Making sense of 'mass incidents'

• Source: The Global Times
• [20:15 May 30 2009]
• Comments

By Wang Weilan

Police in the city of Jieshou, Anhui Province, practice riot control procedures on August 6, 2008. Photo: IC

As “mass incidents” inevitably rise in China, both independent experts and advisors to the Chinese government are arguing for more enlightened measures to handle them.

“Mass incident” is the official Chinese euphemism for a protest, riot, demonstration or mass petition. According to official figures, 8,700 separate incidents occurred in 1993, and that number rose ten times to 87,000 in 2005 and to over 90,000 in 2006. The riot in Weng’an of Guizhou Province in July last year is widely recognized as one of the most violent and influential.

In his book New views on mass incidents – lessons from the Weng’an incident July 28 published in April, Liu Zifu, former director of Guizhou Bureau of Xinhua News Agency, explores the many local and larger reasons behind the riot and his experiences in dealing with it.

China’s most important thinktank – the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), an institution affiliated with the State Council – also published a report on Chinese legal developments last month, in which the authors analyzed the causes of last year’s mass incidents. They strongly advocate caution in dealing with them.

When there is widespread hatred of the rich and the empowered, Weng’an or similar incidents will occur sooner or later, according to a commentary by Li Deming on the People’s Daily website.

Countermeasures

To explore countermeasures against mass incidents is an important topic for the ruling party and the government. It would be meaningful for Party members and government officials, especially at grass-roots levels, to solve social conflicts and deal with public crises, wrote Ma Ya in Phoenix Weekly magazine.

Mass incidents on the Chinese mainland can be broken into two types, according to a CASS sociologist and researcher. Some are sparked by minor events, said Shan Guangding. An example might be a fight or a traffic accident between a government official and an ordinary citizen that then escalates into something involving thousands of people.

This type of incident has no obvious specific purpose or premeditated organization. Mostly such moments simply offer an excuse to unleash pent-up anger or resentment, according to Shan. The Wanzhou incident in Chongqing in 2004 in which 10,000 rioted after an official and his wife had beaten up a humble porter or a “bang bang”, was of this type, according to Shan.

Then there was the other kind: not sudden, not disorganized, and often involving long-term economic interests. Ninety thousand demonstrated in the city of Hanyuan in Sichuan Province after they had been ordered to vacate their homes to make way for construction of a new hydroelectric plant. They demanded better compensation.

The Weng’an incident was a hybrid mixture of the two, he concluded. For that reason and others, Weng’an is destined to be remembered as a model of how the Chinese Communist Party deals with a typical “mass incident”, said Liu.

“It seems accidental, but in fact it was inevitable,” said Shi Zongyuan, Party Secretary of Guizhou Province. About 30,000 were involved in the protest on July 28 in Weng’an over an official mishandling of a 16-year-old schoolgirl’s death.

Protestors set fire to 160 offices of the local Communist committee and government buildings, looted official property and destroyed 22 police vehicles.

Li Shufen had been found dead in a river midnight, July 22 last year. The girl’s family believed she was raped and murdered by two men accompanying her that night before being thrown into the river. One of the men was said to be the son of a local official.

Unsatisfied with the police report which concluded Li had committed suicide by drowning herself, relatives blamed the police for a corrupt, shoddy investigation. Li’s uncle, local teacher Li Xiuzhong, was beaten when he questioned the police. The riot occurred on July 28, the same day as police asked Li’s family to remove her body from the riverside.

Authorities rounded up 234 people accused of taking part in the riot and arrested 117. Several local officials, including Weng’an’s Party chief, have since been dismissed for breach of duty.