Order has been restored to a southwestern Chinese town after more than 1,000 people took to the streets and clashed with police to protest the rough handling of local residents by authorities, an official said yesterday.
Residents in Qianxi County, Guizhou Province, protested after a man who had parked a car illegally clashed with chengguan, or the urban management corps, said an official from the county’s Chinese Communist Party propaganda department.
Chengguan function like -police auxiliary units, but are notorious for corruption and violence against small businesses and the poor, and are widely disliked across China.
The protest, which started on Thursday, span out of control, with more than a dozen police cars smashed or set on fire, the China Daily reported, adding that it took more than 24 hours to disperse the crowd.
“Several people, most of them teenagers, stirred up the trouble,” said the official, who would give only his surname, Wu, as is common in China.
Wu said that at the protest’s peak, more than 1,000 people gathered, but had all dispersed by Friday. More than 10 policemen were hurt, he said, but had no further details.
Such protests — often fueled by illegal land seizures, environmental problems and abuse by local officials — number in the tens of thousands every year in China.
Generally apolitical, the incidents spark a deep unease among authorities who worry they could spill out of control and go from attacks on local issues to challenging the authority Chinese Communist Party.
Chengguan are a particular concern because they are seen as constantly overstepping their authority and encroaching on citizens’ legal rights.
The China Daily quoted an official from the media office of the prefecture that oversees Qianxi County as saying the government will order the chengguan to show more restraint.
“All urban administration workers have been hired through open and legal procedures, although they may not be well-educated,” an official, Zeng Fanya (曾凡亞), was quoted as saying.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
RSS