China’s middle class protesters

22 Aug 11 | Asia and Pacific, China

A week ago China’s middle class flexed their civic action muscles by taking to the streets in their thousands (reports say up to 12,000) in the northeastern port city of Dalian to demand the relocation of a chemical plant that was in danger of leaking toxic waste.  They were well-organised: they carried posters, rehearsed snappy slogans and had special t-shirts made.

They did not want the Fujia Chemical Plant, which makes PX, a carcinogenic petrochemical, to be shut down — they just wanted the problem to be moved somewhere else.

“It’s a time bomb,” China Daily, the country’s English language state-run daily, quoted a protester named Wang as saying.

The government quickly ordered the plant be shut down and promised it would be relocated. Probably somewhere more rural where protesters don’t carry mobile phones, get protest t-shirts made and log onto Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) to spread news of their action.

Chinese authorities generally show more tolerance towards middle class protesters than unrest led by minorities, migrant workers and rural residents. Indeed, the apparent success of the Dalian protests have been seen as evidence of China’s class divide: in the same week, protesters who have for years complained about discharges from a chemical plant in rural Yunnan — which was found to have dumped more than 5,000 tonnes of a known carcinogen in nearby hills and the Nanpan river — were either ignored, arrested or given small amounts of compensation.

Earlier this summer government censors were also pushed to the limit after mainstream journalists and netizens alike decried the official handling of a bullet train crash in Wenzhou. However, web censors were still busy trying to control news of the Dalian protest as participants were uploading photos online from their mobile phones.

Global Voices Online reported that posts and user accounts were deleted, and phone coverage was blocked in some of the areas occupied by the protesters in Dalian.

China Media Project also noted that the word sanbu (which means to stroll but has picked up a second meaning of protest in recent years) was blocked on Weibo searches on Sunday.

China: Magazine editor suspended

18 Aug 11 | Index Index, minipost

Zhao Lingmin, one of the top editors at Window on the South, a Guangzhou-based news and current affairs magazine, has been suspended from her duties. In a letter to colleagues, Zhao wrote that an article called “China Has Risen, We Must Say Goodbye to the Foreign Policy of Revolution” , which she wrote for a recent edition of the magazine, featured  “errors of political guidance”. The article, which is still available on a number of blogs and chatrooms, has been deleted from most other sites. The original link at the Window on the South website now results in a 404 error message.

United States: Cisco sued by Chinese political prisoners over web monitoring

16 Aug 11 | Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost

Technology giant Cisco is being sued by Chinese political prisoners for allegedly providing the technology and expertise used by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor, censor and suppress the country’s citizens. Cisco, while rejecting the allegations as baseless, had publicly stated that it helped the CCP build its Golden Shield and Policenet web monitoring systems, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall of China. The case has been brought by US law firm Ward & Ward on behalf of several dissidents.

China: Outspoken blogger released after six months in detention

10 Aug 11 | Index Index, minipost

Ran Yunfei, a Chinese blogger and writer detained by police and charged with inciting subversion earlier this year has been released after nearly six months, his wife, Wang Wei, has said. Wang confirmed her husband had returned to his home in Chengdu, Sichuan province on Tuesday night, but declined to elaborate, adding that Ran is probably restricted from speaking to the media. Prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who spoke briefly to the blogger on Wednesday morning, said Ran was released into “residential surveillance” for a six-month period, under which he is not allowed to leave home or meet people without permission, and he may not speak publicly. Ran was among the first detained amid the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on dissent.