Yang Xin

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Yang Xin (Chinese: 杨欣) (b. 1982, Yantai, Shandong) is a famous Chinese actress and Beijing restaurateur who became the victim of the crime of police brutality in 2007.

Yang started her acting career early in 1995 and rose to fame by playing major supporting and leading roles in several Chinese TV series and films.

A native of Shandong, Yang moved to the capital Beijing with her devout Christian family and started her Shandong seafood family restaurant while continuing her career in the film industry.

In April, 2007, two local policemen off duty and their relatives clashed with a waitress at her Beijing restaurant located in the Huilongguan district over their alcohol tab, and lashed out on all the Yang family members present with senseless violence. Yang's brother and husband, who were only in defensive positions, were severely beaten, leading to permanent injuries and disability. The actress was also bruised, and her restaurant windows smashed by the agitators and eventually closed down due to the enormous costs of repair.

Police brutality and gang-style rent-seeking by the local police on small businesses are common in China in the Hu Jintao era, and civilian grievances against the abuse of police authority are often silenced in the name of Harmonious Society. However, the Yang Xin case is particularly notorious not only because of its high profile victim, but because of subsequent effort by the entire Beijing Capital Police apparatus to cover up and to lay blame on the victims. Yang Xin's brother, Yang Yue was accused of violent attack on the police even though the leading agitators, Changping District policemen Zhang Haiyang and Ran Guangzhi were off-duty and were breaking the police code that prohibited drunk and rowdy behaviors, and even though Yang Yue and Yang Xin's husband, successful businessman Li Yi, did not attack first and were in passive positions throughout the event. Also, Yang Xin's brother and husband sustained critical, permanent injuries while none of the policemen or their relatives had anything more than minor scratches. The Beijing Capital Police filed a police warrant against Yang Yue, a disabled man who hid from the public for a short period, and eventually detained the man as he was traveling with Yang Xin's husband.

The Yang family sustained enormous loss of revenue due to the impact of the senseless violence on Yang Xin's acting career and on the restaurant. The business was eventually closed, sustaining millions of Yuans in loss.

The incident only came to public after Yang Xin petitioned on her blog to seek social awareness of her brother's predicament, who were still being prosecuted by the Beijing Capital Police for violent attack on the police and obstruction of justice. Her blog postings were shortly deleted by the host Sina.com in compliance with the government's Harmonious Society policy. However the deletion fueled fierce on-line reactions and brought into question the role of Harmonious Society policy in the context of rampant abuse of power by the authority.

Rent-seeking by gang members on small businesses is a daily occurrence in capitalist-communist China, and it occasionally happens to celebrities in the Entertainment circle, partly influenced by the crime-ridden Hong Kong Entertainment world. The Chinese state police and sometimes, gendarmerie (People's Armed Police) are sometimes associated with criminal gangs and are filled by former gang members. Also significant is the Yang family's Christian background. Starting in the 1990s, after the suppression of the Tiananmen Demonstrations, Christianity became extremely popular in the northern provinces, especially in Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong. Grassroots religion filled the vacuums of faith and social morality. Although Christianity is officially tolerated by state policy, much of its growth is suppressed on the grounds of laws that prohibit free assembly and inflammatory speech against the government. In contrast and perhaps as a deterring example, Falun Gong has been brutally suppressed on the aforementioned grounds. Much of the police force (including the agitators that brutalized Yang's family) has been mobilized to prosecute and torture citizens accused as members of Falun Gong or "cults" of the same nature. Many privately assembled Christian circles suffered the fate of persecution as "cults". The Yang case touches on the sensitive issue of the danger faced by Chinese Christians who, though officially tolerated by the state, have to come across policemen who have been licentious enough to persecute anyone accused as "cult members".

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