Sina Weibo (Sun Breaking News)

This unconfirmed group of photos reportedly show villagers from the Zhejiang village of Panhe protesting what they claim are illegal land grabs by local officials.

BEIJING – If you thought that Guangdong province’s peaceful handling of the Wukan uprising last year would become the precedent for managing future mass protests in China, guess again.

Early Tuesday morning, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China notified journalists that three employees of European news agencies had been attacked in two separate incidents this past week while attempting to cover a land dispute story in eastern China.

The three were attempting to cover protests in the village of Panhe in eastern Zhejiang province. The first attack happened on February 15, when a Dutch journalist was accosted by a group of what appeared to be plainclothes police after interviewing villagers in Panhe.

The reporter was beaten and had his notebook and camera memory card confiscated.

The next day, a French reporter was attempting to drive to Panhe with his Chinese assistant when another car collided into theirs. The reporter described the incident as “obviously 100 percent intentional.”

After the journalist's vehicle was rammed, a group of men approached the car, dragged his Chinese assistant out and assaulted him.

When they finished beating the assistant, the men walked to the side of the road and smoked cigarettes until a police car arrived.

No arrests were made, but the local Wenzhou government apologized for the incident, according to the French journalist

Chinese police beat-up journalists

To be sure, press restrictions in China have been relaxed considerably in recent years, but since last year’s anonymous calls for a “Jasmine Revolution,” local municipal and provincial governments appear especially sensitive to negative press and foreign reporting on so-called "mass incidents." 

It’s unclear whether the Panhe attacks represent a government-driven reversal in strategy for dealing with foreign press coverage of mass incidents. It is nevertheless a stark reminder of the dangers of reporting local disturbances despite the optimism inspired by the peaceful resolution of the Wukan rebellion.

Rebellious Chinese village takes baby steps toward democracy

Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

Customers test out Apple iPads in the company's flagship store in Beijing's Sanlitun area on Wednesday. A Chinese tech firm, Proview claims it still owns the iPad trademark In China and will seek a ban on exports of Apple Inc's computer tablets from China, which could deal a blow to the U.S. technology giant's sales worldwide.

BEIJING – “This is the user manual and spec sheets for the IPAD,” said Ma Dongxiao, a patent lawyer in Beijing. In his hands he held a simple black and white pamphlet that laid out the technical aspects of his client’s product.

Absent from the front page was the familiar Apple logo we have come to expect. Rather, he held just a simple description in English for a boxy wireless device shaped like an old TV that was ponderously dubbed a “Professional Color LCD Monitor.”

Simple as the device might appear, it is the linchpin in a new phase of Shenzhen-based tech company Proview’s latest attack on Apple: A restraining order filed this month in a Shanghai court demanding Apple cease using the iPad name in China.

Just days after the euphoria of a $500 stock valuation, Apple has been dealt a series of significant legal blows in China that casts doubt on the legality of the tech giant’s control of the iPad trademark here on the mainland.

And the worst might be yet to come.

The legal issue at hand for Apple is simple enough: Does the Cupertino-based company own the “iPad” trademark in China? Or does it belong to Proview (Shenzhen), a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Proview International Holdings Ltd. – at one time one of the largest manufacturers of computer displays in the world.

NBC/ITN

The cover of Shenzhen-based tech company Proview's owner's manual for their IPAD device, called a "Professional Color LCD Monitor."

Murky trademark deal
Proview began trademarking the term, “IPAD,” in China and other countries back in 2000. The company coined the name for a handheld device it claims was the actual start of what later would be dubbed “tablet computing.”

The project never came to fruition, though, and the name sat unused until 2009 – a year before the debut of the iPad we know today. That’s when Apple allegedly swooped in and paid a Proview subsidiary in Taiwan $55,000 for the trademark rights in ten countries, including they claim, China.

Not so, says Proview in Shenzhen, which argued that it – not the subsidiary in Taiwan – had registered the iPad name in China and thus controlled its trademark on the mainland.

In 2010, Proview took Apple to court in Shenzhen and won a decision last December that ruled Apple had incorrectly purchased the China trademark from the Taiwan-based subsidiary, resulting in a legally non-binding agreement. 

An appeal filed last month by Apple in a Guangdong provincial court was similarly rejected, paving the way for Proview to file a slew of trademark violation complaints across China with local Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureaus. In 20 cities across four provinces, these departments began enforcing the decision, confiscating iPads from sellers and exposing Apple to fines up to five times the profit from iPad sales.

Online retailers are also taking note of the complaints, with Amazon China and Suning.com, a Chinese e-commerce site, also pulling iPads off their websites.

Undeterred, Apple has appealed the ruling to a higher Guangdong court. Carolyn Wu, a spokesman for Apple in China, told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, “We bought Proview’s world-wide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago… Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China.”

More suits to come
Talking about the upcoming Shanghai suit for which Ma says arguments will begin next week, Chinese legal experts are already arguing that Apple faces long odds of winning. As one lawyer put it, Apple’s negotiating with Proview’s Taiwanese subsidiary is “like negotiating with a son and expecting the father to go along with what was agreed upon.”

NBC/ITN

The user manual for Proview's  IPAD shows off its boxy wireless device shaped like an old TV. Proview claims it has the rights to the trademark "IPAD" in China , locking it in a legal battle with U.S.-based tech giant Apple.

With Proview’s ownership of the iPad trademark already established in the Shenzhen courts, it seems doubtful that the Shanghai court will side in favor of Apple and effectively overturn the appeals court in Guangdong.

Late last year, China became Apple’s second largest market after the United States. A decision against Apple that results in the ceasing of mainland iPad sales would be catastrophic for the company, which reportedly sold 15.43 million iPads in the last quarter of 2011 alone.

Even more troubling is another complaint Proview plans to file by the end of this month to China’s customs authorities that would ban the export and import of the new iPad 3. Almost all of the 30 million iPads sold last year are assembled outside the U.S., mostly in China. A successful injunction against Apple on exports of its iPad 3 would effectively make its rumored early March rollout date a pipe dream, putting a significant dent in the company’s profits.

Payday ahead for Proview?
All of these lawsuits, injunctions and complaints beg the question, what is Proview’s end game?

After all, Proview can seemingly look ahead confidently to the upcoming customs complaint and Shanghai lawsuit knowing that the Chinese courts have ruled in their favor in regards to ownership of the iPad trademark. Barring some new, compelling evidence from Apple, it will be extremely difficult for Apple to overturn two decisions in favor of Proview.

Bobby Yip / Reuters

A man walks on a bridge in front of the derelict office of Proview Technology in China's southern city of Shenzhen on Wednesday.

So what does Proview want?

The lawyer, Ma, played coy in answering that question and simply said he hoped that the two parties would be able to settle their disputes out of court. Indeed, a settlement between Apple and Proview is increasingly looking like an expensive proposition for the American tech company and a financial windfall for the cash-strapped Proview.

However, rumors of Proview seeking a $1.6 billion dollar payout may seem almost reasonable to Apple if Proview’s multiple suits successfully pass through Chinese courts and an embargo on shipments of iPad 3s is enacted. Although, it’s important to remember that Apple reportedly has $97.6 billion in cash reserves, so a $1.6 billion payout wouldn’t exactly break their bank.

Despite the long legal odds against Apple, and Proview seemingly sitting in the driver’s seat, the chances of such a doomsday scenario occurring seem distant as both sides appear even more poised for a settlement.

After all, while China’s expansive, albeit limitedly enforced, intellectual property laws currently favor Proview, it seems doubtful that a Chinese ruling blocking the shipment of iPad to countries where Apple legally owns the trademark would hold up in a complaint among the bodies that regulate international trade.

Furthermore, during these trying economic times globally, it would simply be foolhardy for China’s Customs Bureau – and by extension, the ruling Communist Party – to invite the swift international condemnation that would inevitably follow any blocking of Apple exports.

Ultimately, as Stan Abrams of the China Hearsay blog put it, Proview’s best strategy would seemingly be to wreak enough legal havoc for Apple so that the disruption of exports, while not an inevitability, would be a big enough threat to bring them to the settlement table.

Whatever decisions are made in the next few weeks, Apple will surely pay dearly for its first significant blunder since its entry into the China market.

BEIJING – As the Chinese diaspora rings in the New Year around the world this week, many are asking what 2012 and the Year of the Dragon has in store for China, its people, its economy and its relationship with the rest of the world.

For the answer to these questions and countless others that define our everyday lives, mainlanders often turn to their local feng shui expert for answers.

Slideshow: Chinese New Year celebrations around the world

Feng Li / Getty Images

Millions around the world celebrate the Lunar New Year, which begins Monday and welcomes the Year of the Dragon.

Launch slideshow

Feng shui, the Chinese art of balancing yin and yang to create harmonious surroundings, has experienced something of a revival here since being squelched during the Cultural Revolution. While it has become something of a novelty for most, there are still many Chinese who take predictions from feng shui experts seriously, elevating the art of feng shui into a highly lucrative profession for experts who provide their expertise to superstitious clients.

Just how profitable? Some top consultants are said to make tens of thousands of dollars per consultation.

But for those of you who do not have thousands in spare cash to hire a top feng shui expert, we here at Behind the Wall consulted Beijing-based feng shui master, Chen Shuaifu, to get his thoughts and predictions for 2012.

Good year for Dragons, Rats, Monkey and Roosters
Chen, 59, has been in the industry for years and is currently chairman of the Chinese Feng Shui Association, a trade group that has between 50,000-60,000 members.

Chen predicts that this will be a prosperous year for those born in the year of the Dragon (those born in 1940, ’64, ’88,’ ’12), Rat (’36, 60,’84,’08), Monkey (’32, ’56, ’80, ’04) and Rooster (’33, ’57, ’81, ’05). Of these zodiac animals, those born in the year of the Rat are poised to have particularly good luck in 2012.

As snakes grow up, they get longer and eventually turn into dragons, so Chen also believes that those born in the year of the Snake (’29, ’53, ’77, ’01) also stand to benefit from this being a Dragon year.

That prediction probably bodes well for politician Xi Jinping, who was born in 1953 and is widely expected to be elevated to the top Communist Party post in 2012.

Conversely, those born in the year of the Dog (’34, ’58, ’82, ’06) seem poised for a bad 2012 and Chen strongly urged Dogs to postpone major life decisions like weddings until next year when their luck should improve. Whatever choices Dogs of the world make in 2012, Chen especially urges them to think twice about marrying a Dragon this year.

For everyone else, 2012 is an auspicious year to get married.

Watch out for real estate deals
Besides a zodiac animal, every year also has an element assigned to it as well. This year’s element, water, paired with the Dragon is said to be an auspicious combination that should allow prosperity to flow freely.

To that end, Chen believes that as that positive energy flows through the start of 2012, there should be a rebound in China’s export trade. Though he echoed the concern of senior Chinese leadership – most noticeably Premier Wen Jiabao – that inflation and price instability could creep back, Chen predicted it would not be the issue it was in 2011.

Chen’s confidence, though, ends with Chinese real estate. On this issue, it would seem that the zodiac’s message echoes many financial institutions in predicting that this will be a tough year for the already deflating mainland housing market. Chen urges people to avoid real estate decisions at all costs and instead invest in commodities like gold, building materials and agriculture food products.

In regards to the Sino-U.S. relationship, Chen sees good momentum that should lead to increased mutual cooperation and development.

Feng shui experts also dabble in physiognomy, the study of man’s outer features to determine their personality or character and Chen is no exception. In evaluating President Barack Obama’s first term, Chen pounces on his trim figure, particularly his thin jawline. Chen believes that Obama’s weak-looking chin fuels the perception that he is weak and thus prone to challenges by his opponents.

However, despite Chen’s poor assessment of Obama’s facial features, it’s not all bad for the president. The feng shui master’s final prediction for the year of the Dragon: Obama in 2012.

On behalf of all us at Behind the Wall, a very happy Chinese New Year and best wishes for a prosperous Year of the Dragon.

NBC News’ Bo Gu and Eric Baculinao contributed to this report.

Netease

Volunteers in Chongqing work to rescue over 1,100 dogs that were destined for slaughter.

BEIJING – Call it a Chinese New Year miracle. Earlier this week more than 1,100 dogs destined for the slaughterhouse in Chongqing were saved from an ignoble ending by a pet-loving Good Samaritan.

The China Daily reported that 1,137 dogs were rescued on Monday from the back of a flatbed truck by a 40-year old blogger and volunteer at the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association (CSAPA) surnamed Peng. Peng found the dogs crammed into tight cages that were stacked high atop each other. 

The dogs, who had been condemned to slaughter for food, were instead rescued and taken by CSAPA volunteers to an abandoned pig farm where they were given food, water and medical treatment.

In such cramped quarters, the dogs were reported to have been in poor health and some were found already dead inside their cages. By Thursday 16 dogs had died from injury or distemper while another 30 dogs had been sent to a veterinarian hospital in Chongqing for treatment.

Netease

The rescued dogs soon became a sensation in this central Chinese metropolis and hundreds of volunteers and donations began flooding in. One man donated nearly 1,000 square feet of warehouse space to house the dogs for free while there is now enough food to feed the dogs for the next 20-30 days.

But the biggest immediate concern right now is finding enough professional volunteers to help take care of the dogs during the busy Chinese New Year holiday when most people empty out of the big cities and head back to their hometowns.

Long term, many people are wondering how they will find homes for so many dogs. The CSAPA predicts about 20 percent of the dogs will eventually be adopted, but the majority of them will likely never be claimed. The association is now considering whether to solicit donations to build dog houses for the remaining animals.

China has seen a rash of similar animal rescues in recent years. In April of last year, animal lovers banded together and raised $17,960 to pay a truck owner who was holding 580 dogs in cages.

China currently has no animal cruelty laws – a notion made problematic by the still large agrarian population – but as of October of last year, regulations issued by the Ministry of Agriculture require dogs and cats to be quarantined before being shipped around China.

More photos from the rescue can be seen here.

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Yao Ming attends a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference meeting on January 13th, 2012.

BEIJING – That’s Comrade Yao to you.

Nearly six months after Yao Ming formally retired from basketball, the 7-foot-6, eight-time NBA All-Star has been anything but idle. In that time, Yao has started college, spearheaded a campaign to end shark-finning, and even started his own vineyard.  

But last week he added a new title: Standing committee member of Shanghai’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

At 31, Yao is the youngest member of the 142 member committee charged with advising the Communist Party on issues that affect the public interest.

Zhang Chi, a spokesman for Yao Ming told the China Daily that despite taking the position, Yao had no political aspirations beyond pushing policies related to sports and charity, saying, “Yao wants to use his influence to do good deeds for society, but not to seek a political position.”

Netease

Judging by what he saw on the first few days on the job, who can blame him?

On Sunday, Yao took his seat on the committee to much fanfare. Unfortunately for the other members there, the assembled media stuck around long enough to catch – and publish – what many of these consultative meetings often look like: a snooze-fest.

With arms-folded and intent gaze, Yao is seen in one picture listening attentively while his fellow committee members doze off.

The picture was picked up on by China’s microblogging sphere and soon went viral. Some netizens pointedly suggested that the photos may have come during a break in the committee hearings, but most people responded with amusement to the scene they’ve come to expect from such events.

“Poor Yao, he probably regrets being that tall and not being able to sleep!” wrote one commentator on China’s twitter-like service, Weibo.

“Yao Ming is still new to meetings like this,” wrote another before continuing, “He’ll be just like the rest of them soon enough.”

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Chinese dissident writer Yu Jie speaks to the media during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.on Wednesday.

BEIJING – Last week Chinese dissident author Yu Jie fled to the United States to avoid what he described as further “inhumane treatment” by the government.

Now Yu, 38, is speaking out about his experience in detention during a sensitive time in China’s recent human rights history: the 2010 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to his friend and fellow dissident, Liu Xiaobo.

Yu is a best-selling author who began producing literary works at age 13 and eventually rose to become vice president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center from 2005-2007. A devout Christian, Yu visited President George W. Bush in 2006 and was acknowledged for his work on behalf of underground Christian and Roman Catholic house church practitioners in China who worship in private out of fear or imprisonment by the authorities.

Besides religious freedom, Yu has also often publicly criticized the Communist party on other issues and was one of 10 prominent Chinese social activists whom we profiled in 2010 ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize.

During his years of activism, Yu was frequently detained for his writing – most notably, his 2010 book “China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao,” which was published in Hong Kong and took a negative view of the mainland’s prime minister. The book quickly drew the ire of officials and led to his temporary home detention in Beijing.

In October 2010, Yu was placed under house arrest again five days after Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize win was announced. This time, his computer, phone and other communication devices were confiscated.

At a press conference Wednesday in Washington, Yu described the tight security around his house at the time as being “like a dragnet.” He explained: “Four plainclothes policemen watched the entrance to my home 24 hours a day, even pressing a table against the main door and installing six cameras and infrared detectors at the front and back of my house.”

In the weeks and days leading up to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, state security officers worked to quietly roundup social activists and dissidents who could potentially embarrass China. Yu was detained on Dec. 9, 2010, one day before the official Nobel ceremony in Oslo.   

The final moments after Yu was hauled from his home to a waiting police car were brutal, he says.  “Over a dozen plainclothes officers and several cars were waiting there,” Yu recalled at the press conference in D.C. “Immediately, two burly men charged at me, slapping the glasses from my face and covering my head with a black hood, and then forcing me into the back of a car.”

Yu was driven to an undisclosed location, where he says he was stripped naked and made to kneel while officers took turns delivering blows to his head and body and stomping him when he was on the ground.

“They forced me to kneel and slapped me over a hundred times in the face,” said Yu. “They even forced me to slap myself. They would be satisfied only when they heard the slapping sound, and laughed madly.”

All the while, police hurled verbal abuse at Yu and continually called him a traitor for writing articles attacking the Communist Party. Yu also recalled police officers taking photos of him naked and periodically threatening to post them on the Internet to humiliate him.

When Yu finally collapsed unconscious, police took him to a hospital and were said to have told hospital staff that he was epileptic. He was eventually released after he promised state security that he would not talk to foreign journalists about his detention.

Government officials have not publicly commented on Yu’s account of events.

An ‘exile at heart’
Yu and his wife and young son were allowed to leave China last week, bringing to an end his near decade-long ban from publishing.

In a telephone interview with Reuters after his arrival last Friday, Yu did not say whether he formally sought asylum in the United States for himself or his family. He had visited the U.S. many times before and said authorities had warned him to keep quiet ahead of this latest trip.  

For their part, the U.S. State Department denied having an active role in bringing Yu here. In answer to a question about Yu’s arrival in country during a regular press briefing last week, the State Department responded: “We are aware of reports of Mr. Yu’s arrival to the United States. We have not had any contact with Chinese officials about his reported arrival.”

Still, if Yu had been warned by the Chinese about being outspoken on his arrival here, he seems to have ignored them. During his prepared remarks in Washington. Yu looked back on what he sees as a deteriorating environment of free speech in China: 

“During the Jiang Zemin era [1989-2002], I had been able to publish some of my works in China – there was still a certain space for free speech in China. After Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took power in 2004, I was totally blocked. Since that time, no media in mainland China would print a single word by me, and articles by others which mentioned my name would be deleted. Though I was physically in China, I became an “exile at heart” and a “non-existent person” in the public space.”

The Chinese government’s refusal to publish anything about Yu Jie in state publications has manifested itself in the seeming indifference to his release by the general public. On Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, there were posts about Yu, underscoring again the effectiveness of China’s propaganda and censoring mechanisms.

Censoring discussion of Yu Jie’s next work though may prove to be more problematic: Yu is soon planning to release a biography about Liu Xiaobo that has been authorized by Liu’s wife.

AP

Retired NBA basketball star Yao Ming holds a panda during a ceremony for the release of six pandas in the Panda Valley natural reserve in Dujiangyan, in southwestern China's Sichuan province on Wednesday.

BEIJING – Retired NBA star, Yao Ming, carved out an eight-year career protecting the hoop in the NBA. His next defensive assignment though may be a considerably taller task for the 7’6” all-star, if not a lot cuter and fuzzier than his former basketball opponents.

Yao was in the central Chinese province of Sichuan on Wednesday, where he presided over the opening of a new phase in the giant panda-breeding program that some experts hope will help pandas born in captivity eventually assimilate back into the wild through a regimen of acclimation and survival training. 

“I think it is most important to keep a balance between modern living and nature,” said Yao to reporters in Sichuan. “We have been talking about it for many years but it is never an easy thing to do.”

China Photos / Getty Images Contributor

Giant Panda "Yingying," eats bamboo at the enclosed Panda Valley natural reserve after being released into the semi-wild in Dujiangyan, Sichuan Province, China on Wednesday.

Chinese experts constructed a $4.75 million habitat called “Panda Valley” in the area around the town of Dujiangyan – a place heavily hit by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The 50-acre park will serve as a large, open-area school where researchers will be able to slowly teach the pandas the art of survival in the harsh, elevated mountain wilderness that pandas thrive in.

Over time, organizers plan to expand the panda habitat to eventually allow for up to 30 pandas to live there. It is hoped that eventually 100 pandas from this facility will be released back into the wild over the next 50 years.

Panda researchers in China screened the 108 pandas in captivity at the Wolong Panda Reserve in Sichuan over the period of a year and whittled the list down to six final candidates. The roster included such panda celebrities as twin brothers, Xingrong and Xingya, and one panda named Gongzai, who was the inspiration for “Po” the rotund, fighting panda featured in the “Kung Fu Panda” movies.

These pandas were selected for this pilot project based on criteria that encompassed age, health and genetic background. 

It is hoped that the pandas selected will demonstrate the best combination of strength to defend themselves from wild pandas, while being young enough to allow them the opportunity to grow up and adapt to their wild surroundings.

The ultimate goal is for these pandas to grow up, assimilate into the wild and give birth to new pandas ready to survive in the wild.

China Daily / Reuters

Former NBA player Yao Ming and his wife Ye Li play with giant panda cubs at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Wednesday.

The preserve’s opening comes as China is in the midst of a nationwide panda census that is conducted every ten years. There are an estimated 1,600 pandas living in the wild and an additional 300 living in captivity.

Despite China being at the forefront of panda research and the masters of a highly successful breeding program, some experts feel that the park is simply too expensive and that previous attempts to create similar preserves for other species have come with mixed results.

A similar attempt to reintroduce pandas back into the wild in China ended in failure in 2007 when Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old male panda trained for three years by researchers was found dead after he was killed by wild pandas.

Related link: Six pandas amble toward freedom in China preserve
 

Afp Photo / AFP - Getty Images

Residents of Wukan, a fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong march to demand the government take action over illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader on Thursday. Click on the photo to see more images from the village.

BEIJING – As the Chinese village of Wukan entered its fifth day besieged by a police cordon cutting off food and water from entering the village, reports from inside the cordon suggest villagers have continued to resist government overtures to end their protest.

What’s going on outside the cordon, though, is a very different story.

Even as Chinese and foreign press have begun sneaking around the security cordon into town – likely assuring at least temporarily that no draconian, military-style raid on the villagers occurs – Chinese state media have started to create an alternative and unverifiable storyline about what triggered the hostilities.

‘Official’ version of events
The China Media Project at Hong Kong University noted Thursday that late last night, the state-run China News Service reported on a press conference that allegedly confirmed that “preliminary investigations have ruled out external force as the cause of death” in the case of Xue Jinbo.

Xue, a village representative who was detained along with several other local leaders by police last Friday during a raid on Wukan, died in custody – alleged of a heart attack.

But his family was permitted to see the body and reported seeing fractures and bruising all over his body. And they were not permitted to take his remains home for burial.

However, the China News Service report said the town’s medical expert had shared photographic evidence of Xue’s body which refuted the family’s accusations that police beatings caused his death. The reporter was allegedly not permitted copies of the photos for publication.

Xue’s death and its suspicious circumstances sparked the mass protests in Wukan that eventually drove village officials and police out of the area earlier this week.

Another report from the China News Service said various Wukan village officials had been detained for discipline violations.

Afp Photo / AFP - Getty Images

Residents prepare for the funeral of Xue Jinbo, a local leader who died in police custody, in the fishing village of Wukan in the southern province of Guangdong on Thursday.

That no other local Chinese media – and certainly no foreign press – had reported on the press conference suggests that local government officials are engaging in what the China Media Project dubbed, “public opinion channeling” tactics.

In layman’s terms: they are dictating the narrative by creating only one plausible sequence of events.

The two separate reports are intended to get the following results:
1) Absolve local police of brutality and murder accusations – eliminating at least one of the reasons for unrest in Wukan.
2) “Detaining” – as opposed to arresting – Wukan’s senior officials demonstrate that the government is being pro-active against corruption, without officially conceding guilt. And it obfuscates the other central reason behind the villagers’ anger – illegal land seizures.

PHOTO BLOG: Chinese villagers defy government in standoff over land rights

Scapegoat a few
Another piece of the local government’s strategy to quell the unrest has emerged: scapegoat a few to spare the majority.

The Shanwei County government Thursday named two village leaders it claims are ringleaders behind the revolt and vowed harsh punishments for them and other protest leaders.

Wu Zili, the acting mayor of Shanwei County, accused two village leaders, Lin Zulian and Yang Semao, of actively spreading rumors and encouraging villagers to build barricades around the city. The mayor gravely warned that “the authorities will firmly crack down on anyone who organizes and incites the villagers,” according to Telegraph reporter Malcolm Moore.    
 
For longtime China watchers, the combination of the earlier local media reports, news that the government is attempting to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff and Mayor Wu’s threat toward the supposed ringleaders are clear signals that the government is eager to bring an end to the conflict by providing an exit plan for the majority of Wukan’s citizens.

However, taking that path will come with a price: selling out the people the government has branded as ringleaders of the rebellion.

For at least one person, this is unacceptable. “Everything they said at the press conference [about Lin and Yang] is a lie!” said one villager NBC News reached by phone Thursday afternoon. “We simply elected those two to be our representatives.”

Villagers’ side of the story: Beijing will come to the rescue
Villagers in Wukan Thursday were actively working the phones, talking to the media who called in or slipped into town. However, as the world’s attention has started to focus on the events in Guangdong, they appeared anxious to push their own storyline, which is full of condemnation for corrupt local officials and deep-rooted respect for the central government, which they seem confident will come to their rescue.

“We don’t want any foreign press here! We expect the central government to come here and rescue us,” said another villager by phone, “We have great leaders in [President] Hu Jintao and [Prime Minister] Wen Jiabao!”

However, that sentiment is not shared by all. As one Wukan native told NBC, “If the press was not here, the police would come into the village and harass us.”

National implications
Whatever tact the local government takes in Wukan, the results could have serious implications for one man in particular: Wang Yang, the Communist Party chief of Guangdong Province.

With China poised to complete a rare leadership change next year, Wang had in recent years been positioning himself to compete for a promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, which serves effectively as the nation’s top political body.

Having championed a “Happy Guangdong” campaign that he claimed would focus on improving the living standards in the province, Wang has instead found himself dealing with labor protests that have coincided with the economic slowdown in China. Public anger over rising inflation and fewer jobs has led to factory strikes and violence throughout Guangdong, which has been dubbed “The Workshop of the World.”

Now with open rebellion in what was once proudly referred to as a “model village,” Wang finds himself struggling to peacefully and definitively end the uprising – before it kills his chances of being elevated to the standing committee.

Until that elusive win-win resolution appears, expect the siege of Wukan to continue.

NBC News Producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

Related link: Rebellious Chinese village under siege by police

AFP - Getty Images

An undated cellphone picture shows thousands of residents of Wukan village in China's Guangdong province carrying a banner saying "Wukan's people were treated unjustly" during a protest of alleged illegal land seizures.

BEIJING– For years, in the name of social harmony, China’s ruling Communist Party has been highly successful in masking, placating or simply distorting the tens of thousands of protests – dubbed “mass demonstrations” – that occur here ever year.

The Wukan rebellion will prove a tougher dilemma for Beijing to solve.

From The Telegraph newspaper’s Malcolm Moore comes details of the stunning story of Wukan, a fishing village of 20,000 in China’s southern Guangdong Province.  Earlier this week, the entire town rose up and threw out local party officials and police forces following years of having the people’s land sold out from underneath them.

The villagers’ frustration mixed with anger over news that one of the protest organizers, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody, allegedly from a heart attack.  Since the start of the revolt in September, Wukan residents have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by the police to re-enter the town by creating roadblocks out of fallen trees or just using themselves.

They are now in a tense standoff with security forces, which earlier formed a cordon around Wukan--although a villager inside the perimeter told NBC News earlier today by phone that the cordon has been removed, leaving one checkpoint blocking the central access into the town.

Scores of state security officers are said to be still positioned around the edge of Wukan, which has begun seven days of mourning for the fallen protest leader.

Moore also reports that the town has enough food to last ten more days and that the security cordon is in fact still in effect (Click here to read more on how Malcolm Moore slipped through the security cordon).

That we know anything about this explosive story – which has been months in the making but appears to be coming to a head this week – is largely due to Moore, who earlier successfully slipped through the security cordon and since has been filing articles and Tweets on events occurring within Wukan.  (Follow him on twitter: @MalcolmMoore)

The reports have given everyone a rare inside look at the mindset and mechanics of a popular uprising in China--a rarity for foreign journalists who often face tight, sometimes arbitrary restrictions, and harassment by local government forces when trying to report on issues deemed sensitive.

Slipping through China’s security
To say that foreign journalists in China know a thing or two about security cordons is an understatement.

Over the years, the security apparatus has become exceptionally good at quickly sealing off and containing problem areas while at the same time wallpapering over dissent with state media coverage.

In 2008, during the spring Tibetan uprisings, NBC attempted multiple times to enter the Tibetan areas of Sichuan Province for coverage but was turned back by security forces that had formed roadblocks around the region to prevent independent reporters and observers from entering.

Similar restrictions have continued this year.  Journalists have attempted to enter those areas again following a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans that has called renewed attention to the plight of China’s Tibetan minority.

Most recently, local government officials in the Shandong town of Linyi have effectively bottled up local dissent by keeping blind lawyer and social activist, Chen Guangcheng, under perpetual house arrest.

Supporters of Chen – who in 2006 famously filed a lawsuit on behalf of his fellow residents against the local government over its practice of forced abortions and sterilizations – and foreign journalists have attempted many times this year to visit the activist and his family.  But they’ve been met at the town’s edge by plain-clothed security agents who forcibly restrict visitors from entering by throwing rocks and swinging sticks.

It was only in the last week – under intense public pressure – that the provincial government of Shandong intervened, permitting ulcer medicine to be brought to Chen.

Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images

Armed police in riot gear stand at a roadblock en route to Wukan on Wednesday. Residents of the village, which was surrounded by police after protests over the death in custody of a community, leader vowed to continue their fight for land rights.

Will other Chinese dominos fall?
The dramatic chain of events in Wukan begs the obvious question, could this be the proverbial “first domino” that falls in a wave of similar copycat protests nationwide?  As Moore stresses in his coverage of the rebellion, the people of Wukan are counting on the central government to come to the rescue and depose the corrupt local officials whom they believe responsible for their current plight.

That hope has manifested itself in the numerous rumors, as Moore reports, swirling around the village.  The most recent is that China’s state news channel, CCTV, is coming later this week to cover the standoff.  Some of the villagers have concluded amongst themselves that national coverage of their plight will lead to swift action by China’s ruling party against the corrupt Wukan government.

How the central government manages Wukan’s revolt against party authority is a source of intense speculation.  Its action will generate strong responses both nationally and abroad and will reveal to China watchers which audience the party wishes to anger less.

On one hand, Beijing could do as Wukan’s villagers wish and come down hard on the local officials, reaffirming the Communist Party’s often-repeated mantra of “serving the people.”  This path, however, could have the unintended consequence of convincing local governments throughout the mainland that Beijing is willing to sell out its own in order to preserve social harmony, potentially forming a rift between local and central government apparatuses.

On the other hand, Beijing could determine that preservation of Party rule is the single most important priority and elect to crush the rebellion through force or the threat of it.  Such a tack would instantly draw international condemnation, but as China has shown in the past international opinion plays a very distant second to its interest in preserving national stability.

A dark horse in changing that thinking is the ever-evolving Chinese blogosphere, which increasingly has filled the role as national zeitgeist.  Ironically, even as state censors work overtime to scrub the web of news and discussion of socially delicate issues like Wukan, decision-makers here increasingly must account for public reaction on these matters and factor potential online anger in the complex calculus that is governing.

Where China will fall on this matter remains to be seen, but the next few days will tell us a lot about how Beijing plans to handle mass disturbances in the near future.

NBC News producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

Eric Baculinao/ NBC News

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei answers questions during a Live Chat with msnbc.com readers on Nov. 22.

BEIJING – Many readers wrote in after our chat with artist/activist Ai Weiwei with more questions about the structure of the event and how it worked. I’ll do my best to answer those questions and to give a little more background about what went on inside Ai’s house.

Q. How was Ai Weiwei allowed to do this chat if he’s under house arrest?
A: Ai Weiwei is not under house arrest; he is allowed to travel freely in Beijing, but is unable to leave the city without permission from the government. He is also free to bring guests and co-workers to his Beijing studio, which was the site of the live chat and has been a hive of activity the last few times we’ve come to visit him there.

As for why he was able to do this chat, Ai perhaps said it best during the live chat: “I’m not talking to press, I’m talking to people.” 

Q: What were the Chinese saying about the chat?
A: None of the Chinese state media organizations appeared to report on the live chat. Ai’s name has been blocked on China’s twitter-like service, Weibo, so there was no obvious discussion of the live chat on there either.

Q. Why didn’t my question for Ai show up on the chat screen? Did he read my question?
A: Thousands of people from all over the world left questions for Ai to answer – he managed to get through 16 in a little over an hour. Had we put all the comments up inside the main chat box it would have been difficult for many of our readers to find Ai’s answers among all the questions, comments and criticisms – yes, there was a great deal of the latter in both English and Chinese – left by readers.

While I served as moderator of the event, controlling what showed up on the chat screen and what didn’t, Ai ultimately selected the questions he wished to answer. There were several reasons for this, but it was primarily for us a question of safety for Ai.

While he is free to talk to the public, the reality is that he is still faces serious legal charges for tax evasion and his colleagues are under investigation for pornography. Certain questions that pried deeper into those matters could potentially have brought him further legal trouble from China’s court system.

Similarly, questions that touched on big sensitive subjects like Tiananmen Square, Tibet and Taiwan – the “Three T’s” as they are known among the journalist community here – were likely avoided by Ai as they have already been discussed so much previously and would only have inflamed what is an already tenuous relationship with the Communist government.

Ai initially was happy to listen to the questions read to him as they came in, but as readers began to flood the chat with questions and comments, he increasingly began to spend much of the time standing beside me reading the live feed and sometimes answering questions under his breath as my colleague gamely tried to keep up with him on the keyboard.

In fact, his answer, “I’m not talking to press, I’m talking to people,” came as we were preparing another one of his answers, so we had to track back through the trove of questions to find the one he had answered off the cuff.   

Andy Wong / AP

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei opens his jacket to reveal a shirt bearing his portrait as he walks into the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau on Nov. 16, 2011. Click on the photo to see a complete slideshow of photos.

Q. Did Ai Weiwei really call the Occupy Wall Street movement “primitive” and “hopeless?”

A: This answer was slightly taken out of context by some commentators both in the chat and later in media reports on the event. His answer to a question about his impressions of the Occupy Wall Street movement is below:

9:27  Ai Weiwei:
First I didn’t pay enough attention, but as much as I have to say, I can certainly recognize the need to express the feeling of the people who have suffered from this Walstreet power, that kind of distrust, and misconduct from the Walstreet in many respects. But as a movement it’s a still in a very primitive form, and you can see the kind of hopeless struggle because it seems to have no structure to get the message across, or even let people know what kind of message that is. Or it has become lacking of content or successfully express its own purposes during the development. It’s lack of means to really create changes.

Ai’s intent here was not to call out the entire movement out as hopeless, but to note that from his view, Occupy Wall Street is still in its nascent stages and that it needs structure and cohesiveness to truly become an effective vehicle for meaningful social change.

As Ai noted later, coverage of Occupy Wall Street in the local Chinese media has been stilted. While coverage of Americans camping out to protest Wall Street excess initially drew gleeful editorials from some nationalistic newspapers here in China, censors tempered coverage when officials saw the movement spread to Asia, sparking concern that similar events could be staged on the mainland as well. With largely only official Chinese state media reports and scattered Western sources available, most citizens here are limited in their exposure to coverage of Occupy Wall Street.

As for Ai himself, with so much already going on in his life this year, it’s understandable that he hasn’t made the Occupy Wall Street movement a bigger priority in his life right now.

However, that isn’t to say that he doesn’t empathize with the general sentiment. As he said in his response to an angry reader comment about his answer above: “If I was in N.Y., I’d be a part of it [Occupy Wall Street].”

Q. What was up with the cats?
A: One of the first things you notice when you go to Ai’s studio is how animal friendly the place is. Cats lazily sun themselves out in the courtyard, stalk employees and visitors alike and generally roam freely. Joining them is a rotund cocker spaniel named Daniel who often holds court near Ai’s feet clad in an orange knit sweater.

The night of the live chat was very windy in Beijing and animals and humans alike were scurrying throughout the courtyard to escape the biting cold. Those cats that managed to get in during the live chat generally observed quietly from a distance, but a few of the more adventurous ones decided this was a fine time to curl into laps, walk over laptops and look gamely at the tangerines Ai was eating throughout the talk.

Ai had just finished giving an answer to a question and was busy reading through the live feed of questions when we heard a rattle and then the door suddenly flung wide open followed by two cats and a flurry of leaves flying in.

The howl of the wind and the sudden slam of the door gave some of us quite a start, since for half a second we weren’t sure if it was the Beijing police bringing an unceremonious end to the live chat.

But Ai didn’t bat an eye, “That cat is the smart one, he figured the door out a while ago.”

The cat’s ingenuity and contribution to the chat deserved a mention, but definitely better grammar. Rest assured readers, the bear/bare mistake was embarrassedly noticed by me the moment I hit enter. I promise it won’t happen again.

Q. Will Ai do another one of these live chats again soon?
A: Someone close to Ai once described him as a “social media junkie.” During this live chat, Ai seemed energized by the waves of questions readers sent him and eager to tackle them as best he could.

We here at Behind the Wall thank you for the great questions and comments you sent yesterday and hope that we can make this happen again soon.

Click here to read the complete chat

File photo / AP

Ai Weiwei file photo in Beijing, Nov. 17, 2010.

BEIJING – Since the 1970s, Ai Weiwei has been at the forefront of China’s experimental art scene which has blossomed over the years alongside the country’s economic standing. The 54-year-old’s work on the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, as well as high profile exhibits like the October 2010 installation project, Sunflower Seeds, in which Ai commissioned 100 million handcrafted porcelain “seeds” that were then poured into a room at the Tate Modern Gallery in London, have captivated audiences worldwide.

Such high-profile projects have gained Ai international acclaim in the artistic world, but it has been his transformation into social activist and outspoken critic of China’s authoritarian regime that has turned him into a global icon.

This year, Ai has been a fixture in the news as he diligently worked to document the flurry of arrests of Chinese activists, lawyers and writers by the government following the wave of popular uprisings that erupted throughout the Middle East. Ai himself was detained in April 2011 and was held without formal charge by Chinese security for 81 days. He was released following what the government claims was a confession by Ai to charges of tax evasion.  

Eric Baculinao / NBC News

Ai Weiwei answers reader questions during the Live Chat in his Beijing studio with NBC's Ed Flanagan on Tuesday.

Ai Weiwei now finds himself fighting legal charges that include tax evasion and even pornography. In both cases, Ai’s supporters in China have rallied to his side by lending $1.4 million to the artist to pay a legal guarantee that will allow him to contest the tax charges and posting their own “pornographic” pictures online in protest. (See a slideshow of Ai Weiwei's art).

Speaking recently about the charges, Ai told reporters, “We must follow the legal procedure. As any individual citizen, my innocence is linked with the country’s innocence.”

Ai Weiwei answered reader questions earlier today. Both the questions and answers were provocative and interesting. Click on the link below to replay the chat.