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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Wealthy Chinese beats the crap out of commoner, gets away with it, sparks riot |
| 2005-08-02 |
| Very long - Edited For Length CHIZHOU, China -- Liu Liang, a slightly built computer student with big glasses, was home in Chizhou for summer vacation. At about 2:30 on the hot afternoon of June 26, he was pedaling his bicycle by the downtown vegetable market on Cuibai Street. Driving down the same street in his new-looking black Toyota sedan was Wu Junxing, deputy manager of a hospital in nearby Anqing. Wu, accompanied by a friend and two bodyguards, had come to Chizhou that day to attend opening ceremonies of a new private hospital and, associates said, survey the market to judge whether he should invest in his own facility. Liu's bicycle and Wu's shiny four-door sedan collided, sending Liu crashing to the ground. Almost immediately, witnesses said, Liu, 22, and Wu, 34, began arguing over who was at fault. In the heat of the dispute, they said, Liu damaged one of Wu's side-view mirrors, prompting Wu's muscular bodyguards to burst from the car and beat the skinny young man senseless, leaving him bleeding from his mouth and ears. Well, to be fair, you don't mess with a man's car. He was asking to get beaten, and I don't care if you're in China or Chicago. The beating, part of a minor traffic incident on a slow Sunday afternoon, ignited a spark of anger. The spark became a riot, evolving over eight chaotic hours into an expression of rage against the Chinese Communist Party's new fascination with businessmen, profits and economic growth. After they saw what happened to Liu, Chizhou's self-described "common people" rose up against what they perceived as their local government's willingness to side with rich outside investors against Chizhou's own. By the end of the evening, 10,000 Chizhou residents had filled the streets, some of whom torched police cars, pelted overwhelmed anti-riot troops with stones and looted a nearby supermarket bare. The violence in downtown Chizhou startled the leaders of this forward-looking city of 120,000, set in the rich alluvial farmland of Anhui province near the Yangtze River, about 250 miles southwest of Shanghai. Dismayed city officials deplored the impact on their campaign to attract investment and broaden Chizhou's economic base. "Illicit elements" were to blame, they said. But the riot here, like a growing number of flare-ups in other Chinese cities, was in fact directed against the flourishing alliance of Communist Party officials and well-connected businessmen that runs Chizhou. Before calm returned to the streets, the disturbance had become a political rebellion against the increasingly intimate connection in modern China between big money and Communist government. Someone else said, "Teach a nation that a corrupt exploitative ruling class deserves to be overthrown at your own risk, comrades." |
| Posted by:gromky |
| #21 China isn't really a communist dictatorship any more. It's a capitalist dictatorship. So Zbigniew Brzezinski was more or less correct when he said the best policy on China was to leave them alone, because communism and capitalism were two divergent paths. Nonetheless, it's still a dictatorship that we see in China, and a dangerous one. The question is, can the Chinese "communists", then, continue down this road for long? Will there be a time when they give up on communism? |
| Posted by: Rafael 2005-08-02 23:11 |
| #20 ZF, that really is a fine series of posts. How stable do you think the current regime is? Is there a "succession plan" for the old guard? |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-08-02 15:28 |
| #19 Article: "Chinese Communist Party's new fascination with businessmen, profits and economic growth" PR: WTH, Am I missing something? No one told me about a sale on "Contradiction". China isn't really a communist dictatorship any more. It's a capitalist dictatorship. Why do the Communists keep on referring to Chinese capitalism as "communism with Chinese characteristics"? Because to explicitly repudiate communism would be to repudiate their right to rule. By calling China's conversion to capitalism "communism with Chinese characteristics", they are avoiding the question of the immense damage that communist economic policies have wreaked upon the Chinese people, and the consequent potential damage to the party's prestige. Most Chinese I have spoken to appear to have accepted the Communist Party's explanation of the past, and are hopeful that the capitalist economic policies implemented since Deng Xiaoping's reforms in the late 1970's will not be reversed. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 14:37 |
| #18 ZF, Good info on #11. I actually read #11 very slowly. Reporters truly are idiots. |
| Posted by: Poison Reverse 2005-08-02 14:17 |
| #17 "Chinese Communist Party's new fascination with businessmen, profits and economic growth" WTH, Am I missing something? No one told me about a sale on "Contradiction". |
| Posted by: Poison Reverse 2005-08-02 14:01 |
| #16 A: It's not the wealth that's the problem, it's the ostentatious wealth. This often happens in noveau riche societies, where the rich flaunt their wealth in a still fairly poor society. It often results in extreme hatred of the wealthy, until they learn to be discreet with their money. Ostentation has been a feature of Chinese culture for thousands of years. There is a certain amount of noblesse oblige - but vanishingly small compared to what exists in the West. The Oriental attitude appears to be winner takes all. This is why you'll notice that people in the Far East tend to wear expensive labels. During my trips there, I see a lot of Rolex and other expensive Swiss watches. Some of this materialism is reflected among Asian Americans, many of whom seem to flock to expensive cars and designer labels. The attitude seems to be this - why be successful if nobody knows about it? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 12:37 |
| #15 It's not the wealth that's the problem, it's the ostentatious wealth. This often happens in noveau riche societies, where the rich flaunt their wealth in a still fairly poor society. It often results in extreme hatred of the wealthy, until they learn to be discreet with their money. Compare this with America, which is crawling with relatively wealthy people. They have their own neighborhoods, their own stores, their own entertainments, even their own cities. They almost never mingle with "the common folk" unless they dress down and act middle class, otherwise they would stick out and attract unwanted attention here, too. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-08-02 11:54 |
| #14 ZF, Thanks for the education. That's why I scan for your comments. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-08-02 10:25 |
| #13 TH: why didn't the rioters beat the shit out of said dude and his body guards? Probably because the guy and his bodyguards got out of Dodge in a hurry. The rule in China is that if you're going to beat the crap out of someone, do it in your hometown, or beat feet back to your hometown right after administering the beating. Note that there were no riots in the motorist's hometown - this was primarily a sectarian issue pitting locals against outsiders. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 10:17 |
| #12 why didn't the rioters beat the shit out of said dude and his body guards? |
| Posted by: Thraing Hupoluper1864 2005-08-02 10:11 |
| #11 MK: I know the MSM are not reporting it all too well. Reporters are leftists. What they see in China is laissez faire capitalism, similar to the kind we saw in 19th century America, when economic growth rates in the high single digits were not exceptional. Laissez faire in the 19th century meant essentially no regulation - public officials were regularly bribed for favorable rulings, and all kinds of sleazy undertakings were not regulated, let alone prosecuted. Reporters don't like the regulated capitalism we have today, let alone laissez faire capitalism in China. China has no welfare state, because it doesn't impose enough taxes to maintain one. To a Western reporter, this must mean that unrest and the overthrow of the government is inevitable, since it is his religious belief that the welfare state is what keeps the long-suffering proletariat from revolting. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 10:08 |
| #10 Article: But the riot here, like a growing number of flare-ups in other Chinese cities, was in fact directed against the flourishing alliance of Communist Party officials and well-connected businessmen that runs Chizhou. Before calm returned to the streets, the disturbance had become a political rebellion against the increasingly intimate connection in modern China between big money and Communist government. I think this is overstated. No one wants to take on the Communist government. The general consensus in China is that local officials may be corrupt, but the central government means well. And corruption has been a central feature of officialdom on the land that is now China even before there was a China. Mao has a god-like reputation in China. The communist party's reputation isn't at stake - what the locals seek is the replacement of specific officials, not the destruction of the system. And if there is a minority that seeks systemic change, it is change in favor of a return to the practices of the Maoist era. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 10:00 |
| #9 Penguin: Why does a guy who manages a hospital require two bodyguards? I think the MSM isn't telling everything about what is going on in China. They may not have been bodyguards. Maybe the guy's job is kind of like the positions that NY mobsters hold in various unions and garbage collection companies. The other aspect of the accident that isn't clear is whether the cyclist caused the incident and then compounded it by smacking the other guy's mirror. Vigilantism is the rule of the road in China. Someone who steals someone else's bike and is caught can expect to get smacked around by the bike's owner while the local cops watch passively (the cops will typically have had a hand in apprehending the offender and bringing him over to the would-be victim). Another important point is the fact that Chinese pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and motorcyclists do not use the road defensively. Cyclists will suddenly swerve directly onto the path of moving cars. My feeling is that the accident could have been the cyclist's fault, and the fight was of the kind you get occasionally in traffic altercations. And the city rallying against outsiders isn't particularly remarkable - in this respect, China may be returning to the mores of the pre-communist era, where regional parochialism was intense enough that Westerners remarked upon the Chinese capacity for inter-village or -regional violence over apparently trivial issues. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 09:48 |
| #8 Yes MunkarKat, and unless you have significant economic pull, either with the company (ie it going out of buisness if you pullout) or with the government (see bribes) you can pretty much kiss any money lost goodbye. You just have to either swallow your pride and do buisness again (after apologizing for the misunderstanding) or go with someone else. Most buisnesses here that work with China are willing to take the risk because the good usually outweighs the bad. When that happened to a company I worked for, I was all for sending over a "Thank-You" bomb to those cheating bastards. Fortunately, I wasn't in management. :D |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-08-02 09:44 |
| #7 Anybody here ever deal with a Chinese manufacturer when a problem arises with a lot of products sold? |
| Posted by: MunkarKat 2005-08-02 09:17 |
| #6 I know the MSM are not reporting it all too well. A deputy hospital manager with not one but two bodyguards? A riot ensued? |
| Posted by: MunkarKat 2005-08-02 09:13 |
| #5 Why does a guy who manages a hospital require two bodyguards? I think the MSM isn't telling everything about what is going on in China. |
| Posted by: Penguin 2005-08-02 08:45 |
| #4 Article: After they saw what happened to Liu, Chizhou's self-described "common people" rose up against what they perceived as their local government's willingness to side with rich outside investors against Chizhou's own. The Chinese are xenophobic to a fault - even against people of other regions of China. I have been told that I should not drive in China. As a foreigner, any accident I get into automatically becomes my fault. And the reason isn't necessarily that government officials are biased - it's that the local population expects them to side with locals against outsiders, especially foreigners. This applies to road accidents, business disputes - everything. Nothing to do with the law - just popular expectations, backed up by the threat of violence. The docile Chinese laundrymen of old (stateside) were docile perhaps they were foreigners in a strange land. Sun Yat Sen, the founder of the first Chinese republic, described his countrymen as a dish of loose sand. By this, he meant that unlike the docile Japanese, who obeyed authority without question, the Chinese stood up for their interests over the interests of whatever ruler was in power. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-08-02 08:14 |
| #3 Ulp, sorry, this should be on page 3. |
| Posted by: gromky 2005-08-02 07:43 |
| #2 revolutions are as old as time itself. There is something inside all of us that would be willing to rise up under these conditions. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-08-02 07:12 |
| #1 Something tells me the "peoples cadres" don't represent the people even remotely and the "people" are catching on ain't that a drag (not be me but.) |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-08-02 06:54 |