By Wu Gang

Hundreds of protestors took to the streets of Huining, Gansu Province, Tuesday, after police officers allegedly beat a cyclist for running a red light.

The crowd is reported to have overturned a police car during the course of the protest.

A government report released yesterday said the event was “a single case of dispute between police and a traffic law violator.”

Local residents who claimed they witnessed the incident, however, said the massive outpouring of feeling was a response to people’s long time resentment of heavy-handed policing.

According to the official report, Zhang Bin, 19, failed to stop at a red light at noon Tuesday and was ordered to halt by traffic police.

“There were two traffic police officers and three traffic assistants at the site,” Zhang Zhaofan, deputy director of the Huining county publicity department, told the Global Times yesterday.

“First there was a quarrel, then a physical conflict.”

The official government report made no mention of there being a fight.

A woman surnamed Li, who said she lives near the traffic light, called the Global Times yesterday to say she saw four officers beating the young man “hard” and that he had blood all over his head and face.

“They then threw him into the police car and drove away,” Li said.

“After a while, the car came back and the young man was kicked out.”

After being pushed out of the car, the man kicked the police car door, causing some damage, and the fighting started up again, Li said.

Close to 1,000 people circled the police car, shouting accusations of police brutality, she said.
 
The angry mob then overturned the car before about 100 backup police officers arrived, she said.

A student at Huining No 2 Middle School also said he saw a car overturned on his way back from school at about 9 pm that night, Li said.

The government report did not mention any cars being overturned, and put the number of protesters at about 200 and police officer numbers at 60.

“The young man is in hospital now and will remain under observation there for three days,” Zhang said.
“He has not suffered any major injuries, just a few bruises on his lips.”

Online posts at several websites echoed Li’s description of events.

A post at Baidu.com said that after confronting police, the protesters moved to the front of the county government office building, where they demanded justice.

The official report said the crowd did not disperse until midnight.

County leader Wu Yangdong and a dozen officials went to appease the protesters, Zhang said.

News of the incident was relayed to Gansu Governor Xu Shousheng, who ordered local officials to explain to the people what had happened, and appeal to them “not to be agitated by several bad guys who wanted to stir up a riot.”

The governor also said publicity departments must release the facts to the media in a timely manner.
 
Local people, however, were not satisfied with the official report.

“Tuesday’s riot happened because people have felt anger toward the police for a long time,” Li said.

In the past few days, for example, traffic police have stopped more than 100 unlicensed motorcycles, and fined them each 450 yuan ($66), she said.

“I know they were enforcing the law, but they were rough in the way they did it, which made them look like predators.”

Rising fear of unrest

In a separate development, several Internet forums have hosted reports of a clash Monday evening between young people and police near the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The accompanying images showed a group of riot police confronting crowds of people who were protesting against local administrative law enforcers (chengguan) accused of beating up a young woman vendor when they were confiscating her goods outside the university’s northern gate.

As of yesterday there had been no official reports of the incident.

An official from the neighboring Zhengde Polytechnic College, however, told the Global Times he “heard there was some unrest Monday night.”

A recent report in the magazine Outlook – published by the Xinhua News Agency – warned of the growing threat of protests and riots this year.

The unusually stark report said the global financial crisis could spark anger, particularly among the high numbers of unemployed migrant workers and university graduates.

The report is based on interviews with three of its own reporters who have extensive experience in covering social unrest in China.

The country is entering a peak period for protests, which will be a test for the Communist Party, Outlook reporter Huang Huo is quoted as saying.

Qiu Wei, Liang Chen and Kang Juan contributed to this story