"Guangdong is located near Hong Kong, the people's understanding of their rights is greater," well-known democracy activist Liu Xiaobo said.

"They can also watch Hong Kong TV, how Hong Kong people go the streets to fight for their rights. This more or less has an impact on them."

Liu also said the number of civilian protests was increasing because Guangdong is more economically advanced than most of the rest of mainland China.

Just in the past few months, Guangdong has seen several major cases of unrest.

In the latest case, at least three villagers were killed, according to an official tally, and up to 30 died, according to residents' accounts, in a clash last week in Dongzhou village.

The confrontation stemmed from the local Shanwei city government's refusal to pay villagers adequate compensation for taking their land to build a coal-fired power plant, which would also threaten their income from fishing.

In Dongzhou, villagers are familiar with large protests, having watched on Hong Kong television tens of thousands of people marching on the streets, chanting slogans.

"We know about the Hong Kong demonstrations," said a woman in Dongzhou by telephone, referring to the large protests calling for faster democratic reforms in Hong Kong, including one earlier this month.

"We feel Hong Kong is democratic and civilized, not like here."

In other incidents of unrest, more than 200 people on a road near Foshan city attacked police in June after officers tried to detain a bus driver who broke a traffic law.

Villagers in Taishi village, Panyu city, have also in recent months fought to unseat the local village chief whom they accused of unfairly selling the village land to developers.

Besides its rapid economic development, the fact that Guangdong is China's workshop floor and the heart of the country's export economy could also help explain the frequent protests, according to Liu.

Unrest there has increased recently in part because workers clamor for higher wages and better working conditions, he said.

In September, over 100 workers in a shoe factory in Guangdong's capital Guangzhou pelted police with bricks and rocks and smashed vehicles during riots over unpaid wages. Five workers were arrested.

Protests in Guangdong may also be reported more widely than elsewhere around China simply because there are many Hong Kong reporters nearby who can easily hop across the border, something of which local authorities appear to be aware.

The night of last week's shooting in Dongzhou, residents said they could not make any phone calls on their fixed line or mobile phones as the lines seemed to be cut off.

Officials may have feared villagers would call for backup from other villages or call Hong Kong reporters to come to the scene.

In an earlier confrontation in which local authorities sent thugs to beat up some villagers, Dongzhou villagers alerted Hong Kong reporters by fax. and Hong Kong newspaper reported about it.

"The local officials fear these incidents will be reported by the national press and even by the international press," said Joseph Cheng, a political analyst from Hong Kong's City University.

"Typically under those circumstances, the local officials would like to cut off villagers' external links... so as to make the protestors yield."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.