Video of Beatings Amid Demolition in China Leads to Punishments

That a few Chinese officials got their hands slapped doesn't surprise me as much as that the Chinese police allowed the video to be taken and circulated. How often has this kind of thing taken place already? It is far more likely that these were not "illegally" constructed homes, but were instead on desirable land that local government officials wanted to sell to developers, who would then provide hefty kickbacks to those same local officials. The more that the people are mistreated and enraged, the greater the chance that the Communist Party will be overthrown.

all forms of government more or less require oppression......"communism" in China is a bureaucratic machine operated by party elite(the 1%) controlling absolutely,all people and corporations........enforced by the military......
"capitalism",in the US,has been formally confirmed and precisely re- defined in the supreme court.... corporations are persons and money is speech.......i.e.financial institutions and corporations using money (lobbying or legal bribery) have co-opted the entire political and bureaucratic system for their own ends.....fully supported by the military...................you cant beat protesters openly............but you can take the US to war in Iraq,based on public deception with official lies ,kill and maim thousands of American soldiers.....create never ending havoc in the middle east (hundreds of thousand killed).....fill the coffers of Halliburton and other "Citizen"corporations with trillions of hard earned taxpayer dollars..................WITH NO ACCOUNTABILITY.........hopefully we understand that ALL of mankind needs to become more conscious and evolve..........there are no exceptions ,if we are to survive!

Open and free Trade with China is one thing Hillary and the DNC agree with the Republicans about. The Chinese are such lovely people, but America no longer provides the example of adhering human rights over economic gain. And while American's might not get beaten with sticks to leave their homes...in America when a family is kicked out from their home the movers kindly place a their possession on the sidewalk. We have so much to be proud of yet this video reminds us at the pace we're going we'll be a third world nation soon enough.

These guys behave like chengguan, not real police, Chengguan are thug like characters hired by people tasked with demolition, etc.,to remove non cooperative individuals hindering the work. They were probably running away because the real police arrived

They also roam city streets to drive away illegal vendors. They can be both brutal and merciless, even sadistic, as the video shows.

Real police in China are generally quite nice, at least to foreigners. I've never observed them abusing local people, either.

In cities going back hundreds if not thousands of years, there has to be eminent domain power to reorganize outdated land use. The problem in China is the corruption that goes along with it. The peasants (not my term) being removed are usually paid far, far less their their interest in the land is worth. When their interest in the land is sold to developers for a market price, there is often a kickback to the officials who made the purchase possible.

This practice is pervasive, as is resistance to it. It's one of many forms of cadre corruption that have made the CCP so unpopular, which is why it may be accurate to label President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping as the Chinese equivalent of Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

The Russian communists were in power from 1917 to 1991 or 74 years. It's been 67 years since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. I wouldn't lay bets on their making it much past 80 years.

The police should be equipped with pepper swab to deal with the illegal occupation of government land. Those people know police would be reluctant to use force against women and children so they put their wife and kids out the door to block the police. Where are the men in this? Hiding behind the camera no doubt.

Before the Internet I remember reading about Chinese being forced to give up their historic homes in Beijing. The article said that the homes were reassigned to insiders and politicians. It said that the homeowners tried to go to court in China but that the courts refused to do anything with or even acknowledge the documents they sent in.

Law enforcement with Chinese characteristics. No rule of law, no respect for fellow human beings, just thugs doing work on behalf of the government.

A story emerged in NYC over the weekend of a developer in Williamsburg using a forklift to move a legally parked car and severely damaging it in the process. Others on the block have reported similar episodes. Now, the developers themselves were not operating the machinery, they just created the 'atmosphere' of privilege - but put yourself in the place of the forklift operator who has just received instructions to move the car. Resist and lose your job. Refuse to beat up protesters and lose your job. Run a corporation into the ground and get a $50,000,000 severance package. Morality is a middle class construct: Below a certain level, most of us cannot afford it and above a certain level, most of us don't need it.

This is what happens when you have a politicized rather than professional and independent judicial system. Sure, these enforcers got punished, but certainly much of the same thing goes on elsewhere in China unpunished because the financial interests of developers and local party officials are aligned, and thus thugs get hired to beat people up and violate their rights. Only when China has democracy and sheds itself of the tyranny of a one-party dictatorship will there be a chance in China for justice for all.

In the comment section for this article, someone rather woefully asked “Why can't I find goods to buy that are not made in China?” Answer is simple and can be responded by a simple question. Are we willing to pay a higher price for a comparable good? If the answer is no then we are stuck, at least for the time being, buying from China. Looks like there is a price at which we will are willing to give up our morals and principals and succumb to our pocket book. Buying oil from the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East is another example. We are patriots only till it starts hurting our pocket books. That is the reason the US stopped producing furniture, textiles, televisions, iPhones, computers, automobiles and many more consumer goods. The day we say that we are willing to sacrifice and stand for our principals and humanitarian values, and willing to pay the price, we will have an option to buy goods that are made without slave labor. Incidentally, it may be a good doctorate research subject to calculate how much higher a US consumer would pay and its impact on the economy if he/she were to have a good produced in the US for each of the industry listed above.
There is hope on the horizon and the American ingenuity could prevail and provide a solution. The 3D printing could get manufacturing back in the US, may be at your own home. The ultimate irony would be that even that 3D printer would be made in China for a few more years until a 3D printer can reproduce itself.

Bless the social media, 700,000 netizens in China. “Such clashes have sometimes resulted in the deaths of residents and workers and in suicides by people trying to defend their homes.” And more frequently now organized opposition leading to higher level intervention; probably also due to role of netizens.
Has ‘filming the police’ been resolved in US yet. It must be covered by first amendment.

This is not unexpected, but its not a uniquely Chinese behavior. I remember any number of episodes in which the police, beat, pepper sprayed, or otherwise abused demonstrators right here at home.

Why can't I find goods to buy that are not made in China?
I just replaced my 10 yr old printer. I look at the bottom of the new Epson "Made in China". I needed a toaster. I bought it at Target. "Made in China" (It lasted 2 months) Thankfully, Oster replaced it as soon as I called.
I don't want anything to do with the Chinese gov. Why did the CEO's in America outsource everything to these monsters??????

I'm a 74 year-old teacher who started as a civil engineer from Cooper Union in 1964. I switched to teaching in 1966 and am still teaching today. I've spent about fifteen of those years teaching English to Chinese and Hispanics, and forty or so years teaching spoken Chinese to all comers. I've also spent about two years living and teaching in China.

One of my standard questions to my English language learners is: Why did you come to the USA? Almost all of my Chinese students have said "for a better life" or "for freedom". When I ask them what they mean by freedom, many have said that they were punished when they complained about being bullied by a local official, or when they were told they had to leave their homes because of the need for "development". They never won. They had no advocates. In the USA your house can't be torn down just willy-nilly. You have the law on your side. Chinese people like this a heck of a lot. Yet it's hard for me to criticize China, for they they only entered the modern era in 1980.

In 1980 Shenzhen, a village of about 10,000, was chosen to be an economic free zone (almost anything goes). It was a major success, and soon thereafter, many other such zones were created. And China is now the second largest economy in the world.

Modern China is only 36 years old. They are making mistakes, but they are NOT our enemy. We should work with them. Our countries can and should be friends.

alarming.

This was heart-breaking to watch. Totalitarian governance in action.

It's a dictatorship!
Why is this a surprise?

Thank goodness for social media

America doesn't look like this...yet.

NOW, is anyone really surprised by these actions ? China is a military dictatorship masquerading as a Republic. Has anyone forgotten the Tiananmen atrocities?

This is our largest trading partner. It is a criminal state that will deny their own people all their rights on a whim.

Recently, having picked the brains of the Apple Corporation we now see the relationship shift. Lets not forget their blatant island building in the South China Sea, a body of water that is not the property of China regardless of the name.

Also recently all foreign groups have been placed under the authority of the police, the same police that regularly deal out beatings for protesting to their own people. The trading partners should carefully watch the behavior of the Chinese, if they will beat their own folks imagine what they will do to foreigners.

A day of reckoning with the Masters of this country is coming. Lets not forget the treatment accorded Czar Nicholas, people will only take so much.

And yet chasing the all mighty profits multi-national corporations continue to build factory after factory, transferring a wealth of technology as they blindly follow the dollar.

Video, the downfall of tyrants. Without it in this instance, there would be no apologies or "stepping downs."

Rule of Law in China?
Naw...who needs it when you have clubs and the Grand High Exhausted and Mystical President Hu Jintao!
Hail Caesar!

Though this sort of thing, sadly, happens all over the world only ONE country is our largest trading partner, China.

A look at our future?

It's OK. President Xi assures us that notions like human rights and rule of law are Western ideas that are incompatible with Chinese culture. The correct way to deal with abuses like this is to just trust that wise Uncle Xi and the virtuous Communist Party has it all under control and therefore there's no need to institute systemic protections against actions like this.

Really not much different than what the NYPD did during Wall Street protests a few years ago, herding people into cages with no food or water, people who had committed no crimes. Ironic that when the Chinese do it, we condemn it, but when US authorities do it, it's justified.

I'm surprised to be reading about this. China usually hides this sort of thing from the outside world. Firing these people isn't even close to being enough punishment. My guess is they'll soon be working in a different area or town and this wasn't an isolated crime. The communist leaders in China must hate the internet.