The protest which triggered a deadly clash between police and farmers in a village in Guangdong, southern China, last week was initially much like thousands of confrontations across the country in recent years.

The villagers and their families were demonstrating to demand higher compensation for land seized from them to build a series of power plants, the same issue behind many protests.

“There have been countless incidents involving similar conflicts over land seizures,” said Nicolas Becquelin, of Human Rights in China, in Hong Kong.

But confrontation in Dongzhou was different in one important respect – this time, the paramilitary forces used for riot control opened fire on the crowd and killed at least three people, or more if accounts by the villagers themselves are correct.

The authorities have generally tried to avoid direct confrontation with protesters. Instead, they often attempt to divide the protesting camp, singling out protest leaders for harsh punishment, while offering their supporters incentives to back off, sometimes in the form of cash.

This approach has been especially valuable in defusing the thousands of sit-ins by workers who had lost their jobs and their pensions with the closures of state-owned factories in the past decade.

The central government’s anger at the deadly assault on the protesters in Dongzhou is already in evidence, with the detention of an officer in command of the riot police.

For some, the deadly shootings have evoked the memory of the brutal crackdown on protesters in Beijing and other cities in 1989, when hundreds and probably thousands died after the army opened fire.

But while the 1989 protests amounted to a national insurrection which paralysed the country, the upsurge in demonstrations in the last two years has largely been propelled by grassroots issues.

“These fights are political acts directly challenging grass-roots government, aiming at declaring and establishing the ‘lawful rights’ and ‘citizens’ rights’ of the farmers as a community,” wrote Yu Jianrong, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a recent article.

The Chinese economy slumped following the 1989 crackdown, but the last two years - a period on which rural protests have risen rapidly, according to official figures - have seen accelerated growth in economic output.

Nor is it clear that the killings in Dongzhou represent the bloodiest confrontation since the killings in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.

Mr Becquelin cited two deadly clashes in Xinjiang in the 1990s, in which dozens of people were killed, and also demonstrations in Sichuan, the latest which was last year, in which people died.

“If you look at incidents involving the police forces, this is definitely not the worst since 1989,” he said, although he added it was not yet clear how many had died in Dongzhou.

A professor at a leading Beijing university, who asked not to be named, said it was not possible to know with any certainty how many people had died in violent demonstrations in China, as information about such incidents was not always released.

“It is only the top leaders who clearly know how many out of the massive protests last year involved shootings, as all reports of unrest must be approved by them,” he said.

“While a demonstration in Ya’an (in Sichuan Province) last year was joined by over 10,000 people and caused more deaths than in Dongzhou, it did not receive any coverage in local media.”