111341132734204718

Growing Unrest in China: Publius has the goods. That may explain why they’re suddenly talking about human rights (while continuing their repression). Or why they’re pulling tired stunts like this.

UPDATE: The anti-government rioting near Shanghai appears to have gotten much worse, revealing the depths of popular hatred of the government. The New York Times reports:

There were conflicting reports about injuries, and Mr. Lu said two elderly women among the protesters had been gravely injured after being run over by a police vehicle. The article in The Dongyang Daily said more than 30 government employees had been hospitalized, including 5 with serious injuries. Neither account could be confirmed.

A reporter for an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, The South China Morning Post, visited the riot scene and described overturned buses and shattered cars, adding that “a police uniform is draped over one car – a trophy.” The reporter, whose account was published on Wednesday, was detained by the police after leaving the village and released after her notes were confiscated. . . .

But the riot described in Huaxi is more a symptom of the widening social unrest in the Chinese countryside that has become a serious concern for top leaders. Last year, tens of thousands of protesters in western Sichuan Province clashed with the police over a dam project. Smaller rural protests are commonplace and often violent.

When a government becomes oppressive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

UPDATE II: The Washington Post reports that China is having some success in blocking out subversive content on the internet. No, I don’t get hits from China–astonishing, given that I regularly get visits from places like Yemen, Iran, Burma, Vietnam, Kenya, and the Ivory Coast. Then again, I get plenty of “anonymouse” and otherwise disguised-origin hits, and I suspect that plenty of them are from China . . . perhaps even North Korea?