Rebellion

In the spring of 1992, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping toured southern China. This was the trip that furthered the opening of China’s state-run economy, and in which Deng made the famous speech about socialism with Chinese characteristics. He emphasized private ownership, foreign investment, and reforming the rural countryside. Two decades later the region has largely fulfilled Deng’s prophecy of catching up to the four Asian tigers—Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—although this has not been without social consequences. The economy of Southern China has been growing at a tremendous rate, especially in the province of Guangdong, which has enabled some to become very rich. As a result, growth has outstripped regulation, allowing those with connections, wealth, and power to exploit loopholes as well as villagers. Here, the lack of legal constraints favors the few and fails the vast majority of the population. The impoverished are making their voices heard. A 2005 government report on “mass incidents” said popular uprisings increased from 10,000 in 1993 to 60,000 in 2003. More recently, the Chinese Academy of Governance reported that the number of protests doubled from 2006 to 2010, reaching 180,000. Sun Liping at Qinghua University in Beijing also estimates that there were nearly 200,000 protests in 2010. Some of these “mass incidents” were labor disputes involving a few hundred workers, while others included entire villages of tens of thousands of people.