Rising social unrest
Beijing (AsiaNews/SCMP) For the second time in seven days, a Chinese leader has openly admitted that social unrest is rising in China due more to economic and social factors rather than political ones.
Zhou Yongkang, public security chief and a state councillor, acknowledged that rising protests were "internal conflicts among the people" that had been mainly triggered by domestic economic factors, the behaviour of cadres and by a lack of justice.
Although they could become a major source of social unrest, panic was unnecessary he told a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
The right approach was to "be fully aware of their potential threat to social stability, while at the same time avoiding extreme measures," he said.
The number of mass protests has shot up from about 10,000 in 1994 to more than 74,000 last year, security officials report.
Zhou's rare and frank examination of the causes and scale of protests on the mainland followed an acknowledgment of the problem by Chen Xiwen, Vice-Minister of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, in an interview with a Hong Kong's paper.
Recent violent protests by farmers were the tip of the iceberg, Chen Xiwen said.
He said the incidents showed farmers knew how to protect their rights and interests and hailed their willingness to speak up against injustice.
"Now they [the authorities] begin to stop the sort of paranoid thinking that every protest aims to subvert their leadership.[They have started] realising most of the time it's as simple as people wanting some access to basic economic resources," said a specialist on social justice issues with the Beijing Science and Technology University.
"I think the government may improve its methods of handling riots by trying to solve problems via dialogue instead of hard-line measures," he added.
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15/02/2007
