It is the latest explosive example of how political corruption in China can have a dangerously destabilising impact. Thousands of rioters torched police cars and government office buildings in the south-western province of Guizhou after allegations that local officials covered up a teenage girl’s death.

It started with the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. The story that flashed around Weng’an county was that three men were responsible, two of them with great “guangxi”, or local connections. One of them was reportedly the son of the deputy mayor. When the police report said she had killed herself, tensions really began to simmer. When her popular schoolteacher uncle went to the police to seek justice, he was beaten into a coma and subsequently died. The tensions turned into rioting.

Lacking formal means to vent their anger, the people of Weng’an turned the town upside down, and the YouTube website carried shocking pictures of burning police cars and local government offices.

The scenes of mayhem and anarchy are the ones the Communist Party fears most as it is always worried that dissent could spread nationwide. Corruption at local level is something the Chinese government has vowed to wipe out, and last week it introduced a five-year plan to combat it.

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Note:  This is a very old story in China (coverups and brutality) and I’m with the Chinese people on this one.  Mao came up with the famous quote ”power comes out of the barrel of a gun”. 

“Well, not really”.

My own personal thought is that if you are planning on attending the Olympics I would think long and hard about it.  You may end up caught in the middle of a civil war.  China is changing but it is not going to be a peaceful revolution and if I’m right it will start when every camera in the world is focussed on it.  I wouldn’t go there but that’s “just me”.

Update:  Algae Threatens Olympic Sailing

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