Thread: China tries to restore order after migrant riots UPDATE

China tries to restore order after migrant riots

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
June 13, 2011, 3:06 p.m.

Reporting from Beijing— Chinese authorities struggled to restore order Monday after migrant workers, angry over the manhandling of a pregnant vendor, overturned police cars, smashed windows and set fires near the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou.

It began as a run-of-the mill altercation Friday night when city authorities tried to clear the migrants, who are from Sichuan province, as they hawked produce in front of a supermarket in Zengcheng, on the outskirts of Guangzhou. But the ferocity of the rioting over the weekend exposed the fragility of social order in the nation.

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Videos shared via social media show scenes much like the violent protests in recent years in China's Tibet or Xinjiang regions. In this case, however, the protesters were migrant workers, a population often unhappy about its status as second-class citizens in eastern coastal cities.

Chinese officials responded Monday by censoring the offending videos. And the husband of the pregnant 20-year-old vendor was trotted out at a televised news conference Sunday night to report that his wife and unborn child were fine.

"The case was just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people, but was used by a handful of people who wanted to cause trouble," Ye Niuping, the mayor of Zengcheng, said at the news conference. Special groups were going door to door to speak with migrant workers at factories and dormitories, he said.

The Chinese government has reason for concern. Last week, migrants from Sichuan clashed with police and overturned cars in Chaozhou, about 210 miles east of Guangzhou, after a worker demanding two months of back wages was allegedly attacked by the boss of the ceramics factory where he had worked. In Lichuan, in Hubei province, there have been riots over the death of an imprisoned anti-corruption crusader.

Over the weekend, two people were slightly injured when a bomb exploded near a government building in the northern city of Tianjin. Authorities said the assailant was seeking "revenge against society." It was the third bombing directed at the government in less than a month and might have been a copycat case inspired by a May 26 triple bombing committed by a man whose land was confiscated.

A sociologist at Beijing's Tsinghua University reported this year that China has had 180,000 "mass incidents" in 2010, double the number in 2006.

"There are a lot of resentments built up among ordinary people who are frustrated trying to get by on a daily basis with prices going up and the difficulty of young people in finding decent jobs," said Geoffrey Crothall, an analyst with the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin. "Any little spark can set things off."

barbara.demick@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 6814.story

JUNE 15, 2011.

China Stamps Out Southern Rioting

Migrant Workers, Think Tank Warn Unrest Could Easily Flare Up Again.

By JEREMY PAGE

ZENGCHENG, China—The deployment of thousands of riot police armed with tear gas and shotguns appeared to have restored order to this southern Chinese town after days of severe rioting, but both migrant workers and a government think tank warned unrest could flare again if leaders fail to address migrants' concerns.

Debris litters the streets of China's southern city of Zengcheng after migrant workers rioted over discrimination, cost of living and wages. Video courtesy of Reuters.
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This jeans-manufacturing center in the southern province of Guangdong, which accounts for about one third of China's exports, is the site of the latest in a wave of violent protests in urban areas over the last three weeks that is challenging the Communist Party's ability to control society without resorting to brute force.

Riot police were patrolling major streets, manning checkpoints at almost every intersection and checking identity papers of drivers and pedestrians as darkness fell Tuesday in the Xintang area of Zengcheng, a city of about 800,000 people, roughly half of whom are migrant workers.

The massive show of force appeared to have quelled the rioting, which began in the Xintang district on Friday night after security guards pushed to the ground a pregnant migrant street vendor from the western province of Sichuan as they tried to move her food stall off the street.

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Associated Press

A cyclist on Tuesday rides past security forces in antiriot gear in the southern city of Zengcheng, where factory workers rioted over the weekend.
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The atmosphere remained tense, though, as clusters of migrant workers from Sichuan and other areas loitered outside their garment factories—many of which were closed—watching the police and swapping gossip about the unrest.

Meanwhile, appeals were circulating online for migrants to protest again to demand that the government release 25 people arrested for their role in the violence on Sunday.

"It could start again—people are still very angry," said one 48-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Sun, and who works at a small factory making jeans. "The government doesn't care about our problems."

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Reuters

A motorcyclist looks at a damaged car Tuesday in the Xintang district of the southern Chinese town of Zengcheng, which had been wracked by days of protests.
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He and others interviewed said they could still earn far more here—where an average salary for a garment worker is about 2,000 yuan ($309) a month—than back home in Sichuan, where they said an average farmer earns less than half that.

But many complained about the tough working conditions, saying they slept and ate in their factories, and usually worked at least 10 hours a day, often seven days a week. Some said their salaries were not always paid on time, and complained the food prices had risen steeply in the last year.

Others, however, blamed the recent violence on migrants who were frustrated because they had been unable to find work.

"We don't want trouble with the police," said another migrant worker from Sichuan who declined to give even his surname but said he was 37 years old and had worked in Xintang for five years, also making jeans. "Of course, there are problems. Food prices are high, sometimes wages are not paid. But it's not good to talk about this now with so many police around."

A top Chinese state think tank, which advises Chinese leaders, warned in a report published on Tuesday that China's millions of migrant workers would become a serious threat to stability unless they were better treated in urban areas.

The report from the State Council Development Research Center found that while the vast majority of workers and business owners from villages see their future in cities and towns, they are often treated as unwelcome "interlopers" and have few rights.

"Rural migrant workers are marginalized in cities, treated as mere cheap labor, not absorbed by cities but even neglected, discriminated against and harmed," said the report. "If they are not absorbed into urban society, and do not enjoy the rights that are their due, many conflicts will accumulate," it said.

"If mishandled, this will create a major destabilizing threat."

Official statistics show that antigovernment protests have been on the rise in China over the past five years, but the simultaneous unrest in several Chinese cities over the last three weeks is unusual, analysts say.

The timing of the disturbances is troubling for the Chinese government, too, as it is in the midst of a sustained crackdown on dissent after online calls for a Mideast-style uprising in China.

The Communist Party is also trying to project an image of stability in the lead-up to the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party on July 1, and a once-a-decade leadership change next year.

Since February, Chinese leaders have repeatedly called for new approaches to what they call "social management"—meaning local authorities are under pressure to find new ways to prevent, or contain, social unrest.

In addition to the 25 arrests on Sunday, local authorities in Zengcheng have responded by promising to investigate the incident that sparked the violence. At the same time, they have been putting pressure on businesses in the area to stop their workers from joining further protests. Managers from 1,200 businesses in the area were called to a meeting on Monday and ordered to "pay good attention to your people and keep a close eye on your front gate," according to the Xintang government's website.

"Get your own houses in order and act on your own to maintain social stability," it said.

Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 95718.html