SHENZHEN, China (AP) -
Increasingly violent protests throughout China over land, taxes and other disputes are forcing the government to strike a difficult balance, trying to maintain order while letting the public vent frustrations to prevent a larger explosion, analysts say.
In the latest incident, police last week shot and killed villagers protesting land seizures in Dongzhou, a coastal village northeast of Hong Kong. The government says three people were killed, while residents put the death toll at up to 20.
On Tuesday, activists issued a letter calling on the government to allow an independent investigation of the shootings and publish the names of the dead.
"The government now finds itself with a dilemma," said Murray Scot Tanner, a political scientist with the RAND Corp., a Washington think tank. "How to contain these sorts of things without either excessive violence or without sending the signal that people are free to protest is very, very difficult."
Beijing's biggest fear is that "the misuse of violence ... could cause a small protest to turn into a huge riot," he added.
The government has spent time and money over the past decade trying to refine a strategy for dealing with protesters. Police have been trained in crowd control, and Beijing has invested in tear gas, riot gear and other non-lethal tools.
Local authorities have been warned to stay alert to grievances in order to defuse potential crises.
In a Feb. 19 speech, President Hu Jintao told provincial leaders to "identify antagonism of all kinds at an early stage and take effective measures in a timely manner," according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
"We should handle the issues reflected by people legally and reasonably and guide people to express their interests in a reasonable way," Hu said. "We should actively prevent and properly handle incidents on a mass scale."
A directive to police in the 1990s emphasized caution in use of weapons and coercion, according to Tanner.
"That puts the police in a vague situation," he said. "It's the sort of directive which puts tremendous levels of discretion and judgment on local security forces."
The government says there were 74,000 protests in China last year - a number that is significant not only because it is large, but also because it was publicized.
Demonstrations in China can gather size and force with remarkable speed. Officials worry that protests about mundane issues could quickly become anti-government riots.
In June, thousands of people rioted in Anhui province after a traffic dispute, burning cars, smashing windows at a police station and looting a supermarket. In August, protesters who demanded the closure of a battery factory they said was spewing lead pollution clashed with police in Zhejiang province. Dozens of people were injured.
Police sometimes let a protest run its course if the subject is considered politically sensitive enough the government doesn't want to risk inflaming emotions.
"I think what they are trying to do is allow people to make their protest, but they want to have them be controlled and be peaceful, to not interfere with the running of the government and other things," said Dennis Blasko, a retired military officer who served in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and now researches Chinese security issues.
"Many of the protesters are releasing that steam that could otherwise be pent up and blow up in a worse way at a different time," he said.
In Dongzhou, the government says police opened fire after they were attacked by villagers armed with knives, spears and explosives. Villagers said the protest was sparked because they received too little compensation for land taken to build a power plant.
A letter issued Tuesday by activists called on the government to prosecute those responsible for the killings.
"We express our strongest protest and condemnation of the Guangdong (province) authorities who created this murder case!" said the letter, posted on a Web site by a group based in the United States.
Its 14 signers included Ding Zilin, a retired Beijing academic whose son was killed when the Chinese military opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
An editorial issued Tuesday by Xinhua warned Chinese officials to keep the public's interest in mind.
"Officials exercise power on behalf of people. Their deeds must be oriented toward the interests of people," the editorial said. "If they have blind faith in absolute power and push forward unpopular policies with force and threats, they will get themselves in trouble sooner or later."
But such warnings appear to have only limited effect in the countryside.
In June, some 300 men with guns and knives attacked villagers who were protesting the seizure of land for a power station in the northern province of Hebei. Six people were killed and 48 wounded.
"China's economy is changing but the political system is not really changing that much so there's going to be friction that way," Blasko said. "As long as the political system does not allow for the organized expression of dissent or presenting alternate ways of doing things, there's still going to be this problem."
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