[Onthebarricades] CHINA: Mass unrest over one child policy

[Andy]

According to these reports, regime officials are going around robbing and 
destroying property of farmers, which is provoking mass unrest and 
destruction of government buildings in at least four towns in Guangxi 
province in southern China.

One article refers to thousands such incidents per year in China, which have 
forced the government to curtail land grabs and rural pollution.


http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Rest+of+the+World&month=May2007&file=World_News2007052221635.xml

Chinese farmers riot against 'one child' policy
Web posted at: 5/22/2007 2:16:35
Source ::: AFP
BEIJING . Police clashed violently with protesters in southern China as 
thousands of farmers rioted over the nation's controversial "one-child" 
family planning policies, residents said yesterday.
Angry farmers besieged up to four township governments in Guangxi province 
on Friday and Saturday, with police and protesters clashing in at least one 
demonstration, they said.
The demonstrations occurred after local governments this month dispatched 
"family planning work teams" to levy fines on families that were violating 
government population control policies, they said.
One woman in Shapi township, speaking on condition of anonymity, said up to 
20,000 people had gathered and rioted there on Saturday, hurling rocks, 
breaking windows and torching public property.
"The farmers were really angry because the family planning team was going 
around to homes and making farmers pay fines if they had too many kids," the 
woman said.
"If the farmers had no money they took things from them. Property with value 
they confiscated, things with no value they destroyed."
The work teams confiscated everything from livestock, to electronic goods 
and household items such as pots and pans and teapots, according to the 
woman and other accounts by locals posted on the Internet.
Photos on the Internet showed family planning work teams dressed in military 
fatigues and helmets carrying sledge hammers as they marched through Guangxi 
villages.
On Friday, similar demonstrations erupted in neighbouring Shuiming township, 
with locals confronting up to 1,000 police armed with clubs and dogs, one 
witness said.
"It's hard to say how many people were there, (but) you could say there was 
a sea of people," a man in Shuiming township told AFP also on condition of 
anonymity out of fear of government retribution.
Hong Kong press reports said up to 50,000 farmers protested against the 
family planning policies in the four Guangxi townships in recent days. 
Residents and Internet postings indicated the situation was calm yesterday.
Authorities were trying to impose fines ranging from 6,000 yuan ($780) to 
more than 60,000, depending on how many children the families had, according 
to the residents.
Local and provincial government and police departments refused to comment on 
the unrest when contacted by AFP Monday.
China has since the 1970s enforced strict family planning measures to 
control its population, which at 1.3 billion people is the world's biggest.
Reports of abuse by authorities enforcing the law, such as forced late-term 
abortions and forced sterilisations, as well as arbitrary fines, are common.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=792602007

Chinese riot in protest against drive to enforce family-planning laws
ETHAN MCNERN
VILLAGERS have rioted in south-western China, attacking officials and 
burning cars, in protest at attempts to enforce strict family-planning 
policies.
The people in Shabei county in Guangxi, one of five "autonomous" regions in 
China, clashed with officials and armed police, pulling down a wall 
surrounding a government office, burning part of the building and 
overturning cars, witnesses said yesterday. "The government office was a big 
mess," one villager said.
"Broken glass, bricks and rubbish were everywhere."
Another villager said dozens of local people had been detained by police.
Police and local government officials declined to comment, but an official 
from the neighbouring Shapo county confirmed the riot had taken place.
A doctor at the Shabei hospital said several injured people had been treated 
there. One protester had been hit by a brick thrown from the government 
building, and two injured officials had also been treated.
The protests were linked to moves to intensify family-planning policies, 
villagers said. China launched its one-child policy in 1980 and some couples 
with more than one child must pay fines the equivalent of thousands of 
pounds.
"The family-planning officials were just like the Japanese invaders during 
the war. They took everything away, and destroyed or tore down the houses if 
people could not pay the fines," one witness said.
This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=792602007

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/21/asia/china.3-58166.php

Chinese villagers riot over stricter population-control

By Joseph Kahn Published: May 21, 2007

BEIJING: An intensive campaign to enforce strict population-control measures 
prompted violent clashes between the police and local residents in 
southwestern China in recent days, witnesses said, describing the latest 
incident of rural unrest that has alarmed senior officials in Beijing.
Villagers and visitors to several counties of the Guangxi autonomous region 
in southwestern China said rioters smashed and burned government offices, 
overturned official vehicles and clashed with the riot police in a series of 
confrontations over the past four days.
They gave varying accounts of injuries and deaths, with some asserting that 
as many as five people were killed, including three officials responsible 
for population control work. A local government official in one of the 
counties affected confirmed the rioting in an interview by telephone but 
denied reports of deaths or serious injuries.
The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to 
punish people who violated the country's birth control policy. The policy 
limits the number of children families can have legally.
Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap 
have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many 
of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China's long 
economic boom.
The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine 
one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to 
curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China's hinterland 
remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its 
largest cities.
To limit the growth of its population of 1.3 billion, many parts of China 
rely more on financial penalties and incentives than on coercive measures, 
including forced abortions and sterilizations, that were common in the 
1980s, when the so-called one-child policy was first strictly enforced.
But local officials who fail to meet annual population-control targets can 
still come under heavy bureaucratic pressure to reduce births in their area 
of responsibility or face demotion or removal from office.
According to villagers and witness accounts posted on the Internet, 
officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in 
years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks 
for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth 
to abort fetuses.
Several people said officials also imposed fines starting at 500 yuan and 
ranging as high as 70,000 yuan, or $65 to $9,000, on families that had 
violated birth control measures any time since 1980. The new tax, called a 
"social child-raising fee," was collected even though the vast majority of 
violators had already paid fines in the past, the people said.
According to an account published on a Web forum called Longtan, officials 
in Bobai County of Guangxi boasted that they had collected 7.8 million yuan 
in social child-raising fees from February through the end of April.
Many families objected strongly to the fees and refused to pay. Witnesses 
said in such cases villagers were detained, their homes searched and 
valuables, including electronic items and motorcycles, confiscated by the 
government.
"Worst of all, the gangsters used hammers and iron rods to destroy people's 
homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers," 
said a local peasant, who identified himself as Nong Sheng and who faxed a 
petition letter complaining of the abuses to a reporter in Beijing.
Nong said the crackdown was widespread in several counties in Guangxi. He 
said local courts had declined to hear any cases related to the matter, 
citing an edict from local officials.
Other villagers reached by phone described an escalating series of 
confrontations that began Thursday and continued through the weekend.
Several described in detail an assault on the government offices of Shapi 
Township, Bobai County, by thousands of peasants.
They said villagers broke through a wall surrounding the government 
building, ransacked offices, smashed computers and destroyed documents, then 
set fire to the building itself. There were inconsistent reports of deaths 
and injuries during that clash and a subsequent crackdown by riot police 
officers.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/05/22/riots_against_govt_in_china/

Riots against gov't in China
By Anita Chang, Associated Press Writer  |  May 22, 2007
BEIJING --Thousands of farmers in southwest China rioted at a government 
office after authorities imposed heavy fines on families that had more 
children than allowed under the country's family planning policy, a 
newspaper and a villager said Monday.
Anti-riot police were called in after villagers set fires and smashed cars 
Saturday at the Shapo township government office in the Guangxi region, Hong 
Kong's Ming Pao Daily News said.
One person was injured as villagers and government officials hurled stones 
at each other, the newspaper reported. The demonstrators also knocked down a 
wall and damaged offices at the building, it said.
Lu Wenhua, a town resident, did not participate in Saturday's demonstration 
but said he had heard about the riot from other villagers. Lu, 23, said 
protesters were angry because the government had levied fines of more than 
$1,300 on families that had too many children.
"The fine is too heavy because the annual income of the villagers was only 
1,000 yuan (about $130). It is too much for people to bear," he said in a 
telephone interview.
It wasn't immediately clear what sparked the riot, how long the fines had 
been imposed or how many families had been involved. A woman who answered 
the phone Monday at the Shapo township government said she had no comment 
and refused to give her name.
China's family planning policy -- implemented in the late 1970s -- limits 
most urban couples to one child and families in some rural areas to two in 
an attempt to control population growth and conserve natural resources.
Critics say China's family planning policy has led to forced abortions, 
sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to a traditional 
preference for male heirs, which has prompted families to abort female 
fetuses in hopes of getting boys.
Lu said local regulations allow families to have two children if the first 
is a girl. Families are limited to one child if the first is a boy. No one 
can have more than two children.
Ming Pao said all public servants had been ordered to collect $65 from 
people who violated the family planning policy. If violators failed to pay 
within three days, their homes would be demolished and their belongings 
seized.
The protest is the latest in a growing number of violent incidents across 
China in recent years as ordinary Chinese vent anger over official 
corruption, a growing rich-poor gap and land confiscations.
Photographs of the Guangxi protest posted on a Chinese online forum showed 
cars and a motorcycle smashed and overturned, and a rioter making off with a 
computer monitor taken from the office building.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/21/china.riot.reut/

Villagers riot over China's family planning
POSTED: 4:31 a.m. EDT, May 21, 2007
Adjust font size:


BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Villagers rioted in southwestern China, 
attacking officials and burning cars, in protest against attempts to enforce 
strict family-planning policies, witnesses said on Monday, the latest in a 
series of protests nationwide.
The villagers in Shabei county in Guangxi, one of five "autonomous" regions 
in China, clashed with officials and police armed with guns and electric 
cattle prods, pulling down a wall surrounding the government office, turning 
over cars and burning part of its main building, witnesses told Reuters.
"The government office was a big mess," a villager, who witnessed the scene, 
said by telephone.
"The big gate and two cars near it were all burnt and black, and broken 
glass, bricks and rubbish were everywhere."
One villager said dozens had been detained by police.
Local government and police officials reached by telephone declined to 
comment. An official from neighboring Shapo county confirmed the riot had 
taken place, but refused to give details.
A doctor at the Shabei hospital said several injured people had been treated 
there. One protester had been hit on the head by a brick thrown from the 
government building, and two injured officials had also been brought in for 
treatment, he said.
The protests were linked to local government moves to intensify 
family-planning policies, villagers said. Some couples with more than one 
child must pay fines of up to tens of thousand yuan (thousands of dollars), 
the villagers said.
China launched its one-child policy in 1980 to curb a ballooning population, 
now at more than 1.3 billion. The restrictions, which vary from city to 
countryside, have bolstered a traditional preference for boys and have drawn 
fire from Western countries and human-rights watchdogs after widespread 
reports of forced abortions and female infanticide.
"The family-planning officials were just like the Japanese invaders during 
the war. They took everything away, and destroyed or tore down the houses if 
people could not pay the fines," said one villager surnamed Wu.
"In some families, even the gate and bowls were taken away, leaving them 
with an empty house."
Wu said he had seen about 20 buses and other vehicles full of riot police 
and put the number of protesters at up to 10,000. His account could not be 
confirmed.
A widening gap between rich and poor, corruption and official abuses of 
power have fueled a growing number of demonstrations and riots around China.
The government has said the number of "mass incidents" in the country -- a 
term that includes protests, petitions and demonstrations -- reached about 
23,000 last year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6677273.stm

China's child fines 'spark riot'

Thousands of villagers have rioted in south-western China over the country's 
controversial family planning restrictions, reports say.
The villagers, in Guangxi province, reportedly attacked government offices 
after officials imposed heavy fines on families who had too many children.
The rioting allegedly took place on Friday and Saturday.
Beijing allows urban dwellers to have one child, while villagers can have 
two if the first child is a girl.
The policy - which was launched in the 1970s - is aimed at controlling 
population growth in the world's biggest nation with some 1.3 billion 
people.
'Property confiscated'
Angry villagers targeted several local government offices in Shapi township 
in Guangxi, setting fires and destroying public property, local residents 
were quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
At least one person was injured in clashes after riot police were called in, 
Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News newspaper said.
"The farmers were really angry because the family planning team was going 
around to homes and making farmers pay fines if they had too many kids," one 
local resident told AFP.
"If the farmers had no money they took things from them," the resident said.
It was not immediately clear when the fines had been imposed and how many 
families were affected.
Local and provincial officials have not yet commented on the unrest.
It is the latest in a series of civil disturbances in China which have come 
to the attention of the international media.
In March, there were riots in the central province of Hunan, provoked by a 
sharp increase in bus fares.

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=10322

Feminist Daily News Wire
May 21, 2007
Renewed Efforts to Implement One-Child Policy Spark Protests in Rural China
Villagers in southwestern China have been protesting and rioting over the 
past four days in reaction to a recent crackdown on violators of China's 
so-called one-child policy. Chinese law limits families to one child except 
in cases where the first child is a girl and a second child is allowed, the 
Associated Press reports. Local officials are held accountable to ensure 
that the policy, which attempts to control China's population growth, is 
implemented. According to the New York Times, officials in the Guangxi 
autonomous region have recently increased their efforts to control births by 
instituting mandatory health checks, forced abortions, and fines ranging 
from $65 to $9,000 for families that have violated the policy anytime since 
1980.

Many of the fines, called "social child-raising fees," surpass the annual 
income of an average villager, which is about $130, the Associated Press 
reports. Some families who refused to pay the tax are being subjected to 
detainments, searches, and seizures of valuables, according to the New York 
Times.

Protests, demonstrations, and the circulation of petitions are taking place 
in response to the increased enforcement of the policy. Villagers in Guangxi 
have reportedly been ransacking government buildings and offices. Dozens of 
people have been detained, and reports count as many as three fatalities.
Media Resources: New York Times 5/21/07; Reuters 5/21/07; AP 5/21/07

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C1BD864C-6C9F-4DBB-9580-57CA053B4CA6.htm

Chinese riot over one-child 'fines'

Thousands of villagers in southern China have clashed with police after the 
authorities imposed heavy fines on families for breaking the country's 
controversial family planning laws, reports say.

Police were called in after villagers started fires and smashed cars in the 
protests that erupted over the weekend in Guangxi, an autonomous region 
bordering Vietnam, Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News said.

One person was injured as villagers and government officials hurled stones 
at each other, the newspaper said.

The clashes reportedly broke out after the local government levied fines of 
more than $1,300 on families that had too many children under what has 
become known as China's one-child policy.

Some witnesses put the number involved in the rioting at around 10,000, 
although other reports have said there were many more people.

Photos on Chinese blogs showed buildings on fire and cars overturned.

Confiscated

Reports say between 10,000 and
50,000 people took part in the riots
The protests began after local governments dispatched "family planning work 
teams" to levy fines on families that were violating government population 
control policies, local residents told the AFP news agency.

One woman in Shapi township said on condition of anonymity that up to 20,000 
people had gathered and rioted there on Saturday, hurling rocks, breaking 
windows and torching public property.

"The farmers were really angry because the family planning team was going 
around to homes and making farmers pay fines if they had too many kids," the 
woman was quoted as saying.

"If the farmers had no money they took things from them. Property with value 
they confiscated, things with no value they destroyed."

Other accounts posted on online Chinese forums said officials had 
confiscated everything from livestock to electronic goods and even household 
items such as pots, pans and teapots.

Controversial

China's one-child policy is meant to keep the population - the world's 
biggest at 1.3 billion - to a size the government believes is sustainable.

But the policy, in place sine the 1970s, has been controversial, with 
frequent reports of abuse including forced late-term abortions and forced 
sterilisations, as well as arbitrary fines.

Al Jazeera's reporter in Beijing, Melissa Chan, said there have also been 
other unintended problems such as the demographic abnormality of 119 males 
to every 100 females.

In some provinces and regions, such as Guangxi, there are concessions to the 
policy with families allowed a second child if the first one is a girl 
although no one is allowed more than two children.

The weekend's protests are the latest in a growing number of violent 
incidents across China as ordinary Chinese vent anger over official 
corruption, a growing rich-poor gap and land confiscations.

According to the official figures there were 87,000 protests, officially 
termed "mass incidents", reported in 2005, up 6.6 per cent from 2004 and 50 
per cent from 2003.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/s1929100.htm

Villagers riot in China, attack officials, burn cars

Villagers upset by moves to enforce family planning policies have rioted in 
southwestern China, attacking officials and burning cars.

The violence is the latest in a series of protests nationwide.

The Reuters news agency reports villagers in Shabei county in Guangxi, one 
of five "autonomous" regions in China, clashed with officials and police 
armed with guns and electric cattle prods.

The protesters pulled down a wall surrounding the government office, turned 
over cars and burned part of its main building.

Villagers say the protests were linked to local government moves to 
intensify family-planning policies.

Some couples with more than one child must pay fines of thousands of 
dollars.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,484135,00.html

Birth Control Measures Prompt Riots in China
By Joseph Kahn
An intensive campaign to enforce population-control measures prompted 
violent clashes between the police and local residents in southwestern China 
in recent days.
An intensive campaign to enforce strict population-control measures prompted 
violent clashes between the police and local residents in southwestern China 
in recent days, witnesses said, describing the latest incident of rural 
unrest that has alarmed senior officials in Beijing.
Villagers and visitors to several counties of Guangxi autonomous region in 
southwestern China said rioters smashed and burned government offices, 
overturned official vehicles, and clashed with the riot police in a series 
of confrontations over the past four days.

They gave varying accounts of injuries and deaths, with some asserting that 
as many as five people were killed, including three officials responsible 
for population-control work. A local government official in one of the 
counties affected confirmed the rioting in an interview by telephone but 
denied reports of deaths or serious injuries.
The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to 
punish people who violated the country's birth control policy. The policy 
limits the number of children families can have legally.
Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap 
have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many 
of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China's long 
economic boom.
The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine 
one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to 
curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China's hinterland 
remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its 
largest cities.
To limit the growth of its population of 1.3 billion, many parts of China 
rely more on financial penalties and incentives than on coercive measures, 
including forced abortions and sterilizations, that were common in the 
1980s, when the so-called one-child policy was first strictly enforced.
But local officials who fail to meet annual population control targets can 
still come under heavy bureaucratic pressure to reduce births in their area 
of responsibility or face demotion or removal from office.
According to villagers and witness accounts posted on the Internet, 
officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in 
years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks 
for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to undergo 
abortions.
Several people said officials also slapped fines starting at 500 yuan and 
ranging as high as 70,000 yuan, or $65 to $9,000, on families that had 
violated birth control measures anytime since 1980. The new tax, called a 
"social child-raising fee," was collected even though the vast majority of 
violators had already paid fines in the past, the people said.
According to an account published on a Web forum called Longtan, officials 
in Bobai County of Guangxi boasted that they had collected 7.8 million yuan 
in social child-raising fees from February through the end of April.
Many families objected strongly to the fees and refused to pay.
Witnesses said in such cases villagers were detained, their homes searched, 
and valuables, including electronic items and motorcycles, confiscated by 
the government.
"Worst of all, the gangsters used hammers and iron rods to destroy people's 
homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers," 
said one local peasant, who identified himself as Nong Sheng and who faxed a 
petition letter complaining of the abuses to a reporter in Beijing.
Nong said the crackdown was widespread in several counties in Guangxi. He 
said local courts had declined to hear any cases related to the matter, 
citing an edict from local officials.
Other villagers reached by phone described an escalating series of 
confrontations that began Thursday and continued through the weekend.
Several described in detail an assault on the government offices of Shapi 
Township, Bobai County, by thousands of peasants.
They said villagers broke through a wall surrounding the government 
building, ransacked the offices, smashed computers and destroyed documents 
and then set fire to the building itself. There were inconsistent reports of 
death and injuries during that clash and a subsequent crackdown by riot 
police.