China has been on our mind lately. Maybe it's our recent attendance at the Brigham-Kanner property rights conference held in Beijing in October. Maybe it's last week's talk to our law firm by an old friend on lessons that can be learned from China's move from communism to a market economy.
Whatever is causing China to be on our radar lately, here's the latest big story, on Wukan, the village presently under seige after a mass protest objecting to the sale of village land for real estate development. The above video is not in English, but it doesn't take a translator to get the drift. The print media is also reporting on the situation:
- Inside Wukan: the Chinese village that fought back (The Telegraph (UK))
- Small Chinese village revolts; Crackdown near (CBS)
Gideon Kanner has also been following the story (start here).
These type of protests are not uncommon in China (apparently, there are 180,000 "mass incidents" per year there), so it appears unlikely that the Wukan protest will be dealt with by negotiation -- if the government negotiates with Wukan, it will have to do the same elsewhere. We're just hoping that another Tienanmen is not in the works.
