Chinese Instability

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  • Nickdfresh
    SUPER MODERATOR

    • Oct 2004
    • 49386

    Chinese Instability

    Income gaps, corruption fuel China riots
    The violence underscores how unfair China seems to many citizens

    ANALYSIS
    By CHARLES HUTZLER
    The Associated Press
    updated 6:17 p.m. ET, Tues., July 14, 2009

    BEIJING - Widening income gaps, corrupt local administrations and policies that seem to favor the well-connected few over the disadvantaged many are fueling spasms of violence that spring up in cities across China.

    In the most recent case, more than 180 people died in ethnic violence that convulsed a Muslim area of western China last week. The spark for the unrest in Xinjiang was a brawl between majority Han Chinese and Muslim Uighur factory workers 1,800 miles away.

    Weeks earlier, tens of thousands of people swarmed into the streets of a city in the country's heartland, overturning police cars and torching a hotel. The trigger for those riots, which left hundreds injured in Shishou, was the supposed suicide of a hotel chef.

    Though the events that precipitated the two riots were strikingly different, the underlying forces behind them were in many ways the same. In neither instance did people believe accounts from the government and police, and their disbelief soon tapped into long-standing grievances — Uighur unemployment in Xinjiang and corrupt, mafia-like government in Shishou.

    Tens of thousands of what the government calls "sudden mass incidents" rock China every year, presumably soaring in number since Beijing stopped releasing the statistic publicly in 2005, when there were 87,000 of them. While loss of life is rarely on the scale of the Xinjiang riot, protesters often vent their rage on public property, burning government offices and cars.

    A nation rife with inequities
    All told, the violence underscores how unfair China seems to many Chinese, rife with inequities that frequently cause unrest to bubble up. Social justice, a phrase banned by Internet censors earlier this decade, is now in vogue as the communist leadership realizes leaving the tensions unacknowledged risks its credibility.

    Beneath the friction is China's rapid transformation into a highly competitive society. In the headlong rush from a poor, centrally planned and largely rural economy into the world-beating manufacturing and trading giant the country now is, many Chinese have lost the secure lifetime jobs and social safety nets they enjoyed a generation ago.

    As standards of living have risen, so have aspirations — and frustrations when outside factors like kickbacks and nepotism further unlevel the playing field.

    Over the past decade, the distribution of wealth has grown increasingly uneven. The U.N. Development Program puts China on a par with Mexico, a jarring change for a society that preached egalitarianism as recently as the 1970s.

    After Xinjiang's communal eruption last week, in which Uighurs attacked Han Chinese and ransacked their shops and then Han groups retaliated, government officials said much of the violence was perpetrated by people from southern Xinjiang — a euphemism for the Uighur migrants who flock to the regional capital of Urumqi looking for work and often take low-paying jobs as fruit peddlers.

    Insecurity is not confined to the less privileged. A fledgling middle class, worried over their futures, is also mounting protests.

    Outrage over exam subterfuge
    A week before the Xinjiang riot, the hottest topic on the Internet — the most freewheeling public forum in China — was outrage over a top-scorer in the ultra-competitive college entrance exam.

    The 17-year-old Han Chinese student's family falsely listed him as a minority, entitling him to 20 extra points and giving him a boost in landing places in top schools. The subterfuge, discovered by education officials, cut across notions of fairness in a society that for hundreds of years has seen standardized exams as a channel for merit-based advancement.

    Fairness is more complicated when different ethnic groups are involved. Han Chinese tend to view ethnic minorities as privileged groups, generally exempt from the disliked one-child family planning limits and helped by reserved spots for government jobs and in universities.

    Meanwhile, ethnic minorities see themselves as underprivileged, many of them poorer than the Han Chinese and with lesser education and language skills that make it harder to compete. It's worse for the Tibetans and the Uighurs, who see the Han as elbowing into what they regard as their homelands.

    Goverment blames terrorists, separatists

    It immediately branded last year's uprising in Tibetan areas and this month's riot in Xinjiang as the work of terrorists, separatists and malign foreign forces, suggesting a plot to carve up China. Such language obscures these groups' grievances over government policies and feeds stereotypes among some Chinese that the Uighurs were ungrateful for the state's largesse.

    The approach is unlike Beijing's treatment of unrest elsewhere in China, in which officials express sympathy and then often funnel cash payments to quiet disgruntled unemployed laborers, dispossessed farmers and others at the center of local protests.

    The strategy is known as "spending money to buy stability." Over the past month, state media has begun to question the tactic, running articles adding a modifier to the phrase: "spending money to buy temporary stability."

    Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

    Income gaps, corruption fuel China riots - China- msnbc.com
  • standin
    Veteran
    • Apr 2009
    • 2274

    #2
    Lut us make up a scary boogyman and name him Claude, King of Propaganda (KoP)

    Buy imagination quick before it stops! The Kop's as we know KoP's is Gone!
    To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.
    MICHAEL G. MULLEN

    Comment

    • standin
      Veteran
      • Apr 2009
      • 2274

      #3
      When do I get my Nazi Moon base?
      <object width="660" height="525"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XdIeFyPy3Ks&hl=en&fs=1&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XdIeFyPy3Ks&hl=en&fs=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="660" height="525"></embed></object>
      To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.
      MICHAEL G. MULLEN

      Comment

      • letsrock
        Veteran
        • Mar 2007
        • 1595

        #4
        So is Hitler on the moon?

        Comment

        • Nickdfresh
          SUPER MODERATOR

          • Oct 2004
          • 49386

          #5
          Originally posted by standin
          Lut us make up a scary boogyman and name him Claude, King of Propaganda (KoP)

          Buy imagination quick before it stops! The Kop's as we know KoP's is Gone!
          Um, stop spamming this thread...

          Comment

          • ZahZoo
            ROTH ARMY WEBMASTER

            • Jan 2004
            • 9079

            #6
            Originally posted by chan_bkny
            With all due respect, um...what does this mean?

            Anyway, I don't know whom or what to believe. Various newspapers say different things about the riot/causes of the riots: Han and Muslims employees had a fight in a factory; one of the Muslims got hurt, so he allegedly yelled discrimination. Then there were stories about Muslims violating Han women. It's total chaos.
            I'll venture a guess at standin's statement...

            The boogyman comment refers to calling angry citizens terrorists, separatists and painting the people as something evil... thus the propaganda reference and feeding of sterotypes.

            The buy imagination statement is in reference to the last two paragraphs where it mentions officials buying stability by funnelling cash to those at the center of the unrest... normal angry citizens.

            That wasn't too hard was it...

            Nor Spam Nick... sorry.
            "If you want to be a monk... you gotta cook a lot of rice...”

            Comment

            • Nickdfresh
              SUPER MODERATOR

              • Oct 2004
              • 49386

              #7
              Originally posted by chan_bkny
              With all due respect, um...what does this mean?
              ...

              For purposes of clarification, that's exactly what I was wondering...

              Comment

              • Nickdfresh
                SUPER MODERATOR

                • Oct 2004
                • 49386

                #8
                Originally posted by ZahZoo
                I'll venture a guess at standin's statement...

                The boogyman comment refers to calling angry citizens terrorists, separatists and painting the people as something evil... thus the propaganda reference and feeding of sterotypes.

                The buy imagination statement is in reference to the last two paragraphs where it mentions officials buying stability by funnelling cash to those at the center of the unrest... normal angry citizens.

                That wasn't too hard was it...

                Nor Spam Nick... sorry.
                I guess. But the thirty ensuing Youtubes can be pretty annoying. In any case, some here think of China as a rising dragon ready to pounce on our decaying super-power corpse. But I think it is worth noting that China is undergoing a transformation and that they have a lot of internal problems. But hopefully their transformation one that will result in greater freedom of the populace along with the robber-baron-capitalism...

                Comment

                • ZahZoo
                  ROTH ARMY WEBMASTER

                  • Jan 2004
                  • 9079

                  #9
                  Understood and concur on the youtubes...
                  "If you want to be a monk... you gotta cook a lot of rice...”

                  Comment

                  • letsrock
                    Veteran
                    • Mar 2007
                    • 1595

                    #10
                    Interesting.

                    Comment

                    • standin
                      Veteran
                      • Apr 2009
                      • 2274

                      #11
                      It was a bit abstract to say the least and not specifically micro scoping this latest stylized written article.
                      It’s articles in general propaganda overload. I guess, I could pick apart that article, but then this would get longer than it will be.

                      I still stand when saying almost any political system (excluding political system based on supremacy) is fine when corruption is kept in check. These folks (including ourselves) do not need the tools to rise against their government. They need the tools to rid their government AND peoples of the tolerance of corruption.

                      180 is a good number of people to die. However, in relations to American numbers that would be 41 people. Still a lot of people, but coming closer to what was experienced in America when beginning to ridding and monitoring the system of corruption of incomparability in America in the 1960’s. One thing of note of the 60’s strife was that anyone of any classification is capable of incomparability corruption.

                      I do tend to believe it is meddling of outside and inside forces. However, meddling in itself is not a bad thing just like wealth in itself is not a bad thing.

                      The Claude reference is to Claudius I. In being, the removing corruption with corruption begets corruption. No matter the deeds intended. The end will not justify the means. The means remain the same.

                      The King of Propaganda to most extent is dead. Or rather, there are so many Caesars of Propaganda that The Caesar of Propaganda has become one of us.


                      We have become the corruption~
                      Last edited by standin; 07-15-2009, 03:38 PM.
                      To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.
                      MICHAEL G. MULLEN

                      Comment

                      • Big Train
                        Full Member Status

                        • Apr 2004
                        • 4013

                        #12
                        China is a rising dragon, there is no doubt of that. They are going through growing pains yes and will have many issues similar to ours. They are a major competitor to our way of life, so yes, we should be at least moderately wary of them, at the very least.

                        Comment

                        • letsrock
                          Veteran
                          • Mar 2007
                          • 1595

                          #13
                          Originally posted by Big Train
                          China is a rising dragon, there is no doubt of that. They are going through growing pains yes and will have many issues similar to ours. They are a major competitor to our way of life, so yes, we should be at least moderately wary of them, at the very least.
                          They are simply repeating history.

                          Comment

                          • standin
                            Veteran
                            • Apr 2009
                            • 2274

                            #14
                            Originally posted by letsrock
                            They are simply repeating history.
                            And so are you~
                            To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.
                            MICHAEL G. MULLEN

                            Comment

                            • letsrock
                              Veteran
                              • Mar 2007
                              • 1595

                              #15
                              Thats what people do.
                              Thats what nations do.
                              Just like you are repeating history right now.

                              Comment

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