Tea Leaf Nation

A rare protest in Beijing involving hundreds of people was documented by photos posted on China’s social media (scroll down to see photos). The cause of the protest was the death of a 22-year old migrant worker, who fell several stories from an apparels wholesale market building in Beijing on May 3. The police declared [...]

This article also appears on Tea Leaf Nation partner sites ChinaFile and The Atlantic. When Mr. Tuo Zhen, the propaganda chief of Guangdong province, rewrote and replaced the New Year editorial of the Southern Weekend weekly newspaper without the consent of its editors, he probably did not think it would make much of a splash. [...]

On Saturday protestors in dozens of Chinese cities took to the streets to voice their anger at the Japanese government’s nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku Islands in Japanese) in the East China Sea as a flagrant violation of Chinese sovereignty. In Beijing, thousands of protestors besieged the Japanese embassy, hurling eggs, bottles and anything [...]

Protests in China over the disputed Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku to the Japanese) have seen some protesters taking out their anger by smashing Japanese brand cars parked on the streets of Chinese cities.   An open letter by the purported owner of a Japanese car is now making the rounds on Chinese social media that manages to lambast [...]

Recent demonstrations in Shifang, Sichuan over a planned molybdenum copper plant and Qidong, Jiangsu over a proposed wastewater pipeline have taught us about the violent side of social unrest in China. In Shifang, the protest turned into a bloody fight between police and protestors which resulted in serious injuries to both sides. In Qidong, protestors broke into [...]

An infographic circulating on Chinese social media provides some background information on the planned oceanic wastewater pipeline and a compelling call-to-action for local residents in Qidong, a small city north of Shanghai. Fierce mass protest forced local government to abandon the project on July 28, the second successful mass NIMBY protest in China in a [...]

Protests against a planned pipeline to channel wastewater into the ocean for a Japanese paper manufacturer near a major fishery on China’s east coast (just north of Shanghai) has turned ugly.  Thousands of angry protesters in Qidong in China’s Jiangsu Province (江苏省南通市启东) have overturned police cars and threatened to overwhelm a massed police formation.    One [...]

[Warning: Some images below are graphic.] A NIMBY protest in the small city of Shifang in Sichuan Province against a planned molybdenum copper plant turned bloody when the government mobilized riot police to confront protesters. Photos taken at the scene of the protest were posted on various Chinese social media sites, including Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. These [...]

According to media reports and photos posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter, a mass protest took place in Guangzhou on June 19 following the death of an African man in police custody. One netizen, @GingerYip reports, “According to a black brother at the scene, this morning a black brother got involved in a physical altercation with an [...]

Netizens report that on February 20 hundreds of retirees blocked traffic in Gezhouba, a city in Hubei Province near one of China’s largest state-owned hydropower stations of the same name, to demand higher pensions. Eye witnesses have posted photos on YCSQ.cn, a regional web portal, Sina Weibo and Sohu Weibo. The banners in the photos posted on Sohu Weibo [...]

It’s official: Wukan 2.0 is taking place in Panhe (泮河), a small village of about 5,000 souls in coastal Zhejiang Province.  As Tea Leaf Nation reported on February 7 and February 8, based on reports circulating in the Chinese blogosphere, and as now confirmed by the Global Times, at least 200 villagers staged three protests [...]

[Readers can see an update to this post in Wukan 2.0? Evidence Mounts Panhe Uprising Is Real in these pages.] Could it be the “Wukan effect?” That’s what @城道 has used to describe recent rumors of another uprising in Panhe’s East and West Village in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province that have recently circulated on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. Stop [...]