NO, YOU FOOLS, WE SAID TO RIOT AGAINST THE JAPANESE...:

Chinese farmers riot over crop poisoning: Factories built during the country’s new economic boom have sparked a violent backlash (Clifford Coonan, 4/12/05, Times of London)

THOUSANDS of Chinese farmers overturned buses, smashed cars and attacked policemen during a riot in a village in eastern China against chemical plants that they say are destroying their crops.

Villagers said that 3,000 police officers armed with electric batons and teargas descended on the village of Huaxi before dawn on Sunday to clear roadblocks that villagers had set up to stop deliveries to and from chemical plants built on land where rice and vegetable farms once stood.

The scene yesterday was one of complete devastation and anarchy: 40 buses lay smashed in the grounds of a local school and 14 cars were piled upside down in an alley, some draped with police uniforms. There were unconfirmed reports that two of the elderly protesters died during efforts to disperse them, and more than a hundred people were treated for minor injuries in hospital.

In a country where dissent normally brings swift retribution, the weekend riots were just the latest clashes between local authorities and farmworkers, who feel marginalised by the extraordinary growth of China’s economy and the expansion of its industrial base deeper into rural areas.

Emerging superpower, huh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 11, 2005 11:20 PM