Pictures Found Here
Behind my apartment is a pretty empty area that looks like a site for future construction. The community has recently learned that a nine-story apartment complex will be built in that area. While it’s an inconvenience to me to have to deal with the construction noise, it’s a pretty terrible burden for a lot of other people in the surrounding apartment buildings. For one, I live in the tallest building in the area. Mine is a 28-story building, the rest of them are maybe 5 or 6 story buildings. This means a lot of people will have all the sunlight in their apartments taken away. Also, buildings are being torn down to accommodate this new one. When a building is torn down, the people are given compensation to find a new place…but at a fraction of what they really deserve.
While back at home we have a variety of tools to use if there is new construction (environmental lobbies, lawsuits, petitions, historical permits, etc.) in Nanjing – in China overall – the tools either don’t exist or they are ineffective. Corruption is rampant here and those with money tend to get what they want.
The Chinese equivalent of the Neighborhood Housing Group decided to protest this and so the group, including the Elders, sat down in front of the construction site and did not let the trucks pass. This happened yesterday and work was shut down. Today they did it again, but the construction workers met them with clubs. They beat up the Elders and the people until they moved and the truck could pass.
Please note that the construction workers are all young, strong men. While the protesters do have that in their ranks as well, there are also a lot of elderly people and women. One of the women stepped away from the group and began yelling at the workers in the fight. One of the workers ran up to her and pushed her. He then began to punch and kick her. Once she fell, his friends joined in and started to beat her up. It was one woman – who was already down – against several men who were punching and kicking her all over.
All while this was happening; there were no police anywhere. The women of the group all stood in line across the street to block off traffic. When I went down and spoke to some of them, they told me that this was the only way to focus attention on what had happened. The police won’t come or care until traffic is blocked off and journalists and crowds begin to gather. I was impressed that it was women who blocked off traffic rather than the men. I’m not really sure why it stood out to me. But watching them stand up to the trucks and buses and make a stand was inspiring and really struck me as impressive. Finally the police came, but no ambulance yet for the woman who was still unconscious. By the time that I came down from my apartment we were already about an hour and half into the events. And still no sign of an ambulance. Actually, that’s not true. An ambulance did pass by earlier, but it never stopped.
15 minutes later, the ambulance finally showed up and took the woman away. One of the other foreigners who was there was a medical student from the States and was trying to take care of the woman. She told me that the woman had sustained serious head injuries and that the back of her skull was soft, meaning that it was possibly fractured.
I’d like to say that this ends with a happy ending. That the protests drew the proper attention and that the people on top will begin to listen to the masses. But I seriously doubt it. The truth of the matter is that this is a story that has been repeated time and time again for nearly 10 years in China. Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing…it’s happened time and time again. New housing means that there are new fees to make from selling the rights to develop the land, new fees to make from higher class housing, new fees to make from bribes. The list goes on and on.
The people hope that their protests will be heard by those in control. But it’s those very people who benefit from ignoring the people and making deals with the developers. Situations involving development of land are rarely clear-cut black/white issues, and I don’t want to paint the government and the developers as totally evil villains, but it’s hard to ignore that the role of government – especially that of the Chinese Communist Party – is to protect the people.
This was, simply put, an injustice. And what makes it so much worse is that I wonder if this will even make the news here in China. I saw reporters, but I also saw policemen taking notes of them. China wants to put its best face forward at all times. The Party wants to show that it is a great power in the making. It recites financial statistics, GDP forecasts, rates of growth and the such. But it ignores the people and their complaints. The Party embraces the businesses at the cost of those they once claimed to represent. I truly wonder how long this can last. If the only way to garner the attention of the authorities is to block traffic when it comes to the beating of a woman by several men…what happens with more serious issues? How long until parts of this country literally explode in repressed anger?