WP: China Reins In Rural Protests, but Not Resentment: Surveillance, Restraint, Arrests

[DeepModem Mom]

China Reins In Rural Protests, but Not Resentment
Decline in Violent Demonstrations Follows Increased Surveillance, Police Restraint, Swift Arrests
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 19, 2006; Page A24

DONGZHOU, China -- The resentment that led to a bloody confrontation between farmers and policemen here last December has only sharpened over the past 11 months. Local officials are still corrupt, Dongzhou residents complained, and a jutting power plant has risen on the land whose seizure by the government touched off the battle in the first place.

But the simmering anger has been contained; the violence, in which a number of protesting farmers were killed, has not been repeated on any scale. Through a mix of increased surveillance, police restraint and swift arrests of any troublemakers, security forces have kept unrest off the busy lanes of this fishing and farming village on the South China Sea, about 125 miles northeast of Hong Kong.

"It's out of the question," said a Dongzhou merchant who was asked Thursday whether a large riot like the one Dec. 6 could erupt again here. "People are all scared to death."

The formula for stability in Dongzhou has been applied across China, authorities said, and with apparently similar results. Liu Jinguo, the deputy public security minister, said recently that the number of violent protests in China in the first nine months of 2006 was down by 22 percent over the same period in 2005. That marked a sharp change from the steady increases in rural unrest recorded by his ministry in 2004 and 2005.

The drop in reports of violence has been matched in recent months by a reduction in anecdotal accounts of unrest that are passed along by dissidents or posted on their Web sites. Taken together, the trends suggest Beijing might have reined in what seemed to be a crisis in rural areas that threatened broader unrest and, ultimately, the stability of President Hu Jintao's government....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/18/AR2006111800943.html