Making sense of 'mass incidents'

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

Democracy

To prevent officials ignoring or damaging people’s interests, the people should become involved in selection of officials, Liu also suggested.

“Only when people are fully involved in the selection of officials will those selected officials be responsible to the people,” he said.

Neither Liu nor CASS saw mass incidents as overtly political in nature, meaning there was nothing premeditated against the central government or the leadership of the Communist Party.

Most mass incidents were targeted at companies, “the haves” or the improprieties of local governments. Unrest was isolated and uncoordinated, said Shan.

Stereotyped methods of tackling mass incidents – defining protestors as “anti-government” or “anti-Communist Party” – are wholly discredited according to these policy advisors.

“Many of the protestors were only making justified demands. The majority of those involved have no such political purpose as subverting the Communist Party or the Government at all,” said Liu.

Shan attacked the time-honored practice of regarding all protestors as malicious or misled, all protests as premeditated political movements, saying these approaches provided political cover for local authorities wanting to crack down on dissent.

Conflict escalated when authorities adopted an overly tough approach or suppressed information. The CASS report cited Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu as saying that in dealing with mass incidents, the police force, weapons and enforcement measures should be exercised with caution, and the flow of information should be improved.

Both Yu Jianrong and Shan predict more mass incidents in 2009 and beyond.

“We should be fully prepared for more mass incidents in China,” said Shan. “Complaints about social inequalities, criticism of official corruption and hatred towards the unscrupulous rich are still so intense in many regions.”
 

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Report defines main causes of mass incidents

Causes of “mass incidents” such as the Weng’an riot are outlined in a recent Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) report.

According to the report, most riots occur for six key reasons:

1. local government snatching land or property from its local populace;
2. China’s widening gap between rich and the poor;
3. dissatisfaction over unfair distribution of wealth and its associated unjustified richness;
4. violation of people’s economic interests and democratic rights;
5. individual inability to find a method of effective arbitration for protecting their interests;
6. inflexibility of “social management mode” – government’s handling of society – allied to an increasing popular awareness of democracy.