Nation & World | China cracks down again on planned protests across country | Seattle Times Newspaper

Nation & World | China cracks down again on planned protests across country | Seattle Times Newspaper

China cracks down again on planned protests across country

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday held an online forum in which he promised to focus on making the lives of ordinary people in China more comfortable and secure. Just a few hours later, Chinese police unleashed a show of force in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities to clamp down on public gatherings after a second week of overseas Internet-based calls for protests across the country.

By Tom Lasseter

McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday held an online forum in which he promised to focus on making the lives of ordinary people in China more comfortable and secure.

Just a few hours later, Chinese police unleashed a show of force in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities to clamp down on public gatherings after a second week of overseas Internet-based calls for protests across the country.

The combination of Wen's comments about government efforts to raise living standards, accompanied by a display of China's police state tactics aimed at squelching dissent, neatly laid out in one day's time the Chinese Communist Party's approach to avoiding the kind of unrest seen across the Arab world.

While a small band of protesters came together in Shanghai on Sunday, they were quickly dispersed by police. Authorities in Beijing went to extraordinary lengths to make sure that not only did no crowds form, but that journalists stayed away from the nonevent.

There were more police present in uniform and undercover, some with canine units, than are called to handle bomb scares in many countries. Foreigners at the Wangfujing Street shopping area in central Beijing, the announced meeting site, were stopped at every turn and asked for their passports. Police or their surrogates took several Western journalists away for questioning, turned back TV camera crews and reportedly shoved or assaulted at least three photographers.

In addition, water trucks rode up and down Wangfujing, spraying the road and sidewalk to keep people moving. During the week or so after postings began to appear on a U.S.-based Chinese language website, boxun.com, urging protests inspired by the "Jasmine Revolution" that unseated Tunisia's president, Chinese security bureaus rounded up more than 100 activists.

Also

North Korea on Sunday threatened to fire cross-border shots if South Korea continues a leaflet-launching propaganda campaign, which aims in part to inform the hermetic North of anti-government revolts in the Middle East.

The leaflets — stuffed into massive, columnlike balloons — describe the pro-democracy movement that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and has now led to a bloody standoff in Libya.

The Washington Post