October 29:
After a scuffle between a factory boss and a local tax collector, hundreds – and perhaps thousands -- of small factory owners and workers rioted for two days in Zhili, Zhejiang before being put down by police. The mob set fire to cars and smashed public facilities in protest at local authorities’ decision to double the tax on each sewing machine in garment factories from 300 yuan to 600 yuan each. Police said three officers were injured, five people were arrested and 23 others detained. The Huzhou Daily, an official local newspaper, described the riot as “a mass petitioning incident” sparked by “simplistic tax-collecting methods by an individual collector.” The township government sent a text message saying that the tax collector has been fired and the tax increase suspended. Authorities claimed that there were no deaths but rumors carried in the South China Morning Post suggest that police might have beaten two workers to death.
[Editor’s Note: Zhili is known as the “capital of Chinese children’s wear” and two-thirds of its 300,000 population are migrant workers from provinces including Anhui, Sichuan and Henan. The town is home to about 12,200 small factories, which account for more than 30 percent of the mainland’s market share. The riot was the latest of several mass uprisings to shake China this year.]
October 31:
According to a survey released jointly by the Hurun Report and Bank of China, 46 percent of mainland Chinese worth more than 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) have considered emigrating, 60 percent of which said they would leave to seek better educational opportunities for their children. Of the 980 millionaires surveyed in 18 Chinese cities from May to September, fourteen percent have either emigrated or applied and one third of them engaged in “investment immigration,” which allows a person to emigrate after he or she agrees to invest a certain amount of money in the host country. Reuters reports Canada and Australia are the two most favored immigration destinations for wealthy Chinese.
November 3:
The China National Association for Ethical Studies, registered under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has begun a campaign to cultivate 1 million “filial children” in five years. It will offer filial piety lessons for children between the ages of four and six and then, for those who pass the assessment, grant the title of “filial child.” Children will first undergo 100 days of lessons and those who pass will receive three years of filial studies. The 100-day course will cost 900 yuan ($141) of which the instructor will earn 100 yuan per child. “There is a phenomenon in our children’s education that knowledge is valued but morality education is overlooked,” Sun Chunchen, secretary-general of the association, said on Monday in comments carried in the semi-official Global Times.
On the same day the filial piety education campaign was launched, two extremely non-filial incidents grabbed headlines. Liao Tianye, a civil servant in Shenzhen, Guangzhou knelt before his parents to apologize for beating them, the Guangzhou Daily reports. Meanwhile, a court in Shanghai delivered a three-and-a-half-year sentence to a college student who stabbed his mother after she decided to stop paying for his studies in Japan.
November 4:
To counter the trend of falling PLA recruitment among urban youth, the army has decided to further expand its acceptable parameters. The PLA has already increased the age limit of recruits, lowered the required mental aptitude test scores, and allowed them to have one ear pierced. Beginning this winter, the PLA will allow prospective military personnel to have small tattoos and expand weight requirements, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reports. Under the new standards, those with tattoos 2 centimeters or less in diameter on the face and neck and less than 3 centimeters on the arms and legs will be acceptable. The weight range will be expanded to between 25 percent above and 15 percent below the benchmark weight to accommodate more overweight and underweight recruits.