Chinese Go Online in Search of Justice Against Elite Class

Free registration required. “HARBIN, China, Jan. 14 — On Oct. 16, the day she died, Liu Zhongxia was riding in her onion cart when it scraped a sedan. Usually her death would have gotten little attention. But in a country increasingly divided between rich and poor, a detail stood out: The sedan was a BMW.

Mrs. Liu was a peasant. The driver of the BMW, Su Xiuwen, is the wife of a businessman. The initial scrape was minor, but after a confrontation, Mrs. Su drove the car into Mrs. Liu.

The trial in December lasted less than two hours, with Mrs. Su receiving a suspended sentence. The death was ruled an accident.

And that would have ended it, except for two things. First, the ‘BMW case’ tapped into sharp class resentments emerging in this Communist country, which long espoused a classless society. And second, that anger was able to coalesce in what is becoming an increasingly influential court of appeals in China: the Internet, which boiled with online outrage.”