Adrienne Mong

Dozens of police barricaded a highway entrance ramp in Haimen, where protests broke out on Tuesday.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

HAIMEN, Guangdong Province—It wouldn’t have been fair or accurate to call it a China Spring, but for a moment it was worth wondering: Was this the beginning of a Guangdong Spring?

Since September, residents in a fishing village called Wukan, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, had been protesting against their local government over, specifically, illegal land grabs and, more generally, corruption.  This was a town where one man had held sway as the Communist Party chief for four decades.

The situation grew explosive two weekends ago when one of the protest organizers died in police custody, triggering a widespread and cohesive revolt that saw thousands of people run the local officials and police out of town—the first time the Communist Party appeared to have lost total control of a town.

The authorities responded by laying siege on Wukan, preventing food and other supplies from reaching the 20,000-strong population, and censoring all mention of the latest developments in Chinese media or on the Internet.  In turn, the residents welcomed foreign and Hong Kong journalists to cover their plight.

Negotiations between the two sides kicked into high gear even as the situation escalated. The villagers threatened to march to the government offices of a nearby town unless their demands were met, potentially pitting them against thousands of riot and paramilitary police deployed along the main road leading in and out of Wukan.

In the end, cooler tempers prevailed amidst government compromises, but just as the Wukan standoff appeared to ease, reports of more protests nearby surfaced on Tuesday on the Internet.

Suddenly, the province in which its Communist Party head had promoted a “Happy Guangdong” campaign no longer seemed so happy.  At least not in this southeastern coastal corner.

Adrienne Mong

Residents in Haimen say the power plant built in 2009 has dramatically increased pollution and caused a rise in cancer cases.

At least three other pockets of unrest had flared up in districts of a large city near Wukan:  two of the groups were protesting similar examples of illegal land seizures and a third, the largest outbreak of demonstrations, was over government plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Haimen.

Though difficult to confirm, the initial reports described thousands of residents converging on the main local government office and organizing a sit-in on a key highway entrance to protest the development plans.  Local residents were quoted as saying they hoped foreign journalists would cover their story.

Before long, photographs emerged on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs showing large numbers of paramilitary police in riot gear lining up against civilians in Haimen, a large town about 70 miles away from Wukan.  Tear gas was fired and clashes ensued.  Rumors also circulated that at least two boys had been killed in the confrontations; the government denied them.

Protests are not unusual in China.  In fact, according to the most recent official statistics, 2009 saw more than 90,000 “mass incidents,” as the Chinese government calls protests, across the country.  Land grabs and pollution concerns are among the top grievances.

Although the protests in Wukan and Haimen appear unrelated, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that two demonstrations adopting similar tactics would spring up within several dozen miles of one another. 

Heavy-handed police tactics
On Thursday, the streets of Haimen looked like those of any other comparable-sized Chinese town: food stalls, shops, sleepy government buildings, a high school, and a population that relies mostly on motorbikes to get around.

Mid-morning, dozens of those motorbikes were massed near the Haimen highway entrance.  In the distance, scores of black-and blue-uniformed police wearing helmets were standing behind barricades that had been pulled across the toll gate to the highway.

A large gas station on the corner looked open, but was in fact not.  The station's attendants in bright yellow jackets were lazing around, directing traffic to the next station.  The only energy came from a discussion about the power plant taking place among some of motorbike riders.

Adrienne Mong

Dozens of police vehicles, fire engines, and water canon trucks lined the side of a highway running through Haimen.

A short excursion on the highway itself revealed a sizeable police presence.  Police vans lined up against the side, interspersed with ambulances, fire engines, and water cannon trucks.  Dozens of police in riot gear sat on the ground.  Near several other highway entrance ramps, police vehicles could be spotted behind the gates of nearby compounds.

A little over an hour later, the crowd around the main entrance ramp had grown.  Motorbikes whizzed back and forth a couple of hundred feet away from the police barricade.  Many of the riders were young.

Suddenly, a pop rang into the air and a group of young teenagers were scrambling back away from the highway barriers—a plume of smoke rose above them.  The teens had tried to sidle up along the side.  A murmur of “tear gas” arose in the crowd as people began rushing away, covering their faces.  Nostrils burned.

“They don’t have the right to treat people like this,” said a 24-year old local resident who only offered his surname, Li.  “Using tear gas?  It’s wrong.”

Rumors of cancer
A few miles away, a large power plant with two smokestacks sat under the hazy sun.  It was not in operation; local reports said the government had suspended it as well as the plans to build the second plant until further notice. 

Haimen residents called Hongdong — the hamlet of one-storey homes nearest the power plant —“Cancer Village.”  But inside Hongdong, a man working in a local medical clinic denied that cancer patients were on the rise.

Back in front of the highway entrance, a young man named Chen and his two friends on motorbikes watched the police.  They had joined in the protests on Wednesday, because they, too, were angry about the health hazards posed by the power plant.

“The ocean is polluted [because of the run-off from the plant],” said Chen, also 24 years old.  “You can’t fish in it any more.”

He and others in the crowd said the number of cancer cases in Haimen had grown since the power plant was constructed in 2009 and quoted local papers as saying 80 percent of the cancer patients at a major regional hospital came from their township.

Chen said news of the protest had spread by QQ, a popular instant messaging service, until it was blocked on Tuesday evening.  Then they relied on word of mouth.

On the following day, the protesters were demonstrating peacefully, without weapons, said Chen, but the police rushed out from behind the blockade into the crowd and began beating up people—including women. 

Many of the participants on Wednesday, according to residents, were young Chinese.  Several were injured, and countless others arrested—just as was the case on Tuesday.

They had picked the highway entrance, said Chen, because it would attract the greatest attention.  Unlike the existing power plant itself or the land where the second plant has been designated—both of which are removed from the main roads.

Hearing about Wukan
“Were you in Wukan?” was a question that crept up a few times in conversation with Haimen’s residents.  In the past couple of days, Chinese media had begun publishing reports on the dispute next door.  Moreover, many had heard through friends or acquaintances or on the Internet about the months-long confrontation in Wukan.

But no one said Wukan had inspired them to take action. 

“This [environment issue] has been a problem for us for a while,” said Li.

There appears to be another difference between Wukan and Haimen.  Local officials from Haimen have promised to come up with some sort of resolution in five days, according to Chen.  But later on Thursday evening, he said that many more young Chinese had been rounded up and detained.

CAIRO -- The echo from the microphones in the room where the prime minister had just finished his press conference on Saturday morning was still ringing in everyone's ears.

Could he have been right?

Prime Minister Kamal Ghanzoury looked journalists, and by extension the Egyptian people, square in the eye and told them the military and the police were not involved in the clashes on Friday -- and if they were, they were only acting in self-defense.

He went on to add that the military exercised restraint and did not fire on the crowds.

But even more surprising to many activists, Ghanzoury said the people involved in Friday's clashes were not revolutionaries.

The three-weeklong peaceful protests outside his office turned violent Friday when, according to him, troublemakers attacked the military.

• Violence flares after Egypt tries to crush protest

His depiction was an attempt, protesters felt, to taint them and their sit-in.

Ghanzoury's comments contradicted widespread reports and eyewitness accounts from journalists and activists.

Regardless of the moment that precipitated the initial clash between the military and the protesters, the military's conduct over the past 48 hours has many Egyptians questioning its competence and intentions.

In fact, videos made by eyewitnesses show the military engaged in all kinds of behavior, originally denied by the prime minister, including taunting protesters with rude gestures, lobbing stones at them, chasing them with sticks, beating and dragging them while they are on the ground and in more than one instance, opening fire with pistols.

In the video above, posted on the website of Mosireen, an Egyptian non-profit organization that helps citizen journalists by running a media center in downtown Cairo, alleged members of Egypt's military are seen taunting protesters with rude hand gestures. They can also be seen throwing stones at the protesters in this video.

In another video, aired by a private Egyptian satellite channel, a soldier can be seen aiming a pistol at people who were coming to recover a wounded protester being attacked by a crowd in military riot gear.

In his press conference the prime minister reiterated a point made earlier in a statement by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. All of the families of those killed would be compensated. Those injured would be treated at the state's expense. An independent civilian advisory council created after last month's deadly fighting between security forces and protesters recommended all those arrested during the clashes be released.

But on Saturday, the PM said they were not revolutionaries. In fact, Egypt's general prosecutor ordered 16 people detained for four days pending investigation into their involvement in instigating the clashes and the killings -- and none were members of the military or police. And despite widespread complaints by protesters and human rights organizations, no investigations into alleged military misconduct have been launched by prosecutors.

So why would the military offer to treat those injured and compensate victims if it felt they were behaving illegally? It seems odd for the state to treat so-called martyrs if it viewed them as vandals and agents of foreign hands.

For its part, the military has posted video http://youtu.be/8grDc-iz5wg) on its Facebook page showing what it claims were vandals destroying government buildings. Egypt's historic Geographic Society building was set on fire on Saturday. It was not clear how the fire started in the building, home to some of Egypt's most important historic documents.

 After last month's deadly clashes, the Supreme Council accepted the previous prime minister's resignation and promised to empower his replacement with the full authority he needs to run the country. The new prime minister pledged that force would not be used against demonstrators. But some analysts say that the new clashes raise questions about his ability to reign in the security forces and about the degree of cooperation between the military and the civilians supposedly running the country.  

In a post on his Twitter page, prominent opposition figure Mohammed El Baradei said that if the PM had all of the executive authority of the president, which includes security in the country, then in what capacity did the military police act against the protesters?

So did Prime Minister Ghanzoury know that within minutes of concluding his press conference, the military would unleash an assault against the protesters? If he did, then he purposely put a civilian facade on a military crackdown, some say. If he didn't know, then, as El Baradei pointed out, how can he restore law and order in the country if he is not in charge of the one institution that has all the guns?

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.