Chinese students in fees riot

Thousands of students rioted at a college in southern China to protest against fees and other campus issues, a Hong Kong newspaper reported today.

More than 4,000 students overturned cars and threw bottles out of windows at a university in Jiujiang, in the southern province of Jiangxi, the Chinese-language Oriental Daily News said.

The riots took place on June 25 as a protest against fees charged by the Jiujiang Institute, a college jointly run by the military and the government, the paper said.

The protesters were complaining about a variety of fees levelled by the school for textbooks, utilities andtelevision sets at the dormitories, it said.

Students also burned banners and destroyed campus phone booths, the newspaper reported.

The cost of the damage approached 1 million yuan (€97,000), the paper said.

Jiujiang’s mayor Cai Xiaoming visited the campus to mediate. The school agreed to several of the students’ demands, ordering a cut of the number of students per dormitory room from eight to six, the paper said.

The institute also promised to pay back some fees, and to allow students to join a committee monitoring food quality at campus restaurants.