Chinese student power on the rise
Will it be students or workers who take the lead in China’s next revolution? Students certainly seem to have been getting more militant around China in the last couple of years, although their level of political radicalisation seems to be nothing like 1989. Yesterday students rioted in Zhengzhou, Henan Province in protest at police brutality:
Hundreds of Chinese students clashed with police and overturned and burnt their car after street inspectors beat up a female student, a police officer and witnesses said on Thursday, the latest in a series of public disturbances.
Students from several universities in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, went on the rampage on Wednesday after a student vendor was beaten by several inspectors as they cleared her unlicensed stall, a student witness told Reuters.
But there have been a number of other such incidents in the last year, including another one in Zhengzhou last June and a campus riot in Jiangxi Province last October. The big underlying issue seems to be the lack of decent jobs for university graduates (not exactly a problem limited to China, but perhaps more acute there than elsewhere).
Meanwhile, for some excellent historical background on China’s radical heritage, see Charlie Hore’s piece in last week’s Socialist Worker on the failed 1927 revolution. On that occasion at least, there was no doubt that it was workers who led the way, actually taking control of the city of Shanghai for some time. The defeat of the revolution was also, unfortunately, the end of communism in China.
