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Shanghai mayor pledges to 'clean up' city's poor image

The mayor of Shanghai yesterday vowed to clean up the city's "negative image" and to forestall protests by resolving tensions over construction projects and other issues.

Police escorted away a few would-be protesters standing near the tight security cordon around the Shanghai Exhibition Center, where local lawmakers were gathered for their annual session.

"We will proactively forestall and appropriately defuse social tensions," Mayor Han Zheng (韓正) told the lawmakers, without directly referring to recent protests against a proposed extension of the city's magnetic levitation train line.

"We will take measures to prevent, reduce and appropriately handle crowd incidents to minimize their detrimental impact on social harmony," Han said, promising to ensure issues raised by the public were dealt with "promptly and properly."

Han said Shanghai was still working to mend the damage to its reputation from a massive corruption scandal that toppled the city's top Chinese Communist Party official, Chen Liangyu (陳良宇).
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