China represses dissent with 20 killed

China handled political dissent with deadly force in Dongzhou in southern China near Hong Kong. The town people were protesting the lack of compensation for land taken for a wind power project.

The Seattle Times reports:

Police started firing into the crowd, killing as many as 10 people, mostly men, and wounding up to 20, villagers reached by telephone said Friday.

On Saturday, Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper raised the death toll to nearly 20, citing villagers. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper today quoted villagers who said authorities were trying to conceal the deaths by offering families money to turn over bodies. "They offered us a sum but said we would have to give up the body," an unidentified relative of one slain villager, Wei Jin, 31, was quoted as saying. "We are not going to agree."

It's not surprising that the government of China cannot handle dissent by its political process, because there are no political processes in China. The government is a Communist dictatorship. The dictator doesn't want to look bad in the eyes of the world. But he knows only one way to rule - by pure power.

Should China be given the world's spotlight with the honor of hosting the Olympics? They can't even rule their own country. There is a solution, but it's messy - elections. If China were a democracy people would elect their leaders and would be able to have some influence over them. It's messy and it takes years to make the conversion. And the powerful have to give up their positions. In Russia they started this process, but the people at the top couldn't wait for the bottom and middle to build the political infrastructure, particularly since the end of Communism brought about huge economic disruptions.