Riot police have reportedly moved in to calm protestors after rioting broke out inside a metro area over taxes.
No, this isn’t Oakland, California. It’s Huzhou, China, a textiles center located in the northern Zhejiang province of eastern China.
Earlier this week, a children’s clothing business in Huzhou refused to pay its tax bill. The tax collector who attempted to collect from the business was attacked shortly thereafter which led to rioting in the city on late Wednesday and into Thursday. The rioters reportedly threw stones, smashed street lights and overturned cars.
Details remain sketchy. According to the BBC, Zhejiang Online, a government run news site, had indicated that up to 600 people were involved. Local reports put the number of people involved higher, claiming that “thousands” of protesters had clashed with police.
I couldn’t find any such references on the site which isn’t terribly surprisingly. China has traditionally been tight-lipped about efforts to control its people. Taking it a step further, China has reportedly moved to quelch the riots by blocking online access to news about what they’re calling “an incident.” Bloggers have reported that Chinese authorities have moved to block the terms “tax”, “protest” and “Zhili” from online media although the twitter stream for “Huzhou” remains busy. The efforts to censor reporting of the protests have presented quite a challenge considering that China has more than 500 million internet users.
Interestingly, the tax collector whose actions are said to have triggered the riots has been fired.
