Daily commentary about China by TIME correspondents.

China Riots and the World Financial Crisis

The last few days have been particularly busy ones for China's security personnel. No less than three cities including huge metropolises Chongqing and Shenzhen suffered strikes by taxi drivers.  And many other places suffered demonstrations and protests. One particularly huge incident was in Gansu province, where thousands, perhaps as many as ten thousand, demonstrated against a government relocation plan. Gansu is a poor province already having to deal with the nearly two million residents made homeless by the May 12 earthquake. If this incident had happened six months ago, it would have been widely reported, but would have been seen simply as the local flare up. Larger in scale than most perhaps, but with no apparent connection to the outside world, just like the protests in July by some 30,000 in the Guizhou province city of Weng'an. But we are now in the midst of a global financial crisis and the idea that China could come apart at the seams because its economy is slowing and people are losing their jobs is firmly implanted in many people's minds. It certainly has been true in some of the protests over job losses in Guangdong. But it is worth carefully examining new reports of other "mass incidents" as Beijing calls them to see if there's a connection. Much of the time there won't be, but the temptation to scale upwards will be hard to resist. Take a look at the latest wire service story on the Gansu riots, for example, (here) and judge for yourself.

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  • 1

    It is possible that the unrest of the society become worse and what will be the outcome is a severe challenge to the administrative ability of the central government. But don't blame the government on this, these things are sure to happen no matter what the government did and the sooner it happens the better. But the reason deeply beneath all the surface waves is not social unfair, not wealth gap widening, not corruption, not morality deterioration, not even financial crisis and so on as those so called experts from inside and outside China have been teaching people, even some of them contributed partly or directly. The real culprit is something in the culture traditions deeply implanted in people's mind which will take long time and bloody lessons to be gotten rid of. Just stepped out of a more than 2000 years of feudalism tradition, Chinese still have a lot of carry over which is harmful but most don't realized. A turn over of the emperor only means the establishment of a new political system, a good start, but totally no guarantee everything will be all reborn and new . Everyone is functioning the way from which he considers to be able to benefit at the price of the health of the society until when he himself is hurt deeply to discard what he inherited from the old culture. It is also the limitation of the democracy which the western has been selling to China for decades. Common people are not necessarily wise enough to select out the right direction of the country themselves, although goverments would not say this due to possible flooding cristism, passively or intendly satisfying whatever the public wants is not responsible way but like lazy parents pleasing crying kids with candies to get a five-minute peace, at risk of spoiling him and his health.

  • 2

    All the unrest are, of course, US's fault. Americans stopped forcing Chinese factories to ship them cheap goods, making these people to loose their jobs and wages. These unethical foreign factory owners just skip town and not paying workers wages they owe. The Chinese government should place all these factory owners under arrest for fraud.

    And, no doubt, all of these unrest are organized by CIA agents in China trying to make China look bad.

    China is a big country, anything can happen. Just a few riots is not a big deal.

    China has changed a lot since its opening up and development. All of these should be reported and not riots.

    China is a big country with 1.3 billion people. Everything becomes so much more difficult, including keeping the peace and harmony withing the country.

  • 3

    johnsmith9876: CIA agents, seriously? Come on.
    You are taking an oversimplified point of view distorted by fear mongering and conspiracy mongering. It is in the best interest of the US to keep China stable and an economic ally. The US government has no incentive to have instability in China or to make it "look bad."

  • 4

    Moconn, not familiar with Johnsmith's style? he is a genius at speaking in that way. He cares nothing about the intrests of US and China but just loves to show off his talents of discrediting China. Unfortunately, his trick is too fancy to have any solid effects on nothing. And he is infatuated with that like a peacock showing its tail and forgot wht his purpose is and even got lost about what he himself is. sigh. Saying this is no offense to your Americans, because he is not.

  • 5

    moconn: you probably don't know the rules in the China blog. First of all, China is good and great. There is no such thing as problems in China. If there is any, it is the US's fault, if not CIA's. Therefore, with any news in China, one must find a good thing about China, including riots. And blame anything negative on the US.

  • 6

    Moconn: Johnsmith is a sarcastic, professional Anti-China basher who has nothing to do but sit on the China Blog. He could be part of the China Blog Time team here.
    The tone of his blogging is that pro Chinese bloggers should not be voicing anything Pro-China or Anti-US. His opinion is that the wonderfully democratically elected government of the US can do no wrong.

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