Wednesday, March 13, 2013

the right to the city -- not in China

Chengguan--the often-violent city control officers in Guangzhou--have done it again: beating up a street hawker in front of her kid. In the photo below, the woman is crouching outside a police vehicle, handcuffed, her child clinging to her.
Guangzhou has become a class-ridden city--where most city development projecs cater to the rich while poor working folk can be violently harassed by local authorities. These photos come from the South China Morning Post, the English language Hong Kong paper. But the original article ran in Southern Metropolis Daily--a newspaper which is no stranger to conflict with authorities.Indeed, its sister paper, Southern Weekend, recently ran afoul of the national government when its reporters and editors protested when a propaganda editorial was substituted for a more hard-hitting one.

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