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Will China’s rulers listen to the voices of its downtrodden masses?

The six-day-old confrontation between residents and the authorities in the village of Wukan in southern China is dramatic evidence of the volatility of the last major state on earth ruled by a Communist party. Three decades of economic growth since the patriarch Deng Xiaoping partially embraced market mechanisms at the end of the 1970s has made more people materially better off in a shorter space of time than ever before in human history. But that process has thrown up a plethora of problems from which the leadership has generally shied away as it concentrated on two linked objectives – to maintain high economic growth and to ensure the continuation of Communist rule over the world’s most heavily populated country.

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