"China's Elite Learn to Flaunt It While the New Landless Weep"
		Li Chang [Above] grieves that a chateau for the rich, with a wide moat, was built where peasants once farmed. "It was once our land and now we have to apply to work there," he said. "To look at the place brings tears to my eyes."...
		Rising out of the parched winter landscape of suburban Beijing, like a Gallic apparition... Chateau Zhang Laffitte... is a quirky extravagance intended to catch the eye of China's new rich. They can rent its rooms and, later, buy homes amid the ponds, equestrian trails and golf course on... Communist Party member... Mr. Zhang's [Photo, left & right] 1.5-square-mile estate. It is even more conspicuous to its nearest neighbors, 800 now landless peasants who used to grow wheat on its expansive lawns. In a generation, China's ascetic, egalitarian society has acquired the trappings and the tensions of America in the age of the robber barons. A rough-and-tumble form of capitalism is eclipsing the remnants of socialism. Those who have made the transition live side by side with those who have not, separated by serrated fences and the Communist Party. The party's Central Committee conducted a survey of party officials in November in which the widening income gap ranked as the biggest concern, mainly because it stirs social unrest (See below).
		--Joseph Kahn, "China's Elite Learn to Flaunt It While the New Landless Weep", NYT on the Web, 25Dec04
		http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/GO/China2004.html Copyright © 2004 Brad McCormick, Ed.D. bradmcc@cloud9.net 09 March 2006 v01.05
		WANZHOU, China, Dec. 24 - The encounter, at first, seemed purely pedestrian. A man carrying a bag passed a husband and wife on a sidewalk. The man's bag brushed the woman's pants leg, leaving a trace of mud. Words were exchanged. A scuffle ensued. Easily forgettable, except that one of the men, Yu Jikui, was a lowly porter. The other, Hu Quanzong, boasted that he was a ranking government official. Mr. Hu beat Mr. Yu using the porter's own carrying stick, then threatened to have him killed.... [T]he script was incendiary. Onlookers spread word that a senior official had abused a helpless porter. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people had swarmed Wanzhou's central square, where they tipped over government vehicles, pummeled policemen and set fire to city hall. Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party, obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches accruing to the powerful and well connected. (--Joseph Kahn, "China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence", NYT on the Web, 31Dec04)