WHEN THEY COME OUT OF THE CATACOMBS IT'S OVER:

Thousands of Christians Attacked by Chinese Communists (PETER SIMPSON, August 1, 2006, The Daily Telegraph)

Hundreds of Chinese police clashed with thousands of "underground" Christians over the demolition of a church that had been deemed an illegal structure.

Up to 500 police forced back as many as 3,000 Christians who had gathered during the weekend to mount a peaceful demonstration against the state's demolition of the church in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

More than 20 Christians were injured in the clashes Saturday, while five organizers of the protest were arrested, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Its spokesman, Frank Liu, said locals were rebuilding the unregistered church after it was destroyed last year by a typhoon.

As news spread that a demolition crew had been sent in, demonstrators massed at the construction site. Police were called in, leading to clashes.

MORE:
Two Chinese Villages, Two Views of Rural Poverty: Women on Their Own And Men Who Sit Idle (Maureen Fan, 8/01/06,
Washington Post)

Nestled mid-slope in the foothills of China's second-poorest province, Dacitan is a village run almost entirely by women, mothers who work the potato and wheat fields while their husbands are away.

Seventy miles to the east, perched on a remote mountain ridge above a collapsing dirt road, Sale is thick with men who sit idle, hoping for opportunity that never arrives and women who rarely do.

Both are Muslim villages populated by members of the ethnic Hui minority, and both are stark examples of the cost of China's blistering economic growth. While cities are booming, drawing migrant workers from the countryside and demonstrably improving life in some rural towns, other communities are shrinking. In the case of Dacitan, the women are left behind for months at a time as the men search for work; in Sale, the men say that few women want husbands in a poor, isolated village such as their own.

"Life here is so miserable, no one wants to marry the men," said Ma Xiuhua, 42, who grew up in Sale and was home visiting her mother. "For girls, the ideal way is to marry someone in the city or in a better village."

U.S. worries China may lose reform momentum: WTO economic reforms in China may weaken or come to a halt this year, stirring concern in Washington over foreign investment restrictions and technology standards. (JOE McDONALD, 8/01/06, Associated Press)

China's economic reforms could slow or stop once World Trade Organization market-opening pledges are completed this year, leaving the government without explicit goals, a U.S. official warned Monday.

Washington is worried about suggestions by some officials that China restrict foreign investment or impose technology standards on mobile phones and other products that might limit competition, said Franklin L. Lavin, the U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade.

China will lack a ''road map for reform'' once its five-year WTO accession process, with detailed commitments to lower market barriers, is completed in December, Lavin said.

The end of that process and China's high economic growth ''risk creating an atmosphere where not only is the sense of reform fading a little bit, but there is even potential for retrogression,'' he said.

The blind must be led.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2006 9:24 AM