Senior government and party officials were yesterday sent to Menglian county in Yunnan province to calm villagers who rioted on Saturday over a disagreement between local rubber farmers and their buyers.
Xinhua said senior leaders including Vice-Governor Cao Jianfang , Yunnan police chief Meng Tiesu and Gao Xusheng - party secretary of Puer City which oversees Menglian - rushed to deal with the aftermath of the riots in which two villagers were shot dead by police.
The team arrived as Yunnan Party Secretary Bai Enpei issued a "three-point instruction" demanding responsible cadres handle the case carefully and "communicate better" with local villagers.
Mr Bai also ordered an urgent investigation into the riots and for the results to be made public.
The riots in Menglian county, an ethnic-minority border town near Myanmar, echoed the mass protests in Wengan county in Guizhou province last month when thousands of residents upset over the official handling of a teenager's death battled police for seven hours.
Local authorities in Guizhou blamed the violence on gangsters although provincial leaders later sacked the county's top officials for malfeasance and poor handling of public complaints.
Although the riots in Menglian county were quelled on Saturday, more than a dozen villagers yesterday complained to officials about the prices they were getting for their rubber harvests.
According to Xinhua, Mr Meng and Mr Cao spent hours listening to the farmers' grievances and promised to act as mediators. Despite the intervention by senior leaders, Xinhua said more than 200 rubber farmers gathered outside the factory yesterday morning. The day before, 41 policemen were injured and eight police vehicles were set on fire by the villagers. At least 15 villagers were wounded in the crackdown and police shot dead two farmers.
Official media has yet to provide details of the cause of the riots. It said only that police met with resistance on Saturday when they arrived in Mengma township in Menglian county to summon a number of suspects for questioning over a dispute between the villagers and the rubber factory.
"Villagers were warned not to go out but someone who witnessed the confrontation told me that the police opened fire at one of the protesters who is in his 40s or 50s," said a local resident from nearby Menga village.
"Police also shot his son - a student who knelt in front of them begging for leniency for his father."
Calls to police were not answered.
The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said police shot three villagers - two died and one remained in critical condition.