Venturing into unreported China
China has pledged more freedoms for reporters ahead of next year's Olympics, but when the BBC's Dan Griffiths travelled to the countryside to investigate reports of unrest he was detained and questioned.

File image of a policeman standing in front of the Chinese flag
China wants to keep reports of rural unrest under wraps

The village of Shengyou is a three hour drive south of Beijing, deep in the countryside surrounded by fields of maize.

A traditional landscape found across this vast nation - but everything is not as it seems.

My taxi driver tells me that the police have set up checkpoints round the village. He refuses to go any further - so I go the rest of the way on foot.

I walk down a narrow lane with broad poplar trees on either side. A small tractor chugs by, the driver stares at me - foreigners are rarely seen around here.

Round a bend in the road, I see two white vans. Several policemen are standing beside them. They look as out of place in rural China as I do.

The questions come thick and fast. What am I doing? Where have I come from? Who is my contact in the village?

Over the course of the next few hours they will ask me this last question again and again. From nowhere a black car pulls up and I am ushered inside.

Battle of Shengyou

Two years ago there was a riot in Shengyou. In the early hours of a November morning a gang of more than 100 men entered the village.

Footage of the clashes in the Chinese village
The 2005 clash was caught on video and widely disseminated

They were wearing camouflage gear and construction helmets, some armed with hunting rifles, clubs and shovels.

What happened next was filmed by a local resident and smuggled out to the international media.

The video showed a series of bloody clashes between the villagers and the attackers. Gunshots could be heard above the shouting and screaming.

When the fighting finally stopped, six people lay dead, more than 50 were injured.

With the dramatic footage circulating, the authorities moved quickly.

State media said the Shengyou residents had been resisting the takeover of their property by an electricity company which wanted to build a power plant.

It emerged that there had been a similar clash earlier in the year, which had gone unreported. Several local officials were sacked and the villagers won their claim to stay on the land.

But now the police are back in Shengyou.

'Welcome to Dingzhou'

I am in the backseat of the black car on the way to the nearby town of Dingzhou.

Next to me is one of the men from the checkpoint. He is not wearing a police uniform and refuses to give me his name or show me any ID.

Map

The questions keep on coming - how do I know about Shengyou? Why was I on foot?

I tell him that my taxi driver was too scared to go near the village. He laughs. At one point he reaches over and tries to grab my mobile phone.

I ask some questions of my own - why are they detaining me? What is going on in Shengyou? He says nothing.

At the town's government headquarters, an official shakes my hand. "You are welcome to Dingzhou," he says, pretending that I am an honoured guest.

We sit around a large oval table. I am on one side, officials are on the other. Several refuse to give me their names. They want to see my journalist's identity card. And again the questions.

New regulations issued this year were supposed to give foreign journalists much greater freedom to travel around the country.

They were also supposed to mean less harassment from local officials - a common problem in the past and one that has not gone away.

I tell them I heard reports about problems in the village and had come down to look around.

People living near Shengyou say that armed police were sent into the village two weeks ago.


It is not until the next day that my driver discovers that while we were eating someone tampered with our car

That was after residents dug up the bodies of those who had died in the violence in November 2005. They wanted to protest at the lack of official compensation for the families of those who were killed or injured then.

What is happening in Shengyou is not unique. It is another reminder of growing social tensions in rural China.

The government has admitted that there were tens of thousands of rural protests last year. Many are about land grabs like the one attempted in Shengyou, others about corruption or the growing gap between rich and poor.

The authorities in Beijing say they want to do something about these problems - but often officials at the local level ignore these edicts.

Heading home

The interview is over. Officials say they will escort me back to the highway.

I meet up with my driver, who has been waiting for me. Three officials also get in the car. They sit either side of me on the back seat. Another in the front.

A woman walks past high-rise buildings in Beijing
This is the China the government wants to portray

As we drive out of town a black car comes alongside. The driver says we must pull over. This game of cat and mouse continues up the highway to Beijing. Finally I tell my driver to ignore them and head home.

"Have you been to Beijing before?" I ask the officials. They laugh nervously.

Then I see blue and red flashing lights. The police will not say why they have stopped us, nor will they say when we can go. We wait at the side of the road.

Up ahead there is a big neon sign lit up in green - "One World, One Dream". It is the official slogan of the Beijing Olympics.

"Is this how you will treat journalists when China hosts the Olympics?" I ask one of them. "Oh, everything will be different then," he says.

Then another car pulls up, with representatives from the local office of China's foreign ministry. I know my colleagues in Beijing have been pressing the foreign ministry to take action.

"There has been a terrible mistake, we are so sorry." They insist that we must go out for dinner with the officials from Dingzhou, then we can go back to Beijing.

It is a strange experience sitting round the same table with the men who detained me.

It is not until the next day that my driver discovers that while we were eating, someone tampered with our car by removing several of the bolts that attach the wheels to the chassis.

It is nearly midnight by the time we arrive back in Beijing. We drive down the wide, brightly-lit boulevards, past the new office blocks.

This is the China that Beijing wants the world to see. But in Shengyou there is another China - a world that goes unreported by the country's state-run media.

China's president, Hu Jintao, has promised to build what he calls a "harmonious society", but three hours south of Beijing no-one in power seems to be listening.

It's like owt else, if you don't annoy it it won't bite you.

They tell you not to go to these places. If you go, expect what you get. Why wouldn't his driver go with him?? Because he'd been told not to go there.

I've wandered freely all over the place for the last ten months, no-one pulled me up anywhere. People stare at me as well, it's not unusual. And if you can find me car in China with all the bolts 'that hold the wheels onto the chassis' ( ) all in there, it's a new experience.

I've seen your photo - I would imagine people stare at you over here!!

But you're not surely defending the human rights of le chine surely?

Cheeky melt.

Well it hasn't cropped up has it, marra??

What we've got here is a gobshite BBC journalist chancing his arm. He was lifted and interviewed and booted back to Beijing, the area his press pass covers him for. He evidently knows the status quo and decided to flaunt it. He learned a lesson. Next time they'll revoke his licence and throw him out. It's a non-story.

What would we do to a Chinese journalist wandering round Porton Down or GCHQ??

Don't you go believing any of this western propaganda Kev, just stick to the little red book. Chairman Mao reckons that Ali Gibb will play in goal today by the way.

Is it Porton Down tho - what do you know about the place involved here
what do you know about this type of thing in other areas of china?

wanker journo or not, fookin funny way to go on

I know that there are prohibited areas. I know that if you go into them, you are detained and escorted out of them. Consequently, best not to go into them. Particularly on foot with your big Western nose leading. We Westerners tend to stick out like a fish in a tree here so it's pretty hard to sneak anywhere!!

We have plenty of prohibited areas in England as well. Go wandering round Fylingdales, Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Brize Norton, Windscale, Faslane or the outside of any secure unit and you'll be stopped and questioned. You just shouldn't be there.

I've wandered around Lakenheath and Mildenhall before, without being questioned. Mind you it was nearly 30 years ago, when I was in the RAF.

We English, we're so superior......

The story seems to be like Vietnam in many ways. There is a declaration on the immigration card that says 'journalist' which you'd be a fool to tick.

Several parts of Vietnam (the West, near the border with Cambodia where various hilltribes live is one) are out of bounds, due to the government attacking the locals there. Several hundred rolled up in Cambodia not three years ago - stating that they had been attacked and many killed. These were the people who fought with the yanks in the 'American war'. The Vietnamese state holds grudges apparently.

China seems to be in a mini state of flux at the moment. The cities on the Eastern seaboard seem to be getting more liberal in many ways, yet there are many skeletons in the closet. One has to be suspicious of any country that prescribes BBC/CNN and limits the freedom of the press.

It is a police state, let's face it, with the last vestiges of communism used as an excuse to prop up an unelected group of people. I would argue that the story above is newsworthy as it shows how ordinary Chinese people live have to go through their lives.

China is also responsible for the de-facto occupation of Tibet, Inner Mongolia, the Uigur region to the West. They are building up their military and undertaking experiments in space warfare. They repeatedly threaten to wipe out Taiwan and are friends with Burma. It's also apparent how they respond to serious demonstrations at home as the events of 1989 have proved and elements of this story demonstrate.

The olympics are an experiment in the hope that by interaction with the international community China might become more open and liberal. It's a nice place to go in many, many ways and yet it is always wise to keep a fairly cynical eye on what actually makes the country tick, and how far it is possible to push.

that is if we can see the olympics for all of the smog!

The Chinese proscribe the press, particularly CNN because of the 'all hail America' attitudes it promotes. They also disapprove of Hollywood because of the ways that Chinese are depicted, usually as the buck toothed grinning manservant with the nervous laugh. Consequently, because of the stance of the foreign newspapers and American films there is quite a hotbed of anti-semitism here.

But hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. They were starving peasants a mere 60 years ago. Now they're the worlds third largest economy and will soon overtake America. I'd say they're doing OK.

Before you start about yuman rights, 57 people topped themselves in British jails recently. And the difference between that and execution is?

the three biggest economic superpowers in the making for the next century are China, Russia and India. The worrying thing hanging around the first two is their deep-seated resentment,distrust and dislike of what we call the Western world. Indian people, generally speaking, are not great admirers of the US either.
The Russians have already kicked out the Western oil corporations from their country to a large extent. They simply paid some of them off with what they had invested, and the corporations could do little about it, other than to tell their shareholders the bad news. I think the Russians very much enjoyed that, and will enjoy having control over oil and gas supplies to Western Europe in the next 50 years. Bend over, boys!!!!
A lot of UK companies have large financial interests in the Asian manufacturing market, but who's to say certain Asian countries won't view such interests as an unnecessary middleman in future years? They could quite happily be making plenty of money by then and pay off the UK money men, who may be the one of the biggest sources of income for this country at that point in time. Then we will be fooked. Moving manufacturing bases from here makes things cheaper and better for us in the short term, but might well bite us on the arse in 50 years from now!!
Provided of course we don't have a nuclear war by then, as oil is still one of the things any country would be prepared to start one for.

A Vietnamese doctor accused of using the internet to spread criticism of the government has been sentenced to 13 years in jail.

The court in Hanoi also ruled Pham Hong Son should be kept under house arrest for three years after serving his prison sentence.

He was arrested 2002, after publishing an online feature entitled What Is Democracy? from the US State Department's website.

THAT is a human rights issue that may be far removed from what we are used to in the West. And that is what the citizens of these countries have to tip-toe around.

Having lived in Vietnam for a number of years I found that the police enforced the law through fear. Fear of random fines, fear of losing a job, fear of lengthy arrest and imprisonment, not, as we would expect in the West for a serious crime for profit but for 'attacking' the status quo and powers that be. In the UK we call it journalism and freedom of speech; it known as sedition and treason in 'other' countries, China included.

Well the Police don't operate like that in China unless they 'subject' decides that he wants martyrdom. There'd be a knock at the door and a friendly but pointed conversation, much the same as goes on in England. I rarely see a copper who's not shopping unless I go looking for one. Don't forget that you aren't allowed to protest in Westminster these days and ANY gathering can be broken up under the Criminal Justice Act. Picketing is also severly restricted under a Labour government. Just last fortnight, the Labour government took the POA to court to stop them withdrawing their labour. Freedom?? Laughable, as China emerges from oppression that the UK sinks further into it.

Is it preferable that we listen every day to what Rupert Murdoch wants us to believe?? Is that free journalism?? No, it's the Jewish manifesto.

Parmo, I don't see any distrust or dislike of the West here. All I see is a permanent struggle to debunk the myths that fly about, about China. There's no evil yellow toothed monster here, just a country emerging fast from poverty, that's doing rather better than America and America HATES that. They're continually bleating on about China revaluing the yuan so that America can sell them stuff instead of the other way around. Currently they buy the worlds shit, scrap metal, paper/cardboard waste, even fridges, $6bn last year, and recycle them and then sell the products back to the world. I'd call that efficiency but how does the press view it?? Through pictures of mucky recycling plants (are there any clean ones??) with the caption 'polluted China.' There's no way they can win.