We see traffic accidents every day, but in Fuan, Fujian province, one such incident on Saturday reportedly sparked a protest/riot involving "thousands" of residents. The Associated Press reports, "Police said it was instigated by 'a handful of lawless people.' One resident said people became angry because police and paramedics took nearly an hour to arrive to help the injured, while a Hong Kong-based human ...

Advisory: highway signs are being covered up in Ningbo because of some reason. That reason does not concern you. The highway signs are covered up in a city somewhere for no reason. There is no reason. The signs in a place are on the highway. No highway, actually. Not a city. @jaytao says the highway is in Ningbo's Beilun District near Guoran Road. But what the fuck does he know? Soon the tarp will arrive, c ...

Another widespread protest against a factory in China has yielded, at least on paper, another victory, following the one in Shifang, Sichuan province in July. Does it matter that no one believes the city government's statement saying it'll halt its construction plans? First the background: In Ningbo, Zhejiang province, thousands of locals have clashed with police this week over plans to build a refinery tha ...

Reuters reports that more than a thousand people gathered in Ningbo, Zhejiang province yesterday to protest plans for a petrochemical plant that is a subsidiary of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation. And according to the BBC, witnesses said authorities used tear gas and have arrested some people. Searches on Youku for "Ningbo" turn up nothing. Sina Weibo hasn't completely censored the incident, but it ...

People rioted in Luzhou, Sichuan province on Wednesday evening after they heard that police had beaten a truck driver to death in broad daylight. Tea Leaf Nation relayed several messages from incensed netizens who never doubted it, notably from a Sina Weibo user, @Aluo阿罗, who declared, "Luzhou police have beaten someone to death, causing tens of thousands of onlookers to gather ’round. …." Global Times, how ...

They're rioting again in Sichuan province. Tea Leaf Nation reports that yesterday evening, an anti-police protest turned violent after three police officers beat a driver to death in broad daylight in front of several witnesses. (Someone at the scene began filming after the driver was killed; the video is embedded here -- no matter who you are, it has to be disconcerting to see yourself surrounded by dozens ...

When is a riot just a fight with a lot of people? When is a fight with a lot of people a riot? In Chinese factories, where thousands of workers live in close proximity, it can be difficult to tell sometimes -- and there is ample risk, from a journalistic standpoint, in using the "R" word when the facts just don't support the narrative. Nonetheless, the news out of a Foxconn plant in Taiyuan, Shanxi province ...

No two protests are ever the same, as the above video will show. In Changsha, people flip cars. In Dali, they sing the national anthem. In Qingdao, they chant. (Actually, they sing and chant everywhere, but you know what I mean.) There are a lot of banners that read "Japanese Devils," a term that originates from Japan's invasion of China last century. Other slogans are less kind. What's striking, however, i ...

We've gone way beyond civil disobedience. Who are the Chinese attacking? Chinese-owned Japanese restaurants, and Japanese people who may call China home, and now journalists. It is, as the proverb goes, shitting on your carpet to spite the neighbor. We've seen this line of indiscriminate violence in this country before -- it was called the Cultural Revolution. It was bloody terrible. I realize that the gove ...

A foreigner nearly incited a riot in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province on Friday evening after he got into a physical confrontation with a Chinese woman on the road. The foreigner, riding a BYD, apparently thought the female had hit his car with her electric bike, so he got out and slapped her twice across the face, according to an eyewitness interviewed in the video (subtitles are mine, along with any e ...

Wow. So protests in China work? At 5:58 pm today, the official Weibo page of the Shifang, Sichuan municipal government posted a message stating that plans for a proposed molybdenum copper plant, which caused protests that began Saturday and escalated yesterday, have been permanently shelved. Perhaps local leaders read the writing on the wall when the term "Shifang" remained unblocked on Sina Weibo and Baidu ...

From where we sit and judging by the videos we've seen, the situation in Shifang, Sichuan yesterday looked a lot like a riot that was trying to happen but never materialized. In the above, people stand around while tear gas goes off around them. In the second video, which appears after the jump (along with the Youku version of the above), the title tells us that it was the appearance of riot police that set ...

The only info I have about this picture is the watermark and the caption, from Weibo user zhouwenneng, which reads, "In how many years will this picture win a big prize?" We'll update you again tomorrow in the a.m. For now, see our earlier post: Riot Police And Protestors Clash In Shifang, Sichuan Province (residents protesting a construction that would potentially damage their immediate environment). ...

In Shifang, Sichuan province, hundreds, possibly thousands of people have taken to the street to protest a molybdenum cooper project (run by HTC?) that people fear will be harmful to their environment and health. Netizens on Weibo are currently discussing the incident as it relates to riot police skirmishing with residents and setting off tear gas in the middle of a huge crowd, which they say was unnecessar ...

I imagine a Chinese cadre seeing this is having heart palpitations at the moment. The picture comes from the site Hong Wrong, which is where you should be paying attention if you're interested in developments in Hong Kong's handover protests. ...

Less than an hour after posting about the upheaval in Zuotan, Foshan, Guangdong province, I realized there was a bigger, concurrent riot in the province, in Zhongshan City. According to NetEase via the website Democracy and Law Network, the fight started Monday around 6 pm when, in front of a primary school, a 13-year-old got beat up by a 15-year-old. Two locals intervened by tying up one of the kids, as if ...

China Digital Times curates a news story from Caijing reporting that yesterday before dawn, thousands of residents clashed with hundreds of riot police in Zuotan, part of the city of Foshan, Guangdong province. According to Caijing: "Zuotan officials secretly arranged for the sale of land in three neighborhoods to developers. The officials thought they could claim every inch of land, never once considering ...

Celestine Elebechi is the Nigerian who died in police custody on Monday, sparking a big protest the next day involving more than 100 Africans. BJC contributor Alicia found this video recently (more are beginning to appear on Youku). I'm particularly surprised by how brazen the protestors are, appearing to throw objects at the approaching police brigade. By all indications, the protest/mini-riot ended after ...

Update, 6/21, 1:02 am: Please see after the jump. 1:15 am: Videos of the protest have surfaced. Here's a good one. The Chinese blogosphere, specifically Weibo, is abuzz after an incident yesterday involving an African expat, believed to be Nigerian, in Guangzhou. Specifically, he died in police custody. According to Tea Leaf Nation: One netizen, @GingerYip reports, “According to a black brother at the scene ...

Proving that hell hath no fury like a soccer fan whose team just earned an unexpected result, Beijing Guo'an fans poured into the street outside Workers Stadium -- a very, very busy street, mind you -- after Saturday's 0-0 draw to Qingdao Zhongneng and acted like riotous hooligans. Although the "near-riot," as Global Times describes it, didn't quite reach Croatian level, there was one victim -- a gray Jagua ...