Frustrations boiled over in Zhushan village in Hunan province a few days ago, as people trying to take the bus to Lingling town were confronted with price gouging.  Roland has the links, and pictures!

      People are still traveling for the Chinese New Year holiday.  Demand for public transport is high; so the owner of the local bus company, who seems to have some sort of monopoly rights on this particular route, tried to take advantage of the situation.  Here’s an excerpt from a Boxun story (translation by Roland):

During the spring travel season, the Anda Transport Company which manages the bus line between Zhushan town and Lingling raised the ticket price from 6 RMB to 10-15 RMB.  At around 10am on March 9, 2007, a large group of people gathered at the bus station to demand the ticket price be lowered.

The boss of Anda Transport Company arrived at the scene in the company of a carload of people who were ready to threaten the people.  But they were prevented from doing so.  The boss then announced to the assembly: he was going to take his buses away, which stirred the crowd to stronger dissastisfaction. The crowd then overturned four of the buses belonging to the Anda Transport Company. The event had
  escalated.
 

On March 10, the ticket price had not come down.  The bus company boss came with dozens of unidentified men to
  intimidate the crowd, who became more incensed.  At around 2pm, about 10,000 people were assembled and some of them set one of the Anda buses at the station on fire.  At the time, the bus company boss said: "I’ll offer 20 million RMB to raze Zhushan town to the ground." This really made the people at the scene very, very angry.  More and more people showed up and things got worse.  The fire department came to put out the fire.

      Eventually, riot police were called in, people were beaten, and one person was reportedly killed.

      At one level, this is just another example of a local tyrant, the bus company operator, who takes advantage of his position, and his connections with local officials, to line his pockets.  The fusing of economic interest and political power is commonplace in China today.

     On another level, however, this is a reminder of the hollowness of the calls for a "new socialist countryside" emanating from the National People’s Congress meetings going on right now in Beijing.  And that is why this incident is not being reported in the Chinese press.  Beneath all of the happy talk is the continuing desperate reality of many people in rural areas, shut out from the economic boom and subject to systemic abuses of political-economic power.  The Zhushan incident is one small corner of a larger legitimacy problem for the Communist Party.  Mencius makes the connection:

Mencius said: "The tyrants Chieh and Chou lost the people – that’s why they lost all beneath Heaven.  And it was in losing the people’s hearts that they lost the people.

"The way to win over all beneath Heaven is to win over the people.  The way to win over the people is to win over the people’s hearts.  And the way to win over the people’s hearts is to surround them with what they want and keep them clear of what they hate. (129)

     The people of Zhushan do not want a whole lot, just a fair chance to make a living and freedom from petty tyrants who can arbitrarily manipulate prices and political power.

       If Beijing does not respond to such incidents openly and effectively, they will lose the hearts of the people (have they lost them already in big parts of the countryside?) and, thus, lose all under Heaven.