Democracy Now!
by Jason Q. Ng. Another widely-reported “not in my backyard” protest erupted in China last week, with thousands taking to the streets of Ningbo, a coastal city in the Zhejiang province. The proposed expansion of a petro-chemical plant originally drew anger toward a unit of Sinopec, the state-run oil company, that initially sought the expansion.
by Jason Q. Ng. Before last Monday, Shifang, a city in southwestern China, was mostly known to outsiders as the producer of handmade cigars enjoyed by Mao Zedong and other top Communist leaders. After Monday, the city’s more traditional reputation was quickly eclipsed by a new one for the 21st century: It became the site
by Jason Q. Ng. When Chinese pro-democracy activist and Tiananmen Square veteran Li Wangyang was found dead under suspicious circumstances earlier this month, it was the people of Hong Kong who led the calls for an independent investigation. Just this week, after thousands staged protests in Hong Kong, Chinese officials agreed to launch an inquiry into
Last month, Internet users and companies rallied together to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two proposed U.S. bills that sought to give media corporations the tools to combat illegal file-sharing but would have potentially had chilling effects on free speech. It was an innovative protest waged almost exclusively online,
In September of last year, one of tens of thousands of annual “mass incidents” in China took place in a fishing village named Wukan. Several hundred local citizens marched to the county government seat, protesting what is now a disappointingly familiar story in towns and cities all across the country: illegal land seizures by local
