Staying in the East...

"Chinese Village Protest Turns Into Riot of Thousands"

Reports that two elderly women were killed during a protest against factory pollution have sparked a bloody riot by thousands of villagers in eastern China.

Several dozen police officers were injured, five seriously, during the clashes in Huankantou village, Zhejiang province, on Sunday. It was the latest of several recent violent demonstrations, of a kind that poses an increasingly serious threat to China's stability.

The two protesters were said to have been killed when officials tried to disperse 200 elderly women who had kept a two-week vigil outside a chemical factory that they blamed for ruined crops and deformities in new-born babies.

Yet more riots in China.

Remeber this story when people say either of the following:

a) War with China is imminent/likely/etc.
b) The poor don't care about the environment.

We don't know what is going to happen within China in the next few years, much less what their foreign policy will be. On top of that, as China's environmental problems get worse (!) the protests will be even more widespread. The Iron Denominator keeps on... dividing... stuff. Not the most elegant sentence I've ever written.