Chinese Governor, Demonstrators Hold High-Profile Meeting
Participants, State Media Reports Differ

By Lauren Keane
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 22, 2008

BEIJING, Nov. 21 -- A senior Chinese official met with participants in a recent riot, according to the protesters and media reports Friday, as the government sought to highlight how much it was doing in the face of a shaky economy and an increasingly restive population.

The meeting Thursday between the governor of the northwestern province of Gansu and more than a dozen people was billed in the official state media as an example of a high-level politician reaching out to hear the concerns of ordinary Chinese.

But two of the people who attended the meeting said Friday that they were the only ones present who had participated in the protest against a government resettlement plan and that the rest were local officials.

Reached separately by phone, the two protesters said they were grateful for an audience with the governor but worried that the meeting would not solve their problems.

"Of course I'm glad that [the governor] came and listened to us," said Zhang Huilin, 64, a retired laborer. "But I don't know whether they'll take our concerns to heart. If they don't, if they're just doing this for show instead of to solve the real problem, then this will only grow into an even bigger issue."

The official New China News Agency reported that 10 "representatives" had met with the Gansu governor, Xu Shousheng, on Thursday.

But Zhang and the other protester, Wang Qingyu, 65, said that none of the local officials at the meeting had been at the protest, which began Monday morning and turned violent that night when police clashed with demonstrators who had gathered to oppose Longnan city's plan to demolish and move its city center. Thirty people were arrested Thursday in conjunction with the incident.

The discrepancy between the protesters' accounts of the meeting and the media account raised questions about whether the Chinese government was newly committed to addressing and solving local unrest or more concerned with projecting a positive image to the public at a time when officials fear that the economic downturn is fueling protests that are taxing China's security services.

"I didn't dare mention in that meeting that everyone in this town wants Wang Yi to be fired," Wang said Friday, referring to the local party secretary. "We heard he has a good relationship with the provincial party secretary. If I'd said that, I'd be arrested just like all those other people yesterday."

But the New China News Agency quoted her as saying, "Now I know better the government's policy, and I will tell the others."

Wang, in the phone interview, added that officials had come to her neighborhood that morning and asked her neighbors to sign statements promising they would not protest again.

The move by Gansu officials followed a similar government response to a protest in Chongqing this month. The Chongqing party secretary, Bo Xilai, met with striking cabdrivers to hear their concerns about high fees, fuel shortages, unlicensed taxis and traffic fines.

"There's a clear lack of consensus in the party on how to deal with these protests," said Russell Moses, a China analyst based in Beijing. "Usually that would lead to stalemate, but in this case it's an opportunity for experimentation about how to quell them effectively. This is first and foremost about information-gathering."

Increased coverage of recent protests has sparked debate over the media's role as a government watchdog here and whether perceived changes in the way the government reports negative news indicate a new direction.

"How better to tell whether people are satisfied than to let the media be a real barometer?" said UCLA political science Prof. Richard Baum.

Some observers cautioned against assuming that recent government responses to isolated incidents mark a change.

"The party has always used two hands to deal with such crises," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a professor of sociology at Renmin University in Beijing. "One hand arrests a few scapegoats, and the other hand tries to calm down everyone else."

During the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, "the party sent high-ranking officials to negotiate with the students, but they also sent troops," he said. "It's still the same today."

Meanwhile, journalist Chen Daojun was sentenced to three years in prison Friday on charges of subverting the state. Three of his articles were presented as evidence against him in his trial, which lasted just over half an hour.