Wednesday's clash in Anxian county — one of the hardest-hit areas from last May's quake — left an unspecified number of farmers and police injured and calm was restored after 100 police were brought in, the official Xinhua News Agency said late Friday.
Xinhua reported that tensions flared after five villagers said they were denied subsidies and beat the head of Yongquan village. After some of the farmers were detained for the beating, 20 more villagers then surrounded the local police station.
An official in Anxian county's propaganda office played down the conflict but confirmed that a dispute occurred over relief subsidies. The official said farmers were dredging sand from a river bed for construction and when local officials tried to stop them, they raised the issue of quake subsidies.
"Police from neighboring areas gathered to maintain the order, (but) no clash broke out in the township," said the official, who would only give his surname, Xi.
The misuse of relief supplies and funds has been a constant problem since only a few days after the 7.9-magnitude earthquake jolted Sichuan province and surrounding areas on May 12, leaving 90,000 people dead or missing and 5 million homeless. Victims complained that local officials were giving tents and relief supplies to relatives and friends, rather than to people most in need.
The authoritarian government in Beijing has allocated 70 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) for reconstruction and has vowed to monitor carefully how funds are spent to prevent corruption. Disaster relief funds have been a favorite target of local officials. In 2007, some 258 million yuan in disaster relief funds were diverted to construct government buildings or spent on administration, according to a government audit.
In the Anxian county dispute, Xinhua said the local government is investigating whether subsidies were misallocated.
Deputy Foreign Minister Li Hui also told Russian Ambassador Sergey Razov that China "cannot accept the incident and expresses strong dissatisfaction," according to a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry's Web site.
Li called on Russia to do its best to search for eight crew members who went missing after the sinking in waters near Vladivostok.
"China was shocked by this incident," he said.
Russian news agencies reported earlier that Russian border guards opened fire last weekend on the Chinese cargo ship as it sailed off the Russian far eastern port city, and that it later sank in a storm.
Russia's Interfax news agency said the New Star, carrying a crew of 16 sailors from China and Indonesia, was fleeing border guards in the Sea of Japan when the shooting occurred. The guards were pursuing the ship because it had left the port of Nakhodka without notifying authorities, it said.
On Friday, Interfax quoted Russia's Foreign Ministry as saying that the captain of the ship was to blame because he violated border laws and refused to stop his ship when warning shots were fired.
"We regret the tragic consequences of these events. However, we lay the whole responsibility for what happened on the New Star captain, who acted extremely irresponsibly," Interfax quoted ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko as saying.
Interfax earlier said the New Star had turned around after being shot at but started sinking as a storm struck.
The sailors jumped into two lifeboats but strong waves overturned one of them and border guards were only able to rescue eight crew members, it said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Thursday that 10 members of the crew were Chinese and only three had been rescued.
Interfax said rescuers had searched the freezing waters for the bodies of the missing sailors.
Biaoxin Chemical Company caused "massive" tap water pollution in Yancheng, a city in east Jiangsu province, forcing the closure of two out of three tap water plants, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Water supplies were restored after a five-hour shutdown Friday, Xinhua said.
There were no reports of immediate health problems and the Yancheng government Web site posted a notice Saturday saying that drinking water is safe.
Investigators identified the pollutant as a phenol compound used to make products including air fresheners, medical ointments, cosmetics and sunscreens.
The Beijing News newspaper said that hundreds of thousands of people had their water cut.
In recent years, a series of high-profile industrial accidents along major rivers have disrupted water supplies to big cities, as the nation's booming economy brought more heavily polluting industries.
Local police have "controlled" the owners of the Biaoxin Chemical Company, Xinhua said, without giving further details. The term in Chinese is vague but implies the owners were detained.
Last year, heavy pollution turned portions of the Han river, a branch of the Yangtze, in central Hubei province red and foamy, forcing the government to cut water supplies to as many as 200,000 people.
In 2005 in one of China's worst cases of river pollution, carcinogenic chemicals, including benzene, spilled into the Songhua River. The northeastern city of Harbin was forced to sever water supplies to 3.8 million people for five days. The accident also strained relations with Russia, into which the poisoned waters flowed.
The country's cites are among the world's smoggiest, and the government says its major rivers, canals and lakes are badly polluted by industrial, agricultural and household pollution, with 200 million rural inhabitants without access to safe drinking water in 2008.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi focused on economic and environmental issues, while Chinese activists said police had sought to muzzle them during Clinton's high-profile visit.
Giving hope for new cooperation between the world powers, Clinton and Yang told a press conference they had already begun planning for the Group of 20 summit in London on April 2.
The pair were to meet again next month in the United States to coordinate positions for the summit where Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintaofirst meeting since Obama took office in January. were to hold their
"We believe that by working together we will be able to tide over this financial crisis," Yang said.
Reforming global financial regulations and international economic institutions will be among the top agenda items at the summit.
One of export-driven China's chief concerns is that the United States, the world's biggest economy, will put up trade barriers, as evidenced by a "Buy American" clause in the huge US stimulus package approved last week.
But Yang said after their meeting that he and Clinton had agreed to "reject trade and investment protectionism".
For the US side, Clinton indicated Yang had given her an assurance that China would continue to buy US Treasury bonds, which is seen as vital for the United States to help pay for its 787-billion-dollar stimulus package.
"I greatly appreciate China's continued confidence in United States Treasuries," Clinton told a joint press conference with Yang.
Yang was more circumspect, but signalled China would not deviate drastically from its US Treasury policies.
"We will make further determinations about the ways and the means we will use our foreign exchange reserves," he said.
"(But) I want to emphasise here that facts speak louder than words."
Clinton said the two countries -- the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters -- agreed they had a "shared interest" in producing a successful deal at the Copenhagen summit in December aimed at combatting climate change.
"The United States and China will build an important partnership to develop and deploy clean energy technologies designed to speed our transformation to low-carbon economies," Clinton said.
Accompanied by her climate change envoy Todd Stern, she visited a General Electric power plant in Beijing that runs on natural gas, to highlight potential cooperation on clean energy.
"This plant could be a model," Clinton said as she urged the Chinese to pursue economic growth based on clean energy and avoid the mistakes the United States and Europe made during their industrialisation last century.
On Friday, Clinton angered Amnesty International and others critical of communist China's attitude towards human rights when she said she would not allow the issue to block progress on the most pressing global problems.
The Chinese Human Rights Defenders group also said Saturday that a number of dissidents had been put under residential surveillance, questioned and followed by Beijing police in an effort to silence them during Clinton's visit.
Both Clinton and Yang said they had discussed human rights issues, but stuck to general comments.
Clinton said it was an "essential aspect" of US foreign policy, while Yang said it was "natural" for such different countries not to see eye to eye on human rights.
Clinton met Hu shortly after meeting Premier Wen Jiabao.
In their meeting, Wen remarked that "the global financial crisis is having a big impact on the entire world", and praised Clinton's call for international cooperation.
On Sunday, Clinton will attend a church service and meet civil society leaders before flying home.
Clinton began her Asian trip, her first overseas trip as secretary of state, in Japan on Monday, and then visited Indonesia and South Korea.
The two nations also agreed Saturday to cooperate in stabilizing the global economy and combating climate change, putting aside long-standing concerns about human rights.
With the export-heavy Chinese economy reeling from the U.S. downturn, Clinton sought in meetings with Premier Wen Jiabao and other top Chinese government leaders to reassure Beijing that its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury notes and other government debt would remain a good investment.
"I appreciate greatly the Chinese government's continuing confidence in United States treasuries. I think that's a well-grounded confidence," Clinton told reporters at a joint news conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.
"We have every reason to believe that the United States and China will recover, and together we will help lead the world recovery," she said.
After a day of talks on her first visit to China as America's top diplomat, Clinton and Yang said a regular high-level U.S.-China dialogue on economic matters would be expanded to include security issues.
Details of the dialogue are to be finalized by President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao when they meet at an economic summit in London in early April, Clinton said.
Yang said China wants its foreign exchange reserves — the world's largest at $1.95 trillion — invested safely, with good value and liquidity. He said future decisions on using them would be based on those principles, but added that China wanted to continue work with the U.S.
"I want to emphasize here that the facts speak louder than words. The fact is that China and the United States have conducted good cooperation, and we are ready to continue to talk with the U.S. side," Yang said.
Beijing is the last and perhaps most important stop on Clinton's weeklong visit to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China on which she wanted to focus on the economy and global warming.
China last year surpassed the United States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases and Clinton said she and Chinese officials had agreed to develop clean energy technology that would use renewable sources and safely store the dirty emissions from burning coal.
Visiting a new gas-fueled power plant in Beijing, Clinton urged China not to repeat the "same mistakes" western countries had made when they developed.
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