Modern Day Enclosures by "Workers' State"

Via Adam at Mutualist Journal Club. SFGate reports:

Armed police tightened their lockdown of a rebellious Chinese village Friday and went from house to house seeking leaders of violent clashes earlier in the week that villagers said had resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen people....

The use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China, where the authorities have come to rely on the rapid deployment of huge security forces, tear gas, water cannons and other nonlethal measures. But Chinese authorities have become increasingly nervous of late over the proliferation of demonstrations across the countryside, particularly in heavily industrialized eastern provinces such as Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu....

Dongzhou's residents have been engaged in a long-simmering protest against confiscations of their farmland for a wind-powered electricity plant. Compensation for the land was too low, they complained, and the project also seemed likely to ruin fishing in a tidal inlet.

Money quote:

As was the case in Dongzhou, most of the thousands of riots and public disturbances recorded in China this year have involved environmental, property rights and land-use issues. Among other problems the Chinese government has in trying to come to grips with the growing rural unrest, it is wrestling with a yawning gap in incomes between farmers and urban dwellers, as well as rampant corruption in local government, where officials make deals with developers involving communal property rights, often for their own profit.