Police in southern China announced they have detained a person suspected of spreading rumors on the Internet that triggered violent clashes and a major security clampdown.
The public security bureau in Guangzhou announced on its official page on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, that the suspect surnamed Chen was detained on Tuesday and had confessed to publishing false information online.
The clashes in Xintang, a district in the greater Guangzhou area, began last Friday after rumors spread that police had beaten a street hawker to death and manhandled his pregnant wife.
Authorities were forced to deploy hundreds of officers and armored vehicles as the protests continued into the weekend, with people hurling bricks and bottles at local officials and police, and vandalizing ATMs and police posts.
Armed police reportedly used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and at least 25 people have been arrested so far.
The man rumored to have been killed appeared at a press conference held by the local government on Sunday, saying he, his wife and their unborn baby girl were “doing very well.”
“The false information spread on Weibo, QQ [China’s popular instant messaging service] and online forums had a nasty influence on society,” the police said late on Wednesday.
The riots in Guangdong Province, China’s industrial heartland, are the latest in a recent flare-up of unrest in the country, which analysts say highlights resentment towards an unresponsive government.
On Thursday, 1,500 people clashed with riot squads in the central province of Hubei following the alleged death in police custody of a local legislator.
Earlier last week, hundreds of people battled police and destroyed cars in another incident in Guangdong Province, after a factory worker was wounded in a knife attack over a wage dispute and late last month, thousands of ethnic Mongolians protested in northern China for several days after the killing of a herder laid bare simmering anger over what some perceive as Chinese oppression.
The protests have compounded the unease of a government already concerned that Arab-style unrest could spread to China and rising inflation spark more violence.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
A surprising gut feeling may help pigeons find their way home. Animals use various techniques to navigate, including following the stars and remembering key landmarks. Birds, fish and turtles orient themselves using Earth’s magnetic field as a compass, but it is not yet clear how exactly they do this. Pigeons are a well-known group of frequent flyers that can traverse hundreds of kilometers in a single day. For thousands of years, humans have used them to carry news, notes and military messages. Scientists have long tried to untangle how pigeons travel without getting lost. Some think the birds detect magnetic cues using light-sensitive
RSS