CHINA:An increase of 40 cent in the price of bus fares prompted 20,000 people to take to the streets, attacking police and burning buses in central China last week, the latest example of violent unrest in the countryside, writes Clifford Coonanin Shanghai.
The riots were sparked by an increase in bus fares from Zhushan village to Linglin district, which was hiked to nine yuan (90 cent) from five yuan (50 cent) at Chinese new year last month, with an additional 30 cent charge for luggage.
Villagers from Zhushan intercepted a bus last Friday, saying they would only pay the original fare. They began to attack buses and set them on fire.
The situation escalated into a full-scale "mass incident", as the government terms these examples of rural unrest. Several villagers gathered outside the Zhushan police station and threw stones at police officers, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The events culminated in some 20,000 people reportedly clashing with over 1,000 police armed with guns and electric cattle prods. A number of police cars were burned and 20 truckloads of soldiers were brought in to bring the situation under control.
"The Hunan provincial government and the city government of Yongzhou have sent officials to help settle the incident," Xinhua reported.
Xinhua said the situation was now calm and police had arrested those leading the riot. There were reports that a student was killed in the protests, although that was later denied.
China's economic boom has led to a widening gap between the rich of the cities and the eastern seaboard and the poor of the heartlands, including Hunan province.
Combined with widescale corruption in small towns and abuses of power by local cadres, this has led to a rising number of protests by farmers and villagers in rural areas. They are often sparked by small-scale incidents.
The government has stated that the number of "mass incidents" in the country - a term that includes protests, petitions and demonstrations - was about 23,000 last year.
Authorities have made highly public efforts to narrow the wealth gap and improve the lot of China's 750 million rural poor.
Police have been redeployed throughout the country to quell unrest.