 8th millions of voters in Beijing took part in largely stage-managed local elections. The authorities seem to have had second thoughts about encouraging more combative contests. In 2003 elections to district people’s congresses, […]
From Southern Weekend, translated by EastSouthWestNorth: Q: The Forum on Chinese Rural Development organized by Southern Rural News recently published the “Guangzhou Consensus” to call for local governments to amend their regulations within the existing framework to remove the various unfair restrictions against the development of peasant associations. The call is getting louder for the […]
From Phoenix Weekly (in Chinese), translated by EastSouthWestNorth: Zhang Jinshu seemed to have become a local ‘legend.’ In July 2005, Zhang Jinshu was elected as village mayor for the third time, but he had to remaining in hiding — he is suspected of organizing an assault of villagers and is being sought by the police. […]
Farmer Huang Shanmin was beaten by thugs sent by village officials during a land dispute, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province; via Boxunnews.com.
From The Guardian: Political reform is likely to be high on the agenda of a closed-door meeting of China’s communist leaders today amid growing strains between a population demanding more rights and a bureaucracy increasingly using illegal means to maintain its grip on power. Like most of the topics for discussion during the central committee’s […]
From EastSouthWestNorth blog: If you google the word “Taishi” in English, you may not find much. However, this continuously unfolding event has been going on weeks, and the latest developments are all over the Chinese-language Internet. This is about an election in the small village of Taishi (population about 2,000), Panyu districty, Guangzhou. First, a […]
From Dr. Yawei Liu‘s email: As the Chinese media is heaping praises on the people’s congress system and grassroots elections in China during the special March season of “lianghui” , we are presenting a story of Lu Banglie, a peasant from China’s central province of Hubei.
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