China teen seen as hero for killing local official

[ccharles000]

BEIJING— When Li Shiming was stabbed through the heart by a hired assassin, few of his fellow villagers mourned the local Communist Party official many say made their lives hell by seizing land, extorting money and bullying people for years.

Instead, villagers in the northern town of Xiashuixi have made Li's teenage killer something of a local hero. More than 20,000 people from the coal-mining area petitioned a court for a lenient sentence.

"I didn't feel surprised at all when I heard Li Shiming was killed, because people wanted to kill him a long time ago," said villager Xin Xiaomei, who says her husband was harassed for years by Li after the two men had a personal dispute. "I wanted to kill Li myself, but I was too weak."

The murder trial has again cast a harsh light on abuses of power by communist cadres and the frustration many ordinary Chinese feel with a one-party system that sometimes allows officials to run their districts like personal fiefdoms.

China's leaders have identified corruption as a threat to the country's progress, but an opaque political system dominated by the ruling Communist Party _ which brooks no dissent _ and the lack of an independent judiciary contribute to the problem.

In the case of party secretary Li, the young man who confessed to the stabbing _ 19-year-old Zhang Xuping _ has been sentenced to death for the September 2008 killing, his mother and lawyer said Wednesday. The sentence was quietly handed down last week and an appeal was filed this week, they said.

http://www.rr.com/news/news/article/rr/1104/10094190/China_teen_seen_as_hero_for_killing_local_official

[HillbillyBob]

1. Perhaps we should make common cause with the Chinese people

against the communists and the corporations since both pretty much steal power for themselves, meaning the people in power. We know the word communism used as it is there means concentrated power not diffuse power of the people.