As many as 10,000 college students fought with Chinese police in four days of protests over their academic status, damaging cars and buildings and leaving at least 20 people injured, a foreign monitoring group said yesterday.
The protests erupted on Oct. 21 in Nanchang, a city in Jiangxi Province, after students learned that records from two private schools might not be recognized by the government, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
The paramilitary People's Armed Police was deployed to contain the protests and at least five people were detained, the report said. It said the protesters were from ethnic minorities, including some 2,000 Uighurs from China's Muslim northwest. The report said students were calling for a protest to be held on Sunday.
No domestic news organization reported the demonstration.
Students said a large crowd, filling almost two-thirds of a football pitch, had staged a demonstration on Monday and demanded to meet the college authorities, prompting clashes with the police.
"There were about 60 riot police. I heard some students attacked them," a female student who gave only her surname, Chen, said. "Classes have been suspended since the start of protests. We were supposed to start lessons again today, but no one attended. We don't know what to do. Many people want to quit."
Police said that the students had "committed extreme acts such as vandalizing and looting." Students blamed the theft of computers and the smashing of office windows on locals who had sneaked into the campus during the disturbance.
People who answered the phone at the Nanchang police headquarters and the administration offices of the two schools wouldn't confirm the report or give their names.
China has seen a series of such protests over the status of degrees granted to students who study at private schools set up as profit-making ventures by universities. The schools serve students who failed intensely competitive entrance exams for government-subsidized universities but can afford to pay higher private tuitions.
Universities initially granted such students degrees in the name of the parent institution. But the government has cracked down on that practice, prompting student complaints that the new status hurts their job prospects.
The institutions that were targeted in the Nanchang protest were the Jiangxi Ganjiang Institute of Technology and the Jiangxi Institute of Fashion College, according to the Information Center.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS