Grandmother Buried Alive in China for Defending Home (Sky News), page 1

Originally posted by Manouche
I stated it, I thought, clearly from the beginning, Corporate China, government owned by private interests. I am not sparing the government, national and local, from criticism. I spelt it, corruption of officials and police.

I know, I'm not saying that you are defending the Chinese government. Rather than making statements, I should be posing them as questions, as China's system is very difficult to understand.

What strikes me is that employees of a private company beating and burying alive an old woman , when reading the OP, seems a lesser offence than the shameless and hypocritical hiding of the facts. You couldn't find that many adjectives to describe this hideous murder

I was a little shocked, it looked like a general rant about centralised governement and missing the obvious.

Sorry, if my OP gave you that feeling. I thought the obvious and the worst was already visible in the article, and I also put it in the title of my OP. The part about China censoring it was just something I wanted to mention on the side, but happened to appear in my first sentence. Of course my biggest disgust is in how they murdered and buried the old woman in such a macabre and barbarian manner. (Just decided to add in some adjectives, as you said I couldn't find any...)

The part I'd want to know is what is the name of this company that hires thugs and buys officials to handle business affairs. There are very big and powerful real estate companies in China. I am disappointed it's not in the article.

Either no one has a clue yet, or China knows but they won't tell, maybe because the central government has connections with the ones responsible. Who knows? Maybe we'll find out more later...maybe not.

Local officials and police have been corrupted for decades, it's a plague. The central governement has never controlled local governments. Chineses know their local officials are generally corrupted, they don't need it to appear in the news, they already know. Now that business is more free and because the central government can't control anything, it's getting worse and worse for the people because of the widespread corruption.

Hu Jintao did admit that it's very very difficult for the central government to control such a large country with so many different ethnic cultures. In that case he should stop considering ownership of Tibet and Taiwan :-) (I live in Taiwan). Anyway, yeah, I think the news should have already spread quite a bit before it was censored. So what's the point of censoring it? Generally, I think China's economy grew so fast, that China's civilisation was not able to adjust to it fast enough. So despite the booming economy, China still remains China as it always has been. This is also apparent in Taiwan, but at a lesser level of course, as we only have 23 million people here, of which most are able to adjust to fast economic growth.

By saying that the government is forced to investigate, you seem to assume the central government supports these practices. Me, I don't know, certainly there are people with different minds in China leadership, I don't know.

I just assumed there was a direct relationship between the central and local governments, but from what you say, it may not be the case. I just thought that logically the government should be working on a centralised hierarchical level, but China is not so logical.

Censorship is a tool for general control but it won't prevent an uprising provoked by one event. Thousands protested says the article, the news can spread locally very efficiently despite disappearing from the local news.

Yeah, but I was thinking about the people who live in other parts of China who probably have no clue about this murder ever happening. No one's going to protest except for the witnesses and those who live in the town where the old woman was murdered. The rest of China won't give a hoot, because the majority doesn't know it ever happened.

Against who the people would be angered according to you ? Was it a national news and it was censored or was it a local news that was censored locally ? The article doesn't say.

As you and I both already agree, what we are most concerned about is the murder, so those responsible for the murder and the police who did nothing to save her should be blamed. Regarding national/local news being censored by either the local or national government, we don't know. You're right, the article doesn't say.

However, according to the Telegraph

all news reports about Mrs Wang were censored on the Chinese internet on Friday.

I don't think the local government can influence the Chinese internet to that extent.

In the article they also said

The government has said it is aware of the growing, and often middle-class, anger against forced evictions, and is currently drafting new regulations that will protect homeowners. In particular, the government has said that property developers must not force residents out of their homes by beating them or cutting off the water and electricity supply.

So at least the central government admits that it's a problem that is trying to be solved. So there's a plus for them, but the problem is that on this side of the world, the government leaders always make false promises, and I think not just here.

After all, I don't think the home demolitions in Beijing in preparation for the Olympics were not related to the central government. So why should we believe what they say.

Anyway, I think there's a high chance that the property developers are connected to the mafia, which would explain why the police was afraid to stop them as they'd be risking their lives. It would also explain the government's response.