From Asia Times Online: Using the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in March as its stage, the ruling Chinese Communist Party with much fanfare launched a package of rural policies with the expressed aim of building a “new socialist countryside”. This marks a shift of “epoch-making significance” if one believes the rhetoric […]
Read MoreFrom Guardian Unlimited (link): Being an opposition candidate in a one-party state was never going to be easy, but Feng Qiusheng took more of a risk than most when he decided to run for the People’s Congress in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. This was not just because his previous attempt to defend human […]
Read MoreFrom The Useless Tree blog (link): Thirty years ago today a crowd of people gathered in Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. They were ostensibly mourning the death of Zhou Enlai, the longstanding Prime Minister who had died in January. A formal public commemoration had been blocked by Zhou’s political enemies, led by the […]
Read MoreFrom China Post (link): Residents accused officials of voting fraud and blocked the vote count in a local election at a southern Chinese village where police and citizens clashed earlier over corruption allegations, Hong Kong media reported Tuesday. Tempers flared in Taishi village on Monday when villagers accused officials of unfairly disallowing proxy votes and […]
Read MoreFrom the Los Angeles Times: EARLIER THIS month, Chinese police shot and killed as many as 20 protesters (the numbers are in dispute) in Dongzhou village, near Hong Kong. The use of lethal force was unusual, but the underlying grievances were commonplace: powerless townspeople demonstrating against local government practices that endanger their meager existence. Economic […]
Read MoreFrom Phoenix Weekly, translated by ESWN: In the recall incident at Taishi village, Panyu, Guangdong, a surprising figure is the young peasant Lu Banglie who was once reported in the media for being elected as the Hubei province...
Read MoreFrom Washington Post: By the time Lu Banglie drove toward the village of Taishi that night, his photograph had already been distributed to local police stations. So when camouflage-clad men guarding the village entrance stopped his taxi and peered inside, Lu recalled, they immediately shouted, “It’s him! It’s him!” and yanked him out by the […]
Read MoreFrom Usa Today, via Yahoo!news: Two particularly brazen cases over the past few months have exposed the way local strongmen are using hired thugs to smother grass-roots democracy and prevent ordinary Chinese people from asserting their rights. In Taishi, a prosperous village of 2,000 in Guangdong province across the border from Hong Kong, citizens attempted […]
Read MoreThree prominent Chinese lawyers and legal scholars have written an open letter to China’s representatives to the Congress of the Law of the World, which recently met in Shanghai, calling for the rule of law to be...
Read MoreFrom the ChurchNewspaper: THE ARRIVAL of Chinese president Hu Jintao in Britain next week is set to heap more pressure on Tony Blair, who has set himself on a collision course with human rights campaigners angry at the visit. Hu, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, can expect to be greeted by protests from […]
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