CHINA SAYS MORE THAN 10 MILLION PROTESTED IN 2003
2004-04-19
More than 10 million people took to China's streets during the course of 2003 as part of a mounting wave of popular protests which is sweeping the country, RFA's Mandarin service reports.
Just before the annual meeting of China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), in March, the Chinese Communist Party published the official count of demonstrations in 2003.
According to the statistics, reported in Hong Kong’s Dong Xiang magazine, more than 2.3 million people took part in petitions, marches, and sit-ins in urban areas in 2003, with the number of demonstrations totaling 12,370.
In rural areas, 8,124,260 people participated in 8,763 demonstrations. Provinces with assemblies larger than 1 million participants included Henan, Liaoning, Hubei, and Hunan. Provinces with assemblies larger than half a million participants included Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Hebei, Shandong, Shaanxi, and Heilongjiang, the magazine said.
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