Government officials were shocked when a traffic incident erupted into pitched street battles between majority Han Chinese and ethic Muslims in a small village in Henan, an impoverished province in east-central China. The government put the number of people killed at seven, with 42 injured. The New York Times, quoting unnamed local sources, said that some 148 people were killed in the disturbance, including 18 policemen.
The incident was just the latest in a string of protests that have taken place in recent weeks around China, and that have deeply worried central government leaders.
In October, as many as 50,000 demonstrators lined up in front of government offices in a small town in Sichuan province and set a police van on fire to protest the beating of a migrant worker, allegedly by a government official. Ten days later, in Hanyuan county, also in Sichuan, an estimated 100,000 farmers stormed a government building and battled police over land lost to a dam project and what they called inadequate compensation. Order was not restored until martial law was declared and paramilitary forces were scrambled to the scene.
Despite 25 years of economic growth that has made China the envy of its neighbors, income disparities are growing and corruption is spiraling, resulting in mounting anger and a sharp rise in the number of disturbances around the country.
Outlook Weekly, a Communist Party mouthpiece, reported recently that China experienced more than 58,000 major incidents of social unrest in 2003--up 15% from a year earlier--with more than 3 million people taking part in the protests.
Making matters worse for the government, China's "new media" appear to be reaching a critical mass. While news of unrest is usually blacked out of the Chinese media, word is now spreading quickly via the widespread use of modern communications, including mobile phones, faxes, instant messages and the Internet, reaching Chinese nationwide. Activists in China have also become more adept at communicating with the foreign media. Within the past year, for example, dissatisfied Chinese citizens have begun to contact foreign journalists directly using mobile phones, short messages, faxes and e-mail.
Dru Gladney, professor of Asian studies and anthropology at the University of Hawaii, said it's difficult to tell whether the string of recent disturbances represents an increase in unrest or whether we're beginning to learn about more such incidents.
"I think the real new dimension is that activists on the streets and across the country are communicating with each other, and this didn't happen before," said Gladney. "Really, what's different now is the trans-regional coordination and awareness, rather than an increase" in unrest.
And, Gladney told Asia Times Online, bottling up these channels of communication won't be as easy.
Enver Can, vice president of the World Uyghur Congress based in Germany, agreed. "The communist government ultimately will not be able to change the tide of globalization and keep its people immune from the free flow of information," said Can. "The Chinese Communist Party will misjudge the situation if it still believes that its key weapon is the control of information."
Can, an ethnic Uighur from Xinjiang, told Asia Times online the situation is spinning out of control. Can said the rising gap between the new rich and poor, regional economic disparities, the crackdown against minorities and religious groups and the migrant-worker problem all spell continued trouble for the Communist Party.
"I would say that the government will face more and more unrest in the coming years," he predicted.
ATIMES.COM

The French government dispatched an honor guard last Thursday to escort Yasser Arafat's earthly remains from French soil to a plane bound for the Middle East. But if France and the other nations of Europe truly want to honor the Palestinian people, the European Union will conduct a public autopsy of Arafat's finances to ensure that money that belongs to the Palestinian public isn't illegally bestowed on his widow and daughter.
Arafat's body was still cooling, the European press reports, when the Palestinian Authority cut a deal with Arafat's widow, Suha, granting her $20 million plus another $500,000 a year for life. This is rumored to be ransom money that the authority must pay Suha for information regarding Arafat's "personal" finances.
But rumors--and Suha's alleged favors to Arafat's people--aren't good enough. That money--estimates range from $300 million to $3 billion--doesn't belong to Suha.
For over 40 years, Arafat conflated the political fortunes of the Palestinian people with his own political fortune--and he commingled their money with his. There is a word for nations that exist without governments (anarchy), but there is no word for what the Palestinian Authority always was under Arafat: A corrupt state bureaucracy without a country.
Arafat's Palestinian Authority spent more than a billion dollars a year to administer the West Bank and Gaza during the late '90s, says the International Monetary Fund.
But Arafat's PA wasn't no model of fiscal governance. It lavished international donations and Palestinian tax money on an army of 122,000 politically connected civil servants to administer government services to a population of just 3.5 million. Palestinian officials told the New York Times that Arafat used state money to "pay salaries, bestow gifts, ensure loyalty, establish embassies, buy arms and pay groups ranging from charities to young fighters."
Beyond Tammany-style "honest graft" and Saddam-style terrorist payoffs, there is good evidence that Arafat diverted hundreds of millions to private, personal accounts outside of the Palestinian territories.
One piece of evidence: The Times has reported that Suha lives on as much as $100,000 a month in Paris. Europe must pick up that alleged money trail from Suha's doorstep.
France, and Europe, possess clear jurisdiction. Estate successions and money transfers are not private events. If Arafat was unaccountable to his people in life, international law makes him accountable in death.
Money transfers within and across Europe are subject to strict standards enforced by central governments and by the European Union. Europe's multi-lateral Financial Action Task Force has laid out standards that require financial benefactors and beneficiaries to disclose the sources and uses of funds and assets.
An honest accounting may serve to honor Arafat as well. A clear balance sheet of the fiscal aspects of his life will prove whether or not the magnanimous tribute proffered by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres last week--that Arafat lived for his people--was true in life and in death.
ARABNEWS.COM

Rebel soldiers of the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement hold weapons on a vehicle in the rebel stronghold of Bouake, Nov. 17. (Reuters File Photo)

French residents and other expatriatesÕ flight from Ivory Coast demonstrates how far this one-time bastion of stability in Africa has fallen. The country is a dangerous mess in which France has become deeply bogged down, with more than 5,000 troops on the ground facing virulent public hostility, in contrast to its traditional close ties to a former colony.
From an international perspective, the situation in Ivory Coast has been allowed to drift for too long. The country was once a model of post-colonial development. Now thousands of refugees are fleeing across the border. The conflict--ethnic, not ideological--threatens to destabilise West African neighbours in an already volatile and war-ravaged region. It is also a test case for collaborative international peace efforts.
It may be tempting to draw parallels between the French in Ivory Coast and the US in Iraq. That would be misleading. French troops deserve credit for holding the line for the past two years between the country's warring north and south. During that time they have been joined by West African forces, replaced this year by a bigger UN peacekeeping mission. In the latest showdown, Paris has won an unusual degree of international backing. But it has also clearly mismanaged its role.
Ivory Coast had been coming apart for several years before France intervened to halt a full-scale bloodbath. But the settlement France imposed was never going to work. It kept President Laurent Gbagbo in place, although he was distrusted in Paris, and imposed terms he could never sell to his supporters by insisting leaders of the armed rebellion join the government. Mr Gbagbo is clearly not up to the task of reconciling his country. By using the power of the streets, he has unleashed forces he may be unable to control.
When France destroyed the Ivoirian air force this month, in retaliation for bombing raids that broke the ceasefire and killed nine French soldiers, it nipped a fresh offensive in the bud. But it miscalculated the reaction, and can no longer play the honest broker.
What can be done for a country where two sides are intent on fighting each other? The UN arms embargo imposed on Monday is belated but welcome, as are the efforts of South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to organise negotiations. The French military mission must now be fully incorporated into a multilateral operation. French troops cannot responsibly pull out unless or until similarly capable units are ready to replace them. The US and Britain are too tied up in Iraq to do so. This could be another occasion when the fledgling European Union reaction force could complement UN and African peacekeepers, as it did in the Congo. But such intervention will succeed only if both warring factions have been forced to recognise that neither can win a bloody civil war.
FT.COM

A full arsenal of diplomatic tricks has been tried on behalf of Darfur, the western province of Sudan where the government is orchestrating genocide. A number of A-list statesmen--Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan--have journeyed to Sudan to demand an end to the killing; still the genocide continues. Cease-fires, undertakings and protocols have been negotiated and signed; still the genocide continues. Two U.N. Security Council resolutions have condemned the government's behavior; still the genocide continues.
Sudan's pragmatic dictatorship has bowed in the past to determined external pressure. It expelled Osama bin Laden and negotiated an end to its long-running war with rebels in the south, both thanks to the threat of sanctions. But Sudan's rulers do not make concessions if they don't have to do so, and they believe they can exterminate tens of thousands of people in Darfur and get away with it. When outsiders wax especially indignant, the junta signs another protocol and makes a tactical concession. But its strategy remains unchanged: to cement control over Darfur by decimating the tribes that back various local rebels.
The first phony concession came in April. Sudan's government signed on to a cease-fire, promising to "refrain from any act of violence or any other abuse on civilian populations." Since then the government has participated in unprovoked assaults on villages, murdering men, raping women and tossing children into flames that consume their huts. In July Sudan's rulers signed a communique with Mr. Annan, promising to "ensure that no militias are present in all areas surrounding Internally Displaced Persons camps." Since then militias have continued to encircle the camps, raping women and girls who venture out in search of firewood. In August Sudan's government promised Jan Pronk, Mr. Annan's envoy, to provide a list of militia leaders. No list has been forthcoming. Last week, in a concession that perhaps reflected nervousness about the approaching Security Council meeting in Kenya, the government signed two new protocols, committing itself among other things to "protect the rights of Internally Displaced Persons." A few hours later, government forces stormed a camp for displaced people.
In sum, the considered judgment of Sudan's rulers is that they can flout international commitments with impunity. Unless that judgment can be changed, the Security Council session in Kenya will not achieve anything. Sudan's dictatorship must be credibly threatened with sanctions that target officials responsible for war crimes, and these officials must also be made to face the possibility of prosecution. Beyond that, outsiders need to recognize that there is little prospect of security for Darfur's people--and therefore little prospect of a return to destroyed villages, a resumption of agricultural production and an escape from starvation--without a serious peacekeeping force. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N. commander in Rwanda during the genocide a decade ago, has suggested that a force of 44,000 is needed. Charles R. Snyder, the senior State Department official on Sudan, has estimated that securing Darfur would take 60 to 70 battalions.
More than a year and a half into Darfur's genocide, the United States and its allies have proved unwilling to consider that kind of commitment. They have moved at a snail's pace to support a 3,500-strong African Union force, which in any case would be inadequate; the record of deploying underpowered peacekeepers in war zones is that the peacekeepers get humiliated. The allies are starting to discuss another U.N. resolution, but this seems likely yet again to lack a real threat of sanctions.
WASHINGTONPOST.
COM

US President George W. Bush (l) listens to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice speak after Bush nominated her to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state, Nov. 16. (Reuters File Photo)

U.S. President George W. Bush's nomination of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell consolidates the control over U.S. foreign policy of the coalition of hawks that promoted the war in Iraq, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.
The promotion of Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to take her place in the White House also confirms Cheney's preeminence in Bush's second term.
A major booster of national missile defense and the development of "usable" mini-nuclear weapons, Hadley held a key policy position under the vice president when Cheney served as Pentagon chief under Bush's father, from 1989 to 1993.
Growing speculation that another Cheney ally, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, will be nominated to serve as deputy secretary of state under Rice is adding to the impression that the hawks are on the verge of a clean sweep.
"This is a statement that Bush sees that what he's done in his first term is the way he wants to go into the second term, if not a bit more so," said Jonathan Clarke, a former British analyst based at the libertarian Cato Institute and co-author of America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order.
"It's a way of saying, 'If you liked what you saw in the first administration, you're going to love the second one,'" he added in an interview.
Although Rice began her tenure as Bush's national security adviser a traditional "realist," stressing the importance of bolstering U.S. alliances and of committing U.S. troops overseas only in cases where vital national interests were threatened, she was careful from the outset to avoid alienating right-wing forces, particularly Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
On key issues, particularly surrounding the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the U.S. posture toward Iran and North Korea, she more often either aligned herself with or deferred to the hawks, especially Cheney, than she sided with Powell.
Rice appears to have been picked to run the State Department as much for her fierce personal loyalty to Bush as for her own foreign-policy views.
Recommended originally by former Secretary of State George Shultz to serve as Bush's principal foreign-policy adviser during his 2000 campaign, Rice, who shares a love of football and physical fitness with the president, hit it off immediately with the future leader.
During the last five years, she has frequently spent weekends at the presidential retreat at Camp David or at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with the Bush family.
The closeness of her relationship with Bush would normally be seen as a plus by the foreign service officers who toil at the State Department, because it ensures that their views will heard in the White House.
According to James Mann, author of a highly regarded study of the Bush war cabinet, Rise of the Vulcans., that may yet turn out to be the case. "The White House saw Powell as an independent force and an independent operator," he told IPS, adding that such independence limited his influence.
"Rice, who will be more hawkish, will also now be the spokesman for the State Department and for diplomacy within the administration, and I can imagine situations where, once in a while, the same policies that would have been rejected if they came from Powell might get a better reception at the White House because they came from Rice."
ANTIWAR.COM