As the economy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has boomed in the past decade, raising living standards for many of its citizens, incidents of social protest also have risen dramatically. Economic development has brought about or exacerbated a host of economic, social, and political problems, including income inequality, environmental pollution, official corruption, and ambiguous property rights, which in turn have fueled grievances. To a large extent, the PRC government at various levels has been unable or unwilling to mitigate social anger. Social unrest in China affects ongoing U.S. policies promoting human rights and democracy in China and broader considerations about engagement with the PRC. In the short run, social unrest raises many human rights concerns toward China among many U.S. policy-makers. In the medium term, ongoing U.S. efforts to promote civil society and the rule of law in the PRC could help people and institutions in China to develop legal understanding and procedures for expressing and resolving social grievances. In the longer run, social unrest may adversely affect the business climate for foreign investment, the pace of economic reforms (including compliance with WTO commitments), political stability in the PRC, and Chinese foreign policy. Some analysts argue that the challenges of addressing grievances and controlling protests will encourage Beijing to seek a stable international environment in which it can focus on domestic economic growth and social stability. Others argue that social unrest may cause Beijing to adopt a more hostile international posture. Social unrest could also undermine the power of the Chinese Communist Party, although current indicators do not point to a significant loss of political control. Policy options for Congress include monitoring the situation, increasing assistance for local democracy, civil society, and rule-of-law programs in China, supporting a free press and independent judiciary, or pressing the Chinese government to respect the rights of protestors and release jailed activists. According to Chinese Communist Party sources, social unrest grew by nearly 50% from early 2004 through 2005, culminating in a particularly violent episode in December 2005. China's Public Security Ministry reportedly declared that there were 87,000 cases of "public order disturbance"—including protests, demonstrations, picketing, and group petitioning—in 2005 compared to 74,000 reported cases in 2004. In 2003, the PRC government reportedly cited more than 58,000 "major incidents of social unrest" involving an estimated 3 million to 10 million persons, of which 700, or less than 2%, involved clashes with police, while a Hong Kong-based labor rights group estimated that the number of labor demonstrations reached 300,000 that year. The December 2005 clash between villagers and People's Armed Police (PAP) in Dongzhou village (Shanwei city), southeastern Guangdong province, in which 3-20 villagers were killed, became a symbol of the depth of anger of those with grievances and the unpredictability of the outcomes of social disputes. While social unrest has not placed China in imminent danger of widespread political upheaval, it has caused alarm among the Communist Party leadership and influenced the policy direction of the national government. Economic reforms and growth in China, which took off in the early 1990s, have given rise to a middle class of an estimated 100 million persons as well as a "two-tier" society of haves and have-nots. Many of China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs), once the principal source of urban employment, have been disbanded, restructured, or privatized, leading to millions of layoffs. Egregious labor abuses have long been reported in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs), where foreign-invested companies produce Chinese goods for export. Urban development has displaced homes and farmland and created environmental degradation in the countryside. Growing numbers of laid-off SOE workers, workers in the SEZs, peasants and urban residents who have lost their farmland or homes, and others have engaged in mass protests, some of them violent, often after having exhausted legal channels for resolving grievances. The poor in China lack not only economic but also political resources. Workers are not allowed to form unions independent of the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Most reported protests, triggered by official unresponsiveness, corruption, violation of citizens' rights and laws, or repressive tactics by authorities, began peacefully. Popular protests also have been further fueled by a growing awareness and understanding of legal rights. Although rural incomes increased nearly six-fold between 1978 and 2000, they could not keep up with urban incomes, and by the late 1990s, peasant incomes began to stagnate while rural unemployment rose to nearly 20%. Declining social services due to the de-collectivization of the rural economy and rising taxes and fees gave rise to many grievances. Collective protest activity, which occurred daily in some provinces during this period, ranged from petitioning government officials to violent outbursts. In response to these protests, the central and local governments began to institute tax reforms in 2002. These new regulations significantly reduced financial burdens of farmers and reportedly helped boost rural incomes by 15%-40% in some areas. However, such measures may provide only a temporary reprieve from social unrest in the countryside, for they have not seriously addressed other underlying problems such as corruption, weak legal institutions, and intense competition among local governments to attract investment and offset declining revenues. In the past few years, a new kind of protest has appeared, caused by anger over local development projects and resulting land confiscation and environmental degradation. The lack of property rights in China has led to many governmental abuses at the local level. The country's first comprehensive bill on property rights, which purportedly would help both wealthy private entrepreneurs and common citizens protect their rights to property, was shelved at the annual session of the National People's Congress in March 2006 following opposition from conservative leaders. A majority of Chinese peasants have long term (30 year) land-use contracts but not ownership or the right to sell them. When land takings occur, farmers are entitled only to compensation based upon agricultural output and resettlement costs. Village, township, and county governments generally receive the lion's share of the price of the "sale" or transfer of land-use rights to the developer. Violent clashes between demonstrators and police have erupted in not only poor regions in China's interior, but also rich coastal areas, where development pressures are heavy. Furthermore, in these areas, communications links to the outside are more developed and political fallout is more likely. The following are examples of recent protests in rural areas (see Figure 1 ): In January 2006, hundreds or thousands of protesters clashed with police over inadequate compensation for farmland taken for industrial use in Panlong village, Sanjiao township, Guangdong province. A teenage girl reportedly was killed. In December 2005, a dispute over the construction of an electricity-generating plant and related property seizures culminated in a violent clash in Dongzhou village near Shanwei city, Guangdong province, in which 3-20 demonstrators were killed. PRC authorities suspended the deputy police chief of Shanwei, restricted movement in and out of the area, imposed a news blackout, and arrested three protest leaders. The year-long conflict included villagers filing formal complaints, setting up roadblocks, and kidnaping local officials; government officials visiting Dongzhou; local authorities detaining and releasing village leaders; and the mysterious death of a village accountant who had supported the farmers' demands. In August 2005, police beat villagers protesting against pollution from a battery factory in Zhejiang province. In August 2005, unemployed residents of Daye, Hubei province, attacked government offices and destroyed cars after police used dogs to break up a demonstration over an official plan to annex Daye to a larger city, Huangshi. In September 2005, a Chinese court sentenced 10 persons to prison terms ranging from one to five years for their involvement in the protests. In July 2005, residents of Taishi village near Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, submitted a petition to remove their village chief for plundering public funds. After one of their leaders was arrested, 1,500 villagers clashed with 500 armed police. In September 2005, police seized government documents that villagers had been guarding to use in their legal case alleging official corruption, and shut down an Internet website that had been reporting on the unrest. In March 2006, protest leader Feng Quisheng lost an election bid for the township People's Congress. His supporters claimed that Feng's opponent engaged in vote-buying and that proxy votes were not accepted. In July 2005, farmers in Xinchang, 200 km. south of Shanghai, attacked a pharmaceutical plant because of anger and lack of redress over pollution that it emitted. In June 2005, about 100 miles southwest of Beijing, approximately 300 hired thugs attacked a group of farmers who had camped on disputed land that the local government had planned to use to build a power plant. The farmers protested the lack of proper compensation for their land. Six villagers reportedly were killed in the attack, which was captured on video by a protester and shown on Chinese websites. Communist authorities fired the local party chief and mayor and returned the farmland. In April 2005, 20,000 peasants from several villages in Huaxi township, Zhejiang province, who had been complaining for four years of industrial pollution from an industrial park that had ruined their agricultural livelihood, fought with police. Before the protests, local elected village councils and the township communist party secretary had made futile pleas to higher authorities to respond to the peasants' concerns. The factories eventually were shut down while protest leaders were arrested. October 2004: Over 10,000 farmers facing relocation because of a new dam in Ya'an, Sichuan, demonstrated while PAP units were called in, resulting in the deaths of at least one protester and two policemen. Both political analysts and PRC leaders perceive protests by Chinese workers generally as having greater potential political impact than protests by farmers.