mgi watch: the death of Wei Wenhua, meet the chengguan

David Stanway at the Guardian:

A man who used his mobile phone to film a violent clash between villagers and officials in rural China was beaten to death by public order "enforcers", Chinese state media reported yesterday, bringing more unwanted attention to the country's unruly hinterlands.

The People's Daily reported that 24 residents of Tianmen, a city in central China's Hubei province, have been detained after Wei Wenhua, the general manager of a company owned by the local water resources bureau, was pulled out of his car and savagely beaten.

The BBC is reporting that the head of the local land bureau, who are responsible for the enforcers, known officially as the chengguan, has been sacked and 100 people believed connected to the killing are now in custody. There seems to be quite an intense and relatively high level response to the incident, partly perhaps because Mr Wei was himself part of the local administration and partly because the chengguan - a quasi-official property militia cum paramilitary trading standards officers - are generally unpopular, whether with the public, with other state agencies and with the general run of Chinese cops, who tend to take the brunt of the riots provoked by land use enforcers.

Radio Free Asia unplugged has more:

“A lot of chengguan are demobilised soldiers. That’s one factor. Another factor is that they are all very well-connected. Some of them in military circles and some of them in non-military circles. They don’t get their salaries from the municipal budget. They are self-financing through fines and so on. That is their source of income”

Meanwhile protests continue:

Wei’s death has prompted a mass outpouring of grief and anger in the city, with thousands gathering outside government offices Wednesday, and filing past a shrine to pay their respects Thursday.

“Shrines have set up spontaneously by ordinary people,” a Tianmen taxi driver told RFA’s Mandarin service.

And naturally, the Sinosphere is up in arms. Interestingly, there don’t seem to have been any attempts so far to suppress news and opinion about the incident, which was also widely reported in Chinese official media. Global Voices has a roundup of bloggage. Check out the comparison with the Rodney King beating.

Comments

[Michaelangelo]

I recently heard about this story, and I lived in China this summer. We videotaped our lives for a website and we were stopped multiple times for taping. However, the government officials allowed us to film because we are harmless!

we got all the tapes back and all the video is online at www.nihaoareyou.com

the Chinese people are not brutal like these incidents, they are so kind and genuine. It is the hope of our trip that we can spread the word of the kindness of the Chinese people. It is our goal to help bring the two countries together.