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To: RealMuLan who wrote (62028)	4/15/2005 1:15:42 PM
From: shades	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hehe - I am all for the poor getting stuff that they can afford - it is my slashdot ethics I guess you could say, I am also very non violent - but our leaders like to blow stuff up, they have proven that, and our army captains like to see people blow up - that was admitted to me personally - and they like to do dumb things that could hurt the whole world - they have proven that too - don't blow that off so lightly, cowboys have a way of oversimplyfying very complex problems - to not understand that is to not understand bush. You and I may think your country deserves autonomy - but don't think Bush believes that if god starts telling him in his sleep to nuke china. He does talk to god on a daily basis you know - the magic man in the sky - and already downing you guys about catholicism - WTF? I am all for poor people trying to save thier environment so they can breathe clean air and drink clean water. nytimes.com Rural Chinese Riot as Police Try to Halt Pollution Protest By JIM YARDLEY BEIJING - Thousands of people rioted Sunday in a village in southeastern China, overturning police cars and driving away officers who had tried to stop elderly villagers from protesting against pollution from nearby factories, witnesses said Wednesday. By Wednesday afternoon, the witnesses say, crowds convened in the village, Huaxi, in Zhejiang Province to gawk at a stunning tableau of destroyed police cars and shattered windows. Police officers were reported to be barring reporters from the scene, but local people reached by telephone said villagers controlled the riot area. 'The villagers will not give up if there is no concrete action to move the factories away,' said a Mr. Lu, a villager who said he had witnessed part of the confrontation. 'The crowd is growing. There are at least 50,000 or 60,000 people.' He would not give his full name. Other villagers gave substantially smaller crowd estimates. But they agreed on the broad outlines of a clash that came after villagers say they had tried in vain for two years to curb pollution from chemical plants in a nearby industrial park. An account in a local state-controlled newspaper blamed local agitators for the brawl and said thousands of people had set upon government workers with rocks and clubs. There were conflicting reports about injuries, and Mr. Lu said two elderly women among the protesters had been gravely injured after being run over by a police vehicle. The article in The Dongyang Daily said more than 30 government employees had been hospitalized, including 5 with serious injuries. Neither account could be confirmed. A reporter for an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, The South China Morning Post, visited the riot scene and described overturned buses and shattered cars, adding that 'a police uniform is draped over one car - a trophy.' The reporter, whose account was published on Wednesday, was detained by the police after leaving the village and released after her notes were confiscated. Several thousand people in Beijing and Guangzhou protested against Japan last weekend as well. By contrast, those protests were officially authorized, as young urbanites shouted slogans and tossed bottles at the Japanese Embassy at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the countries. But the riot described in Huaxi is more a symptom of the widening social unrest in the Chinese countryside that has become a serious concern for top leaders. Last year, tens of thousands of protesters in western Sichuan Province clashed with the police over a dam project. Smaller rural protests are commonplace and often violent. Huaxi is a few hours' drive south of Hangzhou, the provincial capital of coastal Zhejiang. It is a short distance from the Zhuxi Industrial Function Zone, the local industrial park that villagers say is home to 13 chemical factories. 'The air stinks from the factories,' said a villager, Wang Yuehe. She said the local river was filled with pollutants that had contaminated local farmland. 'We can't grow our crops. The factories had promised to do a good environmental job, but they have done almost nothing.' Ms. Wang said villagers had pooled their money for two years and sent representatives to file complaints at government petition offices in Zhejiang Province and in Beijing. 'But there have been no results so far,' she said. On March 24 a group of elderly people, mostly women, set up roadblocks on the road leading to the factories. On April 2 the government temporarily shut down the factories. But by Sunday local officials had dispatched police officers and workers to break up the protest. Villagers said as many as 3,000 officers had arrived in scores of cars and buses. The fight apparently erupted after officers had already taken down the tent city. Villagers said thousands of people had hurried to the scene after the police attacked some of the protesters. The mob then surrounded workers and officers, said witnesses and the newspaper account. Some local officials who had retreated to a nearby school were reported to have been attacked when they tried to leave on foot. 'I saw over 10 bodies on the ground, both officials and villagers,' Mr. Lu said. Several villagers said local officials owned shares in various local factories. But according to the article in the official newspaper, local officials 'paid great attention' to the environmental problems and had paid compensation for past discharges of pollutants into the river. The article also said that officials decided to break up the protests on Sunday because they were worried that 'the coming of cold air and dramatic temperature drops threatened the health of feeble old women.'

To: RealMuLan who wrote (62028)	4/15/2005 1:48:15 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

China has signed up for the WTO. Eventually, the central government will find that excessive piracy threatens China's own IP producers (See damage done to HK film industry as an example) and thus future development. The difficult part will managing the transistion, protecting nascent IP producers in the coastal areas while there is still extensive inland rural poverty. One way is to maintain a dual standard - enforce IP rules for China developed IP, and favored strategic industry joint ventures, especially where there is local added intellectual value. Ignore or give nominal enforcement to other IP rights where there is no significant Chinese ownership. (Getting nominal enforcement should depend on maintain appropriate relations with local authorities.) The bad news for China is apparently enforcement of rights for China developed IP is very weak and inconsistent. So China needs to develop a dual standard, which requires lots of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, there's a worldwide hypocrisy shortage, so this is one more item China will need to import.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (62028)	4/15/2005 2:50:04 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

<What jurisdiction the US congress has over other sovereign nations? None, nada, nil, zero, nothing, zilch, zip. > Maybe you didn't notice US Congress pass laws enabling King George II to deal militarily with Saddam Hussein's sovereign government. The USA Congress makes laws about trading with foreign countries and controls the UN which makes rules for foreign countries. That includes China. The ultimate jurisdiction is military jurisdiction which China is wanting to apply to Taiwan, a sovereign nation. Similarly, the USA will apply military jurisdiction to China if necessary to defend USA interests. Mqurice

To: RealMuLan who wrote (62028)	4/15/2005 2:56:15 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

<Yes, it is so true that China has a such a long history that a decade is indeed a blip to us. Don't like it? no problem, but I guess you will have to put up with it<g>> Chinese don't think in centuries or even decades. They think in terms of what's for lunch and whether they can rip off the tourist walking by for a few bucks for a fake watch or work of art from an English language student. It's a popular myth that Chinese think in centuries. Chinese are very similar to other people. Get up in the morning, curse the cold, eat something, fight the traffic, try to make a buck, curse the pollution, look for a girlfriend, play cyberspace games, hope for a way out of the hutong into one of those swanky new apartments. They don't spend a lot of time thinking in centuries. They hope not to die in another coal mine disaster. Here they are, thinking in centuries: <BEIJING - Thousands of people rioted Sunday in a village in southeastern China, overturning police cars and driving away officers who had tried to stop elderly villagers from protesting against pollution from nearby factories, witnesses said Wednesday. By Wednesday afternoon, the witnesses say, crowds convened in the village, Huaxi, in Zhejiang Province to gawk at a stunning tableau of destroyed police cars and shattered windows. Police officers were reported to be barring reporters from the scene, but local people reached by telephone said villagers controlled the riot area. > Mqurice