'BMW Collision Affair' in China fuels rage over the newly rich

By Christopher Bodeen
The Associated Press

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On a balmy October day, the wife of an engineering tycoon leaped from her $96,000 BMW X5 in Harbin, a northeastern industrial city. Su Xiuwen angrily accused farmer Dai Yiquan of scratching her car mirror with his vegetable wagon.

After slapping Dai, an enraged Su climbed behind the wheel and plowed into 13 onlookers, killing the farmer's wife.

At her trial, Su claimed she accidentally placed the automatic transmission in drive and had not meant to hurt anyone. A judge acquitted her of manslaughter but gave her a two-year suspended sentence for negligence.

Six months later, stoked by online discussion, the case has become a lightning rod for disgust at newly wealthy Chinese, who have prospered while millions of workers and farmers struggle to get by.

"This society has become really unfair. With money and connections, you can arrange anything. And you don't have to follow the laws," said Zhang Ming, a security guard at a suburban Shanghai apartment complex catering to the newly wealthy.

Some of the outrage in Su's case followed allegations that her father-in-law was a powerful local official whose influence sheltered her from legal sanction. Investigators and officials denied she had any relationship to top officials or received special treatment.

Public anger vented on the Internet and in tabloids and news magazines prompted a rare government response. A new police investigation was ordered into the accident, although the results, released last week, supported the original finding.

The percolating resentment is aimed at Chinese who have profited from reforms that have dumped the old economy for raw capitalism, while retaining opaque political and legal systems.

Many of the wealthy are government officials or politically connected businessmen who use their ties to secure land, contracts and real estate, generating fantastic private wealth from state assets.

The trend is especially strong in Harbin, a rust-belt city with vast expanses of decaying factories leavened by little private industry.
 
China's economic reforms have produced a growing income gap. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, fewer than 20 percent of China's people now control about 80 percent of the nation's private wealth.

Those new facts of life are especially hard on older Chinese, who recall how the former economy praised workers and farmers, and most people were equally poor.

The newly rich enjoy ostentatious displays of wealth — villas secured behind high fences, imported cars and private schooling — while most of the population is poor, sometimes earning only a few hundred dollars a year.

Still worse is the sense of insecurity, with wave after wave of layoffs at state-run factories and only about 10 percent of the population covered by health insurance.

The new rich publicly show little sense of charity or social conscience. Some have spirited ill-gotten wealth abroad, leaving behind bankrupt companies and destitute workers.

The Internet is giving voice to much of this anger, allowing the public to vent outside the entirely state-controlled press and ineffectual government complaint offices.

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