• Panasonic, Canon shutter China factories amid violent anti-Japan protests

    Getty Images

    An anti-Japanese protester throws a gas canister during a demonstration over the disputed Diaoyu Islands in Shenzhen, China, on Sunday.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    Major electronics firms Panasonic and Canon have temporarily suspended production at factories in China after a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea triggered violent anti-Japanese protests.

    Sites linked to auto manufacturers Toyota and Honda have also been attacked in the unrest, which has forced frightened expatriates into hiding and sent relations between Asia's two biggest economies into crisis.

    Ratcheting up tensions further on Monday, Chinese state media warned Japan it could suffer another "lost decade" if trade ties soured. Japan counted China as its top trade partner last year, with total two-way trade of more than $340 billion.

    Tyrone Siu / Reuters

    A demonstrator kicks a glass window of the Japanese Seibu department store during a protest in Shenzhen, China, on Sunday.

    A report in the Japan Times on Monday, posted on Twitter, said 1,000 fishing boats were sailing towards the disputed islands - a move likely to further inflame tensions.

    "I'm not going out today and I've asked my Chinese boyfriend to be with me all day tomorrow," said Sayo Morimoto, a 29-year-old Japanese graduate student at a university in Shenzhen.

    Protests broke out across dozens of Chinese cities at the weekend, some violent, in response to the Japanese government's decision last week to buy some of the disputed islands from a private Japanese owner. The move incensed Beijing.

    Much at stake for US as tensions rise in troubled China Seas

    In Tokyo, electronics giant Panasonic Corp said Monday it has suspended production at two electronics components factories in China and closed another, telling workers to stay at home after the facilities were attacked by anti-Japan protesters.

    Atsushi Hinoki, a Tokyo-based Panasonic spokesman, said another plant in China has been closed after several workers "sabotaged" operations in the factory. The plant will also remain closed until Tuesday - a memorial day in China when it marks the anniversary of Japan's 1931 occupation of parts of mainland China.

    Afp / AFP - Getty Images

    Chinese demonstrators set fire to a Japanese national flag during a protest over the Diaoyu islands issue, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan, in Wuhan, China, on Sunday.

    Meanwhile, Canon Inc is set to suspend operations at three of its four plants in China on Monday and Tuesday. It will halt production lines at its laser printer factory in Guangdong, a digital camera factory in Guangdong, and a copier plant in Jiangsu, Japanese media reported.

    The protests focused mainly on Japanese diplomatic missions but also targeted shops, restaurants and car dealerships in at least five cities. Toyota and Honda reported arson attacks had badly damaged their stores in Qingdao.

    Japan protests after man seizes flag from ambassador's car in Beijing


    Many Japanese schools across China, including in Beijing and Shanghai, have cancelled classes this week.

     Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who met visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday, urged Beijing to ensure Japan's people and property were protected.

    "It is in everybody's interest ... for Japan and China to maintain good relations and to find a way to avoid further escalation," he told reporters In Tokyo.

    Panetta said Sunday he is concerned the territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific region could spark provocations and result in violence that could involve other nations, such as the United States.

    'Conflict'
    Speaking to reporters on his plane en route to a weeklong trip in the region, Panetta said he will urge countries here to find a way to peacefully resolve their problems. He arrived Sunday in Tokyo, the first stop of his trip.

    "I am concerned that when these countries engage in provocations of one kind or another over these various islands that it raises the possibility that a misjudgment on one side or the other could result in violence and could result in conflict and that conflict would then, you know, have the potential of expanding," Panetta said.

    The defense chief said his conversations with the Japanese and Chinese would echo what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told them earlier this month — that they must find a process for settling the disputes. The U.S., he said, does not take a position with regard to the disputed lands.

    Protesters in China attack Japanese factories in a show of anger over a territorial dispute between the two countries. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    More China coverage from our Behind the Wall blog

    The dispute over the islands -- called the Senkaku by Japan and the Diaoyu by China -- intensified last week when China sent six surveillance ships to the area, which contains potentially large gas reserves, in response to Japan's purchase.

    The overseas edition of the People's Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, warned that Beijing could resort to economic retaliation if the dispute festers.

    "How could be it be that Japan wants another lost decade, and could even be prepared to go back by two decades," said a front-page editorial in the newspaper. China "has always been extremely cautious about playing the economic card," it said.

    A Chinese man holds up a piece of paper with the words "Diaoyu island belongs to China, Japanese get out" outside the Japanese embassy in Beijing, China, Sept 11.

    "But in struggles concerning territorial sovereignty, if Japan continues its provocations, then China will take up the battle," the paper said.

    China is Japan's biggest trade partner and Japan is China's third largest. Any harm to business and investment ties would be bad for both economies at a time when China faces a slowdown.

    Qingdao police announced on the Internet on Monday they had arrested a number of people suspected of "disrupting social order" during the protests, apparently referring to the attacks on Japanese-operated factories and shops there.

    China's 7.6 percent growth rate is the lowest in three years – but the country's economic problems appear more dire than the latest numbers indicate. Some believe the government will counter the downturn with a massive stimulus package, a strategy that has left China's local banks saddled with bad debt in the past. NBC's Ian Williams reports from Beijing.

    In Shanghai, home to China's biggest Japanese expatriate population of 56,000, one expat said his family as well as other Japanese customers had been chased out of a Japanese restaurant on Sunday by protesters near the Japanese consulate.

    Guangzhou police said on Monday, on an official microblog, that they had detained 11 people for smashing up a Japanese-brand car, shop windows and billboards on Sunday.

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Chinese pollution protesters turn violent in clash with police

    Carlos Barria / Reuters

    A demonstrator smashes a car window during a protest against an industrial waste pipeline under construction in front of the local government building in Qidong, Jiangsu Province on Saturday.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    QIDONG, China -- Angry demonstrators occupied a government office in eastern China on Saturday, destroying computers and overturning cars in a violent protest against an industrial waste pipeline they said would poison their coastal waters.

    Hours later, the mayor of the city where the pipeline was to have originated said the project was being cancelled, Reuters reported.

    The demonstration was the latest in a string of protests sparked by fears of environmental degradation and highlights the social tensions the government in Beijing faces as it approaches a leadership transition this year.

    Thousands of protesters marched through the coastal city of Qidong, roughly one hour north of Shanghai by car, shouting slogans against the planned pipeline that would empty waste from a paper factory in nearby Nantong into the sea.

    Wife of ousted China politician charged with Briton's murder

    Demonstrators rejected the government's stand that waste from the factory would not pollute the coastal waters.

    "The government says the waste will not pollute the sea, but if that's true, then why don't they dump it into Yangtze River?" said Lu Shuai, a 25-year-old protester who works in logistics.

    China's 7.6 percent growth rate is the lowest in three years – but the country's economic problems appear more dire than the latest numbers indicate. Some believe the government will counter the downturn with a massive stimulus package, a strategy that has left China's local banks saddled with bad debt in the past. NBC's Ian Williams reports from Beijing.

    "It is because if they dump it into the river, it will have an impact on people in Shanghai and people in Shanghai will oppose it."

    The state-run Global Times newspaper quoted local residents who said the sewage discharge from the pipeline was expected to be as much as 150,000 tons per day, according to the AFP news agency.

    Cars overturned, cops beaten
    Several protesters entered the city government's main building and were seen smashing computers, overturning desks and throwing documents out the windows to loud cheers from the crowd.

    China begins to admit 'fog' is really smog

    An AFP photographer described the scene, saying demonstrators seized bottles of liquor and wine from the offices, along with cartons of cigarettes -- all of which Chinese officials frequently receive as bribes.

    Reuters witnessed five cars and one minibus being overturned. Over 1,000 police -- some paramilitary -- guarded the city government office compound in lines.

    At least two police officers were dragged into the crowd at the government office and punched and beaten enough to make them bleed.

    'Opportunity for democracy': Rebel Chinese village votes

    According to the AFP, searches including "Qidong" on China's popular microblogging site Sina Weibo were blocked Saturday. Sina Weibo has over 250 million subscribers.

    Earlier posts on Weibo and on Twitter indicated that the protesters had stripped the clothes off the local party secretary, but these reports could not be immediately verified.

    On Friday, in an effort to stave off the protest, the Qidong city government announced it would suspend the project for further research.

    But many protesters said on Saturday that postponement was not enough.

    Carlos Barria / Reuters

    A police car lies overturned as protesters occupy a government building during a protest against an industrial waste pipeline under construction in Qidong, Jiangsu Province on Saturday.

    "If the government really wanted to stop this project, they should have done it right from the beginning. At this point they are too late," said Xi Feng, a 17-year-old protester.

    Local officials took steps to ward off the demonstration and residents received text messages and letters warning that any public demonstration would be illegal.

    The reversal came Saturday afternoon, when Nantong Mayor Zhang Guohua announced in a statement that the city would terminate the project proposed by a Japanese-owned paper factory in its jurisdiction. 

    Rising discontent
    Environmental worries have stoked calls for expanded rights for citizens and greater consultation in the tightly controlled one-party state.


    The outpouring of public anger is emblematic of the rising discontent facing Chinese leaders, who are obsessed with maintaining stability and struggling to balance growth with rising public anger over environmental threats.

    The protest followed similar demonstrations against projects the Sichuan town of Shifang earlier this month and in the cities of Dalian in the northeast and Haimen in southern Guangdong province in the past year.

    China tells US Embassy to stop reporting Beijing pollution

    In Shifang, the government halted construction of a copper refinery following protests by residents that it would poison them. It also freed most of the people who were detained after a clash with police.

    The leadership has vowed to clean up China's skies and waterways and increasingly tried to appear responsive to complaints about pollution. But environmental disputes pit citizens against local officials whose aim is to lure fresh investment and revenue into their areas.

    Behind The Wall: Full NBC News coverage from China
    Pictures from China on NBCNews.com's PhotoBlog

    Fen Jianmei was seven months pregnant when she was forcibly taken to hospital and her child aborted, because she and her husband couldn't afford the fine imposed in China when couples have a second child. NBC's Angus Walker reports from the Shanxi Province, China.

    NBC News researcher Tianzhou Ye, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Protesters defy stun grenades to halt construction of $1.6 billion factory in China

    Reuters

    Local residents gather in front of a municipal government building in Shifang county, Sichuan province, in this handout picture taken Monday.

    By NBC's Ed Flanagan

    Updated at 10:52 a.m. ET: While Shifang city government officials have announced that construction on the refinery will be halted, some residents have continued to protest in the streets to demand the release of some protesters detained during the protests including an unknown number of college students from a nearby aviation academy.

    BEIJING -- Construction of a copper factory in central China has been halted, an official said Tuesday, after days of angry protests over fears of pollution culminated in clashes that saw riot police fire stun grenades and tear gas to break up a crowd of thousands.

    Residents of the town of Shifang, Sichuan province, have been slowly gathering around a local city government office since Saturday, the day after a foundation-laying ceremony put on by Sichuan Hongda – a conglomerate specializing in minerals, real estate and finance – to celebrate the first phase of construction on the $1.64 billion proposed molybdenum-copper alloy refinery nearby.

    When -- or now if -- completed, the refinery could generate an estimated $8 billion a year.

    According to local Sichuan newspaper reports, the protest started with around a dozen people, but by Sunday it had grown as fellow residents and high school students joined them.

    By Monday, there was a crowd of thousands, a police officer on duty there told the Chinese newspaper, Global Times. However, the South China Morning Post reported the figure was in the tens of thousands. 

    By early Monday afternoon, tensions had escalated and protesters attempted to occupy the city government offices, forcing their way past police inside where they reportedly threw bricks through windows and destroyed offices there. Riot police were brought in to restore order, firing tear gas and stun grenades to break up the crowd.  

    Some 13 injuries were initially reported by official state media, but witnesses on the ground reported far more wounded.

    As of late Tuesday afternoon, protesters were reportedly still on the streets of Shifang, effectively locked in a standoff.

    Local government officials were facing pressure from provincial-level and central government leaders to stifle social unrest.

    'No longer suitable for living'
    A protester surnamed Wang told NBC News that their numbers had thinned out as the city boosted its police presence.

    “The two sides are just standing, facing each other,” Wang said. “There are a lot of police and the roads are blocked.”

    “Yesterday, the protesters were all concentrated in front of the government building,” said another protester who requested anonymity. “But today, the police have blocked all the roads around the government building so people cannot concentrate in one area and are scattered everywhere… I am not sure how many people there are, but fewer than yesterday."

    Bathed in smog: Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off lifespan, expert says

    Asked what he would do if construction went ahead on the refinery, the man responded, “As far as I’m concerned, I have settled here, but this place will be no longer suitable for living.” 

    “If my economic situation and other conditions meet, I will definitely move away," he added.

    Concerns over the pollution created by the alloy refineries that dot China’s resource-rich regions have grown in recent years as China’s economy develops and its people become better educated about the effects of industrial waste on human health.

    “I think in general smelters are heavily polluting facilities no matter what, they smelt,” said Ma Tianjie, a Greenpeace campaigner in China specializing in heavy metal waste. “We have seen a lot of cases with heavy metal smelters where there is substantial release of all kinds of toxic pollutants.”

    Those pollutants are released into the air through smoke and into the nearby area's ground and water supplies through the highly toxic slag waste that is a byproduct of a refinery’s production phase. Arsenic, an element that can cause severe kidney and liver problems in humans, is often found in worrying levels in this slag.

    As these health concerns have become increasingly more public, so too has opposition to these refineries in urban areas.

    While companies and local governments have up until now been largely able to duck growing NIMBY-ism in urban centers around China, officials here are increasingly finding themselves accountable for the environmental legacy of these lucrative, but highly polluting industries. 

    A legacy that Ma warns can stay with a population for a long time. “Generally the smelters will leave a quite heavy legacy to the local community” he warned, “even decades after the facilities leave.”

    Construction suspended
    The mass public protest in Shifang has for now, had its desired effect: Late Tuesday afternoon, Shifang’s local Communist Party chief, Li Chengjin, announced through the government’s Weibo microblog feed that the government was halting construction of the refinery and would no longer allow it to go ahead.

    “It’s definitely a piece of good news that construction is being halted, this is absolutely what we wanted,” said Wang upon hearing the news of the government’s decision to halt construction.

    However, similar recent cases suggest that such success could just be temporary. Last summer, thousands of residents of the northeastern port city of Dalian took to the streets to protest a chemical factory after a dike broke following a storm, potentially exposing the city to the threat of a toxic spill.

    Local officials were successful in keeping the crowd peaceful and eventually broke up the protests when they emphatically pledged to halt production at the factory and have it moved out of the city.

    But production resumed soon after, though local officials there have stressed since then that the factory was still slated to be moved.

    NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report.

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  • China censorship: Shares fall 64.89 points on June 4, 1989 protest anniversary

    Bobby Yip / Reuters

    People take part in a candlelight vigil at Hong Kong's Victoria Park on Monday to commemorate those who died during the military crackdown of the pro-democracy movement at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING – Government controls many aspects of life in China, but for today at least the invisible hand of market forces proved too strong even for the country’s ruling Communist Party.

    In an apparent coincidence, Shanghai’s local stock market, the Shanghai Composite Index, opened trading this morning at 2346.98 points. Read backwards, it looks like the date, June 4, 1989 – this day 23 years ago when the Communists brutally cracked down on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in the capital.

    Even more bizarre? By the end of trading in the afternoon, the market had lost 64.89 points.

    PhotoBlog: Thousands remember Tiananmen Square crackdown

    The significance of the numbers might have passed without comment had authorities not tried to censor discussion of the anniversary by preventing users on Weibo - China’s equivalent of Twitter – from posting terms such as “six four,” “candle” and “never forget.” With users abuzz over the Shanghai Composite Index numbers, censors had to widen the list of banned terms to include the Chinese word for ‘Index’.

    Hundreds of students and other civilians are estimated to have been killed in 1989 as People’s Liberation Army soldiers entered the capital to clear the streets of protesters. The topic of the crackdown is taboo in this country and little discussed aside from sanitized official accounts in textbooks that call the event a “political disturbance.”  

    Security around Tiananmen Square is typically boosted before the anniversary and censors work to keep discussion to a minimum. 

    June 4, 1989: NBC News reports as Chinese soldiers crush demonstrations.

    State Department deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, issued a statement on Sunday urging the Chinese government to "release all those still serving sentences for their participation in the demonstrations; to provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing; and to end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families."

    In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, called U.S. statements on the June 4th incident a “crude meddling in domestic Chinese affairs.”

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  • A contagion of conflict in China?

    Adrienne Mong

    Dozens of police barricaded a highway entrance ramp in Haimen, where protests broke out on Tuesday.

    By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

    HAIMEN, Guangdong Province—It wouldn’t have been fair or accurate to call it a China Spring, but for a moment it was worth wondering: Was this the beginning of a Guangdong Spring?

    Since September, residents in a fishing village called Wukan, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, had been protesting against their local government over, specifically, illegal land grabs and, more generally, corruption.  This was a town where one man had held sway as the Communist Party chief for four decades.

    The situation grew explosive two weekends ago when one of the protest organizers died in police custody, triggering a widespread and cohesive revolt that saw thousands of people run the local officials and police out of town—the first time the Communist Party appeared to have lost total control of a town.

    The authorities responded by laying siege on Wukan, preventing food and other supplies from reaching the 20,000-strong population, and censoring all mention of the latest developments in Chinese media or on the Internet.  In turn, the residents welcomed foreign and Hong Kong journalists to cover their plight.

    Negotiations between the two sides kicked into high gear even as the situation escalated. The villagers threatened to march to the government offices of a nearby town unless their demands were met, potentially pitting them against thousands of riot and paramilitary police deployed along the main road leading in and out of Wukan.

    In the end, cooler tempers prevailed amidst government compromises, but just as the Wukan standoff appeared to ease, reports of more protests nearby surfaced on Tuesday on the Internet.

    Suddenly, the province in which its Communist Party head had promoted a “Happy Guangdong” campaign no longer seemed so happy.  At least not in this southeastern coastal corner.

    Adrienne Mong

    Residents in Haimen say the power plant built in 2009 has dramatically increased pollution and caused a rise in cancer cases.

    At least three other pockets of unrest had flared up in districts of a large city near Wukan:  two of the groups were protesting similar examples of illegal land seizures and a third, the largest outbreak of demonstrations, was over government plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Haimen.

    Though difficult to confirm, the initial reports described thousands of residents converging on the main local government office and organizing a sit-in on a key highway entrance to protest the development plans.  Local residents were quoted as saying they hoped foreign journalists would cover their story.

    Before long, photographs emerged on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs showing large numbers of paramilitary police in riot gear lining up against civilians in Haimen, a large town about 70 miles away from Wukan.  Tear gas was fired and clashes ensued.  Rumors also circulated that at least two boys had been killed in the confrontations; the government denied them.

    Protests are not unusual in China.  In fact, according to the most recent official statistics, 2009 saw more than 90,000 “mass incidents,” as the Chinese government calls protests, across the country.  Land grabs and pollution concerns are among the top grievances.

    Although the protests in Wukan and Haimen appear unrelated, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that two demonstrations adopting similar tactics would spring up within several dozen miles of one another. 

    Heavy-handed police tactics
    On Thursday, the streets of Haimen looked like those of any other comparable-sized Chinese town: food stalls, shops, sleepy government buildings, a high school, and a population that relies mostly on motorbikes to get around.

    Mid-morning, dozens of those motorbikes were massed near the Haimen highway entrance.  In the distance, scores of black-and blue-uniformed police wearing helmets were standing behind barricades that had been pulled across the toll gate to the highway.

    A large gas station on the corner looked open, but was in fact not.  The station's attendants in bright yellow jackets were lazing around, directing traffic to the next station.  The only energy came from a discussion about the power plant taking place among some of motorbike riders.

    Adrienne Mong

    Dozens of police vehicles, fire engines, and water canon trucks lined the side of a highway running through Haimen.

    A short excursion on the highway itself revealed a sizeable police presence.  Police vans lined up against the side, interspersed with ambulances, fire engines, and water cannon trucks.  Dozens of police in riot gear sat on the ground.  Near several other highway entrance ramps, police vehicles could be spotted behind the gates of nearby compounds.

    A little over an hour later, the crowd around the main entrance ramp had grown.  Motorbikes whizzed back and forth a couple of hundred feet away from the police barricade.  Many of the riders were young.

    Suddenly, a pop rang into the air and a group of young teenagers were scrambling back away from the highway barriers—a plume of smoke rose above them.  The teens had tried to sidle up along the side.  A murmur of “tear gas” arose in the crowd as people began rushing away, covering their faces.  Nostrils burned.

    “They don’t have the right to treat people like this,” said a 24-year old local resident who only offered his surname, Li.  “Using tear gas?  It’s wrong.”

    Rumors of cancer
    A few miles away, a large power plant with two smokestacks sat under the hazy sun.  It was not in operation; local reports said the government had suspended it as well as the plans to build the second plant until further notice. 

    Haimen residents called Hongdong — the hamlet of one-storey homes nearest the power plant —“Cancer Village.”  But inside Hongdong, a man working in a local medical clinic denied that cancer patients were on the rise.

    Back in front of the highway entrance, a young man named Chen and his two friends on motorbikes watched the police.  They had joined in the protests on Wednesday, because they, too, were angry about the health hazards posed by the power plant.

    “The ocean is polluted [because of the run-off from the plant],” said Chen, also 24 years old.  “You can’t fish in it any more.”

    He and others in the crowd said the number of cancer cases in Haimen had grown since the power plant was constructed in 2009 and quoted local papers as saying 80 percent of the cancer patients at a major regional hospital came from their township.

    Chen said news of the protest had spread by QQ, a popular instant messaging service, until it was blocked on Tuesday evening.  Then they relied on word of mouth.

    On the following day, the protesters were demonstrating peacefully, without weapons, said Chen, but the police rushed out from behind the blockade into the crowd and began beating up people—including women. 

    Many of the participants on Wednesday, according to residents, were young Chinese.  Several were injured, and countless others arrested—just as was the case on Tuesday.

    They had picked the highway entrance, said Chen, because it would attract the greatest attention.  Unlike the existing power plant itself or the land where the second plant has been designated—both of which are removed from the main roads.

    Hearing about Wukan
    “Were you in Wukan?” was a question that crept up a few times in conversation with Haimen’s residents.  In the past couple of days, Chinese media had begun publishing reports on the dispute next door.  Moreover, many had heard through friends or acquaintances or on the Internet about the months-long confrontation in Wukan.

    But no one said Wukan had inspired them to take action. 

    “This [environment issue] has been a problem for us for a while,” said Li.

    There appears to be another difference between Wukan and Haimen.  Local officials from Haimen have promised to come up with some sort of resolution in five days, according to Chen.  But later on Thursday evening, he said that many more young Chinese had been rounded up and detained.

  • Villagers defiant as government creates new narrative

    Afp Photo / AFP - Getty Images

    Residents of Wukan, a fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong march to demand the government take action over illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader on Thursday. Click on the photo to see more images from the village.

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

     

    BEIJING – As the Chinese village of Wukan entered its fifth day besieged by a police cordon cutting off food and water from entering the village, reports from inside the cordon suggest villagers have continued to resist government overtures to end their protest.

    What’s going on outside the cordon, though, is a very different story.

    Even as Chinese and foreign press have begun sneaking around the security cordon into town – likely assuring at least temporarily that no draconian, military-style raid on the villagers occurs – Chinese state media have started to create an alternative and unverifiable storyline about what triggered the hostilities.

    ‘Official’ version of events
    The China Media Project at Hong Kong University noted Thursday that late last night, the state-run China News Service reported on a press conference that allegedly confirmed that “preliminary investigations have ruled out external force as the cause of death” in the case of Xue Jinbo.

    Xue, a village representative who was detained along with several other local leaders by police last Friday during a raid on Wukan, died in custody – alleged of a heart attack.

    But his family was permitted to see the body and reported seeing fractures and bruising all over his body. And they were not permitted to take his remains home for burial.

    However, the China News Service report said the town’s medical expert had shared photographic evidence of Xue’s body which refuted the family’s accusations that police beatings caused his death. The reporter was allegedly not permitted copies of the photos for publication.

    Xue’s death and its suspicious circumstances sparked the mass protests in Wukan that eventually drove village officials and police out of the area earlier this week.

    Another report from the China News Service said various Wukan village officials had been detained for discipline violations.

    Afp Photo / AFP - Getty Images

    Residents prepare for the funeral of Xue Jinbo, a local leader who died in police custody, in the fishing village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong on Thursday.

    That no other local Chinese media – and certainly no foreign press – had reported on the press conference suggests that local government officials are engaging in what the China Media Project dubbed, “public opinion channeling” tactics.

    In layman’s terms: they are dictating the narrative by creating only one plausible sequence of events.

    The two separate reports are intended to get the following results:
    1) Absolve local police of brutality and murder accusations – eliminating at least one of the reasons for unrest in Wukan.
    2) “Detaining” – as opposed to arresting – Wukan’s senior officials demonstrate that the government is being pro-active against corruption, without officially conceding guilt. And it obfuscates the other central reason behind the villagers’ anger – illegal land seizures.

    PHOTO BLOG: Chinese villagers defy government in standoff over land rights

    Scapegoat a few
    Another piece of the local government’s strategy to quell the unrest has emerged: scapegoat a few to spare the majority.

    The Shanwei County government Thursday named two village leaders it claims are ringleaders behind the revolt and vowed harsh punishments for them and other protest leaders.

    Wu Zili, the acting mayor of Shanwei County, accused two village leaders, Lin Zulian and Yang Semao, of actively spreading rumors and encouraging villagers to build barricades around the city. The mayor gravely warned that “the authorities will firmly crack down on anyone who organizes and incites the villagers,” according to Telegraph reporter Malcolm Moore.    
     
    For longtime China watchers, the combination of the earlier local media reports, news that the government is attempting to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff and Mayor Wu’s threat toward the supposed ringleaders are clear signals that the government is eager to bring an end to the conflict by providing an exit plan for the majority of Wukan’s citizens.

    However, taking that path will come with a price: selling out the people the government has branded as ringleaders of the rebellion.

    For at least one person, this is unacceptable. “Everything they said at the press conference [about Lin and Yang] is a lie!” said one villager NBC News reached by phone Thursday afternoon. “We simply elected those two to be our representatives.”

    Villagers’ side of the story: Beijing will come to the rescue
    Villagers in Wukan Thursday were actively working the phones, talking to the media who called in or slipped into town. However, as the world’s attention has started to focus on the events in Guangdong, they appeared anxious to push their own storyline, which is full of condemnation for corrupt local officials and deep-rooted respect for the central government, which they seem confident will come to their rescue.

    “We don’t want any foreign press here! We expect the central government to come here and rescue us,” said another villager by phone, “We have great leaders in [President] Hu Jintao and [Prime Minister] Wen Jiabao!”

    However, that sentiment is not shared by all. As one Wukan native told NBC, “If the press was not here, the police would come into the village and harass us.”

    National implications
    Whatever tact the local government takes in Wukan, the results could have serious implications for one man in particular: Wang Yang, the Communist Party chief of Guangdong Province.

    With China poised to complete a rare leadership change next year, Wang had in recent years been positioning himself to compete for a promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, which serves effectively as the nation’s top political body.

    Having championed a “Happy Guangdong” campaign that he claimed would focus on improving the living standards in the province, Wang has instead found himself dealing with labor protests that have coincided with the economic slowdown in China. Public anger over rising inflation and fewer jobs has led to factory strikes and violence throughout Guangdong, which has been dubbed “The Workshop of the World.”

    Now with open rebellion in what was once proudly referred to as a “model village,” Wang finds himself struggling to peacefully and definitively end the uprising – before it kills his chances of being elevated to the standing committee.

    Until that elusive win-win resolution appears, expect the siege of Wukan to continue.

    NBC News Producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

    Related link: Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

  • Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

    AFP - Getty Images

    An undated cellphone picture shows thousands of residents of Wukan village in China's Guangdong province carrying a banner saying "Wukan's people were treated unjustly" during a protest of alleged illegal land seizures.

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING– For years, in the name of social harmony, China’s ruling Communist Party has been highly successful in masking, placating or simply distorting the tens of thousands of protests – dubbed “mass demonstrations” – that occur here ever year.

    The Wukan rebellion will prove a tougher dilemma for Beijing to solve.

    From The Telegraph newspaper’s Malcolm Moore comes details of the stunning story of Wukan, a fishing village of 20,000 in China’s southern Guangdong Province.  Earlier this week, the entire town rose up and threw out local party officials and police forces following years of having the people’s land sold out from underneath them.

    The villagers’ frustration mixed with anger over news that one of the protest organizers, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody, allegedly from a heart attack.  Since the start of the revolt in September, Wukan residents have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by the police to re-enter the town by creating roadblocks out of fallen trees or just using themselves.

    They are now in a tense standoff with security forces, which earlier formed a cordon around Wukan--although a villager inside the perimeter told NBC News earlier today by phone that the cordon has been removed, leaving one checkpoint blocking the central access into the town.

    Scores of state security officers are said to be still positioned around the edge of Wukan, which has begun seven days of mourning for the fallen protest leader.

    Moore also reports that the town has enough food to last ten more days and that the security cordon is in fact still in effect (Click here to read more on how Malcolm Moore slipped through the security cordon).

     

    That we know anything about this explosive story – which has been months in the making but appears to be coming to a head this week – is largely due to Moore, who earlier successfully slipped through the security cordon and since has been filing articles and Tweets on events occurring within Wukan.  (Follow him on twitter: @MalcolmMoore)

    The reports have given everyone a rare inside look at the mindset and mechanics of a popular uprising in China--a rarity for foreign journalists who often face tight, sometimes arbitrary restrictions, and harassment by local government forces when trying to report on issues deemed sensitive.

    The Chinese village of Wukan in China's southern Guangdong Province had enough of local government corruption and threw out local party officials earlier this year. Now they are in a tense standoff with security forces who have formed a cordon around the town, cutting it off from the outside world. See video of the protests.

    Slipping through China’s security
    To say that foreign journalists in China know a thing or two about security cordons is an understatement.

    Over the years, the security apparatus has become exceptionally good at quickly sealing off and containing problem areas while at the same time wallpapering over dissent with state media coverage.

    In 2008, during the spring Tibetan uprisings, NBC attempted multiple times to enter the Tibetan areas of Sichuan Province for coverage but was turned back by security forces that had formed roadblocks around the region to prevent independent reporters and observers from entering.

    Similar restrictions have continued this year.  Journalists have attempted to enter those areas again following a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans that has called renewed attention to the plight of China’s Tibetan minority.

    Most recently, local government officials in the Shandong town of Linyi have effectively bottled up local dissent by keeping blind lawyer and social activist, Chen Guangcheng, under perpetual house arrest.

    Supporters of Chen – who in 2006 famously filed a lawsuit on behalf of his fellow residents against the local government over its practice of forced abortions and sterilizations – and foreign journalists have attempted many times this year to visit the activist and his family.  But they’ve been met at the town’s edge by plain-clothed security agents who forcibly restrict visitors from entering by throwing rocks and swinging sticks.

    It was only in the last week – under intense public pressure – that the provincial government of Shandong intervened, permitting ulcer medicine to be brought to Chen.

    Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images

    Armed police in riot gear stand at a roadblock en route to Wukan on Wednesday. Residents of the village, which was surrounded by police after protests over the death in custody of a community, leader vowed to continue their fight for land rights.

    Will other Chinese dominos fall?
    The dramatic chain of events in Wukan begs the obvious question, could this be the proverbial “first domino” that falls in a wave of similar copycat protests nationwide?  As Moore stresses in his coverage of the rebellion, the people of Wukan are counting on the central government to come to the rescue and depose the corrupt local officials whom they believe responsible for their current plight.

    That hope has manifested itself in the numerous rumors, as Moore reports, swirling around the village.  The most recent is that China’s state news channel, CCTV, is coming later this week to cover the standoff.  Some of the villagers have concluded amongst themselves that national coverage of their plight will lead to swift action by China’s ruling party against the corrupt Wukan government.

    How the central government manages Wukan’s revolt against party authority is a source of intense speculation.  Its action will generate strong responses both nationally and abroad and will reveal to China watchers which audience the party wishes to anger less.

    On one hand, Beijing could do as Wukan’s villagers wish and come down hard on the local officials, reaffirming the Communist Party’s often-repeated mantra of “serving the people.”  This path, however, could have the unintended consequence of convincing local governments throughout the mainland that Beijing is willing to sell out its own in order to preserve social harmony, potentially forming a rift between local and central government apparatuses.

    On the other hand, Beijing could determine that preservation of Party rule is the single most important priority and elect to crush the rebellion through force or the threat of it.  Such a tack would instantly draw international condemnation, but as China has shown in the past international opinion plays a very distant second to its interest in preserving national stability.

    A dark horse in changing that thinking is the ever-evolving Chinese blogosphere, which increasingly has filled the role as national zeitgeist.  Ironically, even as state censors work overtime to scrub the web of news and discussion of socially delicate issues like Wukan, decision-makers here increasingly must account for public reaction on these matters and factor potential online anger in the complex calculus that is governing.

    Where China will fall on this matter remains to be seen, but the next few days will tell us a lot about how Beijing plans to handle mass disturbances in the near future.

    NBC News producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

  • The highs and lows of air travel in China

    GREG BAKER/AP

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING – Famed Chinese philosopher Laozi once wrote that “a good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”

    Tell that to the passengers of Air China Flight 1894.

    From the good people at Ministry of Toufu comes this bizarre but strangely familiar news story based on a video shot by a passenger aboard a flight last week from the southern coastal city of Shenzhen to Shanghai.

    The video – which starts 28 seconds in – shows a throng of incensed passengers swarming a minibus moments before a man is dragged out of the vehicle and is set upon by the angry crowd.

    A lone police officer is seen for a moment then, perhaps wisely deciding for his own sake to stay out the fray.

     

    The passenger at the middle of all of this was attempting to fly last Thursday when he was told that despite the fact that he and his travel partner both held Air China platinum frequent flier cards (the equivalent of a Star Alliance Gold Card), there was simply no way to upgrade both of them to their desired business class seats.

    The two passengers caused a great stink, arguing with ground crew, claiming they were acquainted with Air China President Cai Jianjiang and attempted to prevent the plane from departing by claiming they were too sick to fly.

    At one point, the rest of the passengers who had already boarded the plane were forced to disembark and go through security checkpoints again. By then, heavy fog had moved in over Shenzhen airport and the flight was cancelled.

    Passengers on the plane were understandably furious with the decision to first hold up the flight for the two malingers and then to cancel altogether. Demands for compensation were only interrupted by the recognition of the two wayward platinum cardholders on a bus.

    Irate passengers soon set upon the bus and to the loud approval of the camera-wielding masses, pushed the cowed passenger to the ground, where he laid prostate as the crowd screamed obscenities and demands for an apology at him.

    The man’s travel partner soon came out of the bus to defend him, but her pleas to leave him alone were shouted down by the passengers (translation courtesy of Ministry of Toufu):

    01:26 The woman cried, “We have already apologized!”

    01:29 One woman from the crowd: “You also need to compensate us too!”

    01:39 Several voices to the man on the ground repeatedly: “Raise your head!”

    01:44 One voice: “Playing dead?”

    01:56 Several voices repeatedly: “Give the reason! What the hell is the reason? For us to disembark?”

    02:18 “Stand up!”

    02:30 One woman: “He should also compensate each one of them.”

    Police officers later escorted the two away.

    Recent Chinese aviation history is dotted with similar examples of Chinese tourists banding together against perceived poor service, airport delays, or simply a lack of communication. While most of these situations end peacefully resolved, some do end in violence, sparking the government to take action by threatening to punish airlines that don’t manage their passengers.

    Two years ago, I was on a similarly fated flight the ones mentioned above. The plane, delayed from another destination, never arrived and the flight was eventually cancelled. While no formal announcement was made initially, the mood soon turned sour when a single passenger requesting news on the location of the plane was tersely told they didn’t know anything and that she should sit down and stop asking.

    Moments later, a crowd of passengers soon formed around the rebuked passenger and the ground crew. When news suddenly broke that the plane was not going to arrive and the flight summarily cancelled, the proverbial powder keg exploded and the passengers, earlier frustrated but placid, united in one voice to demand compensation and an apology.

    One woman’s impatient question had in the span of ten minutes led to a situation that quickly spun out of control. In a bid to keep the peace, the ground crew at the gate soon offered meal vouchers, rebooked tickets and even compensation miles to those dogged enough to keep their vigil at the gate.

    By no means are these events limited to China. After all, the trials and tribulations of flying in America were deemed worthy enough to dedicate an entire television series about it. However, the frequency with which these events seem to occur in China suggests that something – whether it be the already reported massive expansion of the air network in China or the introduction of a passenger bill of rights – will have to be done.

    Or perhaps more meal vouchers lie ahead in our not so distant future.

  • Petitioners gather in force on the streets of Beijing

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING – After weeks of bottling up dissent and activism in this country, the tense political situation in China exploded this morning when swarms of petitioners gathered outside Beijing’s United Nations offices in protest.

    NBC News came upon the protesters by chance while driving down Beijing’s busy East Third Ring Road around 9:45 a.m. local time on Friday.

    By that time, plain-clothed police and other elements of the Public Security Bureau had cordoned off a narrow street sandwiched between the Liangmahe River and the usually sleepy foreign embassy district that surrounds the U.N. headquarters.

    Inside the cordon, dozens of petitioners – Chinese citizens demanding an audience with government officials in order to seek compensation or justice for grievances – were being herded by police into commandeered buses, suggesting that China’s security apparatus had been caught by surprise by either the timing or the size of the protest.

    Other officers carrying stills and video cameras floated throughout the area documenting the protest and taking shots of participants and passersby who lingered too long.

    As police worked to restore order, a second group of petitioners appeared from across the road and then just minutes later, a third group suddenly appeared.

    All told, around 100 petitioners protested today, easily one of the biggest recorded protests in the capital in some time.

    The protestors came from all around China, traveling to the capital to participate in the age old ritual of taking local grievances from far around the Middle Kingdom directly to the central powers that be for justice.

    Their grievances varied – some tearfully told stories of forced seizures of their land, others pointed to wounds suffered at the hands of nameless enemies, while others simply kneeled, cowed by the burden of their suffering.

    “Help us, we have no home!” screamed one distressed woman and her son as security forces tried to wrestle her off the ground into a waiting bus. The woman later managed to break free from the cordon with her son while he cried, “I just want to go to school!”

    “Long live the United Nations!” bellowed an older petitioner who claimed he had visited his local government office and Public Security Bureau numerous times to air his complaints about compensation from a work injury with little to show for it.

    Throughout the protest, petitioners rushed our crew to hand us petitions or slip them into our coat pockets in the hopes that we could put them in the right hands. Some were scrawled on old butcher paper, others were typed and printed in long, bound tomes that detailed their plight.

    However, as fast as petitions could be handed to us, officers stepped in to take them out of our hands and disperse the crowd. 

    Though it was likely that few, if any of the petitioners were familiar with Liu Xiaobo and his Nobel Prize win, the selection of this day – International Human Rights Day – as well as the organization that clearly was put into in this protest suggests that the participants deeply understood the significance of the day.

    The brazenness of this protest in the center of China’s diplomatic presence only underscored the urgency.

    Profiles of 10 Chinese activists detained in 2010

  • "Film them all, film them all, so many, so many!"

    By Adrienne Mong/NBC News

    "Burma VJ" writer/director Anders Østergaard takes questions from the audience.

    It seemed somehow fitting that news that Myanmar’s opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prizewinner, Aung San Suu Kyi, had been freed from 15 years of house arrest came to us during a screening of “Burma VJ” at Nordox 2010, the annual Nordic Documentary Film Festival in Beijing.

    The movie is a moving and powerful account of a team of Burmese “video journalists” covering the startling and tragic events of September 2007.

    Armed with tiny video cameras, these VJs documented the rise and fall of days-long protests in Yangon led by monks railing against the military junta and demanding Suu Kyi’s release. Running the highest risks, the journalists filmed everything commando-style (secretly, but sometimes openly) and smuggled the footage out by Internet and couriers so that it could be re-broadcast back into Myanmar.

    Watching “Burma VJ” sometimes brought a chill down one’s spine. After the initial – and moving – images of hundreds of saffron-robed monks walking quietly through the city streets with their alms bowls turned upside down in a defiant gesture of protest (a man turns to the camera and shouts, “Film them all, film them all, so many, so many,” is he a supporter or a spy?), the footage then documents the violent conclusion: military troops moving in to contain the demonstrations.

    It was hard not to be reminded of similar-looking pictures from 1989, when hundreds of thousands of students and workers had descended on Tiananmen Square. And then again when thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops were trucked in to end the protests decisively and brutally on the night of June 3.

    The parallel was not lost on the audience, an even mix of Chinese and westerners. Following the documentary, its director and writer, Anders Østergaard, fielded a number of insistent questions from curious Chinese who wanted to know whether he thought democracy was possible in China; what he thought of the imprisonment of that other Nobel laureate, Liu Xiaobo; whether he believed there was a global trend towards democracy; or what kind of country the Burmese VJs wanted if they were “not satisfied with the military government.”

    Perhaps the most telling question, however, was one that recognized nothing has changed in Myanmar despite the documentary’s compelling message and international distribution, buoyed by a clutch of awards and an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary this past year. The military junta still has a firm grip on power. The VJs are no longer active, having been arrested or driven into exile. And, until tonight, Suu Kyi was still under house arrest.

    As the film’s narrator, Joshua (the VJs’ team leader), put it before the protests began, “I feel like the world has forgotten us.”