NYT,pg1: China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence

[DeepModem Mom]

THE GREAT DIVIDE | TALKING BACK TO POWER
China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence

By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: December 31, 2004


....Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party, obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches accruing to the powerful and well connected.

***

Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989.

Police statistics show the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order when the police lose control.

China does not have a Polish-style Solidarity labor movement. Protests may be so numerous in part because they are small, local expressions of discontent over layoffs, land seizures, use of natural resources, ethnic tensions, misspent state funds, forced immigration, unpaid wages or police killings. Yet several mass protests, like the one in Wanzhou, show how people with different causes can seize an opportunity to press their grievances together....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/international/asia/31china.html?pagewanted=all&position=

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Revolution of rising expectations

Combined, perhaps, with the effect of decades of preaching about the glories of revolution by the oppressed classes.

[Sporadicus]

2. You Mean Chinese Laborers Are No Longer Content

to make the equivalent of $0.64 per hour? Who woudda thunk it? :eyes:

[ikojo]

3. Working class Americans can stand to

learn from their counterparts in China. True the living conditions may not be as
bad over here but the challenges to daily survival are almost as severe. As long as the majority of Americans believe the lie that is Horatio Alger, there will be no mass uprising of the working class in the US.