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.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS