Before Games, China Puts Conflict on Hold

"This incident may appear to be random, but in fact it was inevitable," Shi Zongyuan, Guizhou's Communist Party secretary, told reporters. He said officials had lost the citizens' confidence because they had used "rude and roughshod solutions" to handle residents' anger over mining development, the relocation of families to make way for a reservoir and demolition of homes for public projects. So when officials, after investigating for less than 24 hours, announced that teenager Li Shufen had drowned herself, few believed them.

Li's family feared police were covering up that she had been raped and murdered by two men whose families were said to be connected to the public security bureau. Her uncle, after pressing local officials to investigate further, was beaten so badly by thugs that he had to be hospitalized.

Thousands of citizens took to the streets for protests that turned violent. On the Internet, popular discussion boards were flooded with posts from people supporting the family against the local government. Many posts were deleted soon after they appeared, ostensibly under orders from government censors, but Web users began using euphemisms and other tricks to escape the filters.

After three autopsies and several meetings between officials and the family, Li's parents agreed to take a government compensation payment, allowed the girl's body to be buried and accepted the official ruling of suicide by drowning.

The government's handling of the case reinforced the widespread belief that local officials can be corrupt or inept, and that the only hope for the aggrieved is to capture the attention of national leaders. At the same time, though, national officials have told provincial leaders to stop people from petitioning Beijing for help. That order helps reinforce the local leaders' longstanding incentive to smother dissent; if too many petitioners make their causes known in Beijing, that often hurts the local officials' chances of being promoted.

In Shijiazhuang City, near Beijing in Hebei province, local officials issued a "Six Combats" manifesto last week, trumpeting the steps they were taking to ensure social stability during the Games. In addition to measures like improving traffic and controlling fire hazards, it listed "Assault on Petitions" as one of its objectives for achieving "sweeping victory on Olympic security work."

Few Chinese are surprised that the government emphasizes clamping down on protest. "The government only knows this method and they are only good at this method to deal with dissent," said Li Datong, an editor who was fired for publishing a historical analysis that did not follow approved party lines.

Zhang Zuhua, a dissident scholar who has pushed for political reform, said suppression "may control the situation temporarily, but it's not the way to solve the problem fundamentally." The answer, Zhang said, is to "constantly build a democratic and legal system and let the people have an outlet for the grievances."

With Beijing petitions officially discouraged, just a few dozen people were seen at two different petition offices in the city one morning last week. Two police vans, one with plates from Jiangsu province and the other from Liaoning, were parked nearby and were later observed driving away with several passengers. Two men, lounging in chairs on the sidewalk, said they were from Shanghai and had come to watch the petitioners.

"They've already caught me twice and sent me home," said one petitioner who refused to give her name or discuss her case. "They told me if they catch me one more time, they will take me to a mental hospital."

Researcher Liu Liu contributed to this report.