Word: shaanxi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...business is oil. Second, he's running from the police. Liu, who declines to reveal his full name, changes his cell-phone number weekly and won't pass two nights in the same bed. His fugitive life is shared by dozens of other wildcat oilmen in northern China's Shaanxi province, where independent drillers are fighting for compensation after the government seized their wells and detained several of those who complained. "I'm in debt to the banks and most people I know, and I can't even return home to visit my parents," says...
...stepped up its search for proven reserves?witness state-controlled oil giant CNOOC's effort to acquire California-based Unocal over protests from U.S. politicians. On home soil, Beijing now battles its own people. More than 10,000 investors, mostly peasants, secured rights to drill for oil in Shaanxi over the past decade, only to see their holdings nationalized. The drillers characterize the government's strategy as "confiscate now, compensate later," and those who have been paid insist they have not been given enough. In May and June, police arrested nine investors for protesting, and a Beijing-based lawyer...
...dispute was born of good intentions. In 1994, when China produced more oil than it consumed, Beijing allowed county governments in Shaanxi to drill for oil in an effort to alleviate chronic poverty. The counties sold mineral rights to citizens for around $10,000 per square kilometer. Entire villages often pooled their money to invest in rights and rigs. More than 6,000 wells were drilled, and soon the "pump worms," as derricks are known in the local dialect, yielded crude. "I saw people building new houses, hiring teachers for their children," says Liu, who in 1999 formed a company...
...Shaanxi officials say they regretted transferring the rights almost immediately. "Workers in pig slaughterhouses became oil-company bosses," says Wang Dengji, mayor of Yulin city in the center of the oil-bearing area. "They caused serious pollution and serious waste." There was another problem: China deems oil a national resource. The State Council in 1999 declared the independent wells illegal and ordered a "rectification...
...year-old student at Peking University, was crippled for life when he was denied medical treatment for a broken back, sustained in a fall caused by Red Guard tormentors. His daughter Deng Rong and younger son Deng Zhifang were banished to the countryside in the northern province of Shaanxi...