'Growing democracy awareness leading to protests,' admits senior Chinese leader/ENG

DHARAMSHALA, December 27: A senior Chinese Communist Party official who brokered a deal with the revolting Wukan villagers in Southern China has warned the country of more protests citing the growing awareness amongst the public on democracy and their rights.

"The public's awareness of democracy, equality and rights is continually getting stronger, and as a result their demands are growing," Zhu Mingguo told party officials at a meeting Monday.

"The task of managing the masses is becoming more and more difficult," the Guangzhou Daily, the official paper of the provincial capital, reported Zhu as conceding on Tuesday.

Zhu’s admission of growing public awareness on democracy and equality and the increasingly troubling task of managing the masses, observers believe, reflect poorly upon the legitimacy of the “dictatorial democracy” that the Communist Party of China has espoused and embraced to rule China for the last seven decades.

China’s abject intolerance on calls for political reform and greater democracy that threatens to dilute its hold on power was once again displayed recently when Chinese courts jailed two veteran activists with a history of criticising China's one-party government for nine and 10 years respectively.

In Sichuan province, Chen Wei was sentenced to nine years in jail and in Guizhou province, Chen Xi was sentenced to prison for 10 years on charges of inciting subversion, drawing flak from the United Nations. Both men had written essays deemed critical to the Chinese government.

The Wukan protest, played out in the full glare of international media, quickly became a telling point of rising public anger in China against official corruption and unpopular government decisions, deeply hurting the Communist Party’s image of stability and social harmony.

The Wukan residents ended their ten days of protests over confiscated farmland and the death of a protest organiser Xue Jinbo, whose family suspects he was beaten in custody, last week after Zhu, deputy Communist party secretary for Guangdong, called their complaints "reasonable" and released three detained protest leaders.

Officials also set up a committee tasked with investigating the villagers' complaints and promised to re-examine the cause of Xue's death.

Growing social unrest in China comes weeks after top security chief Zhou Yongkang warned provincial officials of more unrest in China.

China this year will be spending more on “public security” than the military for the first time. Public security, which covers state surveillance of its people and maintaining China’s paramilitary police, received a boost by nearly 14% to the tune of $95 billion.