China harasses independent candidates for low-level offices
BEIJING — Liu Huizhen, a petite, soft-spoken farmer’s daughter who wants to serve her community, might seem an unlikely threat to China’s all-powerful Communist Party.
Yet, as Chinese vote Tuesday for low-level representatives, authorities have responded to Liu’s bid as an independent candidate in a southwestern district of Beijing by sending several dozen men with buzz cuts and barking voices to follow her around and prevent her from meeting with voters.
The controls reflect the ruling party’s determination to maintain a rock-solid hold on politics at all levels, galvanized in recent years by President Xi Jinping’s steady accumulation of political authority that has made him the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s.