The New York Times, which today cited villagers as saying up to 20 had been killed, described the shooting as the largest known use of Chinese government force against ordinary citizens since soldiers opened fire on pro-democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square in 1989. A front-page report in the South China Morning Post said ``dozens'' were dead or injured.
Residents of Dongzhou, on the outskirts of Shanwei city, Guangdong province, were protesting the construction of a coal- fired power plant in their village, saying inadequate compensation was offered for land taken for the project. Shanwei is 135 kilometers (84 miles) east-northeast of Hong Kong, according to the Hong Kong government's Web site.
``The death toll is definitely less than'' 20 people, Liu Jingmao, deputy head of the Shanwei government's propaganda department, told Bloomberg News in a telephone interview. ``We will make an announcement tomorrow.''
Local residents of Dongzhou, home to about 30,000 people, rejected a government offer of 600,000 yuan ($74,290) a year for land taken up by the plant, Radio Free Asia reported Oct. 12, citing a village representative surnamed Huang. The U.S. based radio service, which is funded by the U.S. Congress, said the power project would cost $743 million.
More Protests
The number of mass protests in China increased to more than 74,000 last year from 10,000 in 1994, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang said in September. Many disputes have been sparked by the seizure of peasants' land for urban development by corrupt local officials.
``The use of force against unarmed villagers is intolerable,'' said Suki Chung, a researcher at Labor Action China, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group. ``The land seizure exposed the collusion between local authorities and developers and the sufferings of those living in poverty.''
A clash between police and protesters at Dingzhou village, near Beijing, in July left six farmers dead and 48 injured. The central government intervened, arresting more than 100 people, including local Communist Party Secretary He Fang and the Party Secretary of nearby Kaiyuan township Yang Jinkai.
Industrialization has helped China's $1.7 trillion economy treble in size in the past decade and Guangdong province, which manufactures about a third of the nation's exports, has been at the forefront of this expansion.
The construction of factories, power plants and homes is also swallowing up farmland, and fueling a widening gap in incomes between cities and the countryside, where about 800 million of the nation's 1.3 billion people live. Average urban disposable incomes were 3.2 times those in rural areas last year, a gap that's widened from 1.9 times in 1978, according to Xinhua.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1392581 Chinese Villagers Describe Police Siege Villagers Describe Siege by Thousands of Troops Days After Demonstrators Killed By AUDRA ANG Associated Press Writer -- Michael Pugliese