Could a Hunan hawker be the one to ignite China's very own Arab Spring?
Can the death of a Chinese watermelon seller trigger the same tidal change that the death of a vegetable vendor in Tunisia did across the Middle East?
On Wednesday night in Linwu county, Hunan, riot police clashed with hundreds of unarmed protesters. Two days later, photos of men and women in blood-soaked clothes, some crying, some livid with anger, are still among those most shared on Chinese microblogs.
The clash, triggered by the arbitrary and brutal killing of 56-year-old watermelon seller Deng Zhengjia on Wednesday, has caused nationwide outrage that has yet to dissipate into the usual fatalism.
One netizen compared the Hunan watermelon seller’s fate to that of the Tunisian vegetable vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose vegetable cart was seized by police in Sidi Bouzid in 2010. In desperation, he set himself on fire. His death triggered the fall of Tunisia’s authoritarian regime of Ben Ali and those in three other countries, so far.
China’s online community, the closest thing the country has to civil society, hasn’t stopped talking about the watermelon seller. Many have blamed the system, far beyond the chengguan system, for Deng’s death, how the local government handled the situation and how it dealt with the protesters.