(March 16, 2006) New report describes spreading pattern of "collective protests and group incidents," and says relations between party officials and the masses are "tense, with conflicts on the rise."
Beijing launches press crackdown
(March 15, 2006) China’s censors are launching a comprehensive clampdown on press freedoms, that reveals insecurities among elite threatened by rampant corruption and rural strife as a sensitive Communist party anniversary approaches, officials and journalists said.
Activists hail guidelines on public input into projects
(February 22, 2006) China’s top environmental agency today issued a groundbreaking set of guidelines on the public’s right to participate in decision-making on large construction projects such as big dams.
Corruption charges rock China’s leaders
(February 21, 2006) Corruption charges have swirled for years around Li Peng’s family. New allegations of nepotism involving Huaneng International have angered the party leadership and copies of the publication in which they appeared are being confiscated.
Sacking of writer signals clampdown in Hong Kong
(January 16, 2006) Jasper Becker and his defenders say the former South China Morning Post reporter was the victim of a new climate of self-censorship as Beijing imposes the ‘correct attitude’ on the Hong Kong media.
China sentences four in radioactive
(December 17, 2005) China has sent four people to jail for stealing dangerous radioactive waste from a power plant in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
Harmony stems from democracy
(July 31, 2002) ‘The market economy is not a sin. … the sin comes from inequality of non-economic rights. It is this inequality of rights that distorts China’s market economy, and that also leads to omnipresent corruption and peasant problems,’ writes Prof. Zhu Xueqin.
China: 2005 Housing Rights Violator
(May 24, 2002) ‘China has been named one of three Housing Rights Violators in 2005, for its appalling record of government-sanctioned forced evictions and its flagrant disregard for the human right to adequate housing.’
Pace and scope of protest in China accelerated in ’05
(March 19, 2002) ‘The scale of unrest is extraordinary for any country in peacetime, with an average of 240 incidents each day.’
Chinese PM warns on rural unrest
(March 15, 2002) Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said that land seizures by local authorities are a key threat to rural stability. ‘We absolutely can’t commit an historic error over land problems,’ Mr Wen said.
Chinese leader blames rural unrest on greedy land grabbing
(March 14, 2002) Prime Minister Wen Jiabao says land grabs by officials eager to cash in on China’s booming economy are provoking mass unrest in the countryside and amount to a ‘historic error’ that could threaten national stability.
China land grabs fuelling unrest, says premier
(March 11, 2002) Premier Wen Jiabao has said the continued ‘reckless occupation’ of farmland would ‘create large numbers of landless farmers and present a grave problem for the sustainable development and stability of the countryside and whole economy and society.’
Land seizures threaten social stability, warns China’s leader
(March 3, 2002) A day after the government released statistics showing an average of more than 230 demonstrations every day last year, state media published a grim warning from the prime minister, who is struggling to curb local governments’ land-grabbing instincts.
Top editors dismissed from daring newspaper
(June 11, 2001) The Financial Times of London and South China Morning Postreport that China’s censors have launched a clampdown on press freedoms, revealing insecurities among the country’s ruling elite threatened by rampant corruption and rural strife. The cause of their sensitivity seems to be a combination of an increasingly lively and emboldened state media, and the approaching 80th Communist Party anniversary, on July 1.
Local group nurtures indigenous voices in development of China’s West
(May 22, 2001) Nestled in a small building complex in the heart of Kunming in southwestern China, the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK) is easily overlooked. But behind its modest headquarters, this 100-member strong organization is changing the face of development in China’s remote western provinces.