Beijing rejects comparison of last week's deadly police attack in Dongzhou to the 1989 crackdown Beijing yesterday rejected any attempt at associating the police shooting of villagers in Guangdong last week with the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy students. The rejection came as activists, intellectuals and the international media drew parallels between the use of force to quell the riot, triggered by land seizures in the village of Dongzhou, Shanwei, and the violent suppression of pro-democracy protesters 16 years ago in central Beijing. The local government has put the death toll from last week's riot at three, but villagers fear the real figure could be as high as 20 because many villagers are still missing. If the latter figure is confirmed, the Dongzhou riot would be the deadliest assault by mainland security forces on civilians since the 1989 crackdown, in which hundreds or thousands are believed to have been killed. In a regular briefing in Beijing yesterday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the two incidents were not comparable as no conclusion had been reached about the Dongzhou violence. 'Conclusions have been reached on the 1989 incidents, but no conclusion has been drawn on this event. How can we know if they are the same type of incident?' he asked. The Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao yesterday reported that Guangdong party secretary Zhang Dejiang had visited Dongzhou last Wednesday - a day after the shooting - to 'give important instructions on the investigation and handling of the incident'. The newspaper also identified the commanding officer who gave the order to open fire as Wu Sheng, a vice-director of the Shanwei Public Security Bureau. Guangdong newspapers reported on Sunday that he had been detained by prosecutors for allegedly mishandling the riot. Despite villagers' calls for central government intervention, Xu Youyu , a political theorist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Beijing was likely to adopt the same approach in handling the Dongzhou incident as it had with the Tiananmen Square crackdown. 'A denouncement of the local government's handling is not likely, especially when this time security forces were used. When a crisis involving political sensitivity occurs at the local level, the central government tends to handle the issue in the traditional manner, namely to cover it up and suppress the media and those who speak up,' Professor Xu said. He said the central government should come up with a new approach to assuaging social discontent before people lost their faith in all levels of government. 'People have long lost their faith in local governments. When bad things happen, they think they're the local governments' fault. And they believe the central government can help them. But now, more and more people have lost their faith in Beijing. This is a serious problem,' he said. 'The central government should be happy that there still are people visiting the petition offices in Beijing - that means there are still people who trust them.' But Professor Xu said it was not likely that Beijing would properly address the problem because it needed to maintain a relationship with the local officials. 'The local governments have been doing things that embarrass the central government. But they know that even if Beijing is aware of their wrongdoings, that wouldn't do them any harm as Beijing would have to rely on them to carry out policies and to keep local administrations in order,' he said. 'Beijing has to weigh between maintaining the stability of the governments and a governance crisis as it tries to avoid upsetting local officials.'
