South China protesters disrupt rail traffic

Scores of people invaded railway tracks and disrupted rail traffic along a main line straddling Shanghai and five provinces in south China for hours to protest against government rezoning plans, local officials said on Friday.

About 200 protesters stormed the Guixi city railway station in Jiangxi province on Wednesday and sat or stood on the tracks, a news portal run by the Jiangxi provincial government said.

"They were instigated by a small group of people," it said.

Guixi residents fear their city will have to subsidise the relatively poorer Yuehu district if some parts of Guixi are merged with Yuehu. The protesters were also irked the government denied them any say in the merger.Officials said the merger was still being deliberated.

China has witnessed an increasing number of protests and riots, often in rural areas, in recent years, fuelled by a widening wealth gap, corruption and official abuse of power.Several people were injured when protesters clashed with police, a Guixi city government propaganda official surnamed Jiang told Reuters. He declined to elaborate.Postings on another Internet site said police used tear gas.

One resident said demonstrators burned vehicles.Train services between financial hub Shanghai in China's east coast and Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, were not restored until about six hours later. The east-west line also straddles provinces of Zhejiang, Hunan and Guizhou.

Scores of passenger and freight trains were delayed. Local officials declined to give an estimate for economic losses.

Government officials made door-to-door visits on Thursday to try to convince residents not to take to the streets again, the propaganda official said.

The stoppage attracted hundreds of onlookers, the Jiangxi government-run portal said. But a local resident reached by telephone and Internet postings put the number at thousands.

"There was a sea of people. I've never seen so many people in this place before," a receptionist at a hotel near the station said by telephone.

REUTERS