Molihua.org

Thousands of Chinese protesters clashed with police and uniformed security forces wielding batons in an area of Chongqing on Wednesday, according to news reports and images posted by activists.

The clashes in Chongqing, a fast-growing urban center, broke out after crowds gathered to protest economic issues in the Wansheng district of the sprawling municipality, just south of the main city of Chongqing and the epicenter of a widening political scandal that has shaken China.

There were no indications of a connection between the protests, which began on Tuesday, and the announcement shortly after by central government authorities in Beijing that the former party secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, had been stripped of his post in the Politburo and his wife arrested as the prime suspect in the killing of a British businessman.

An official denied any connection between the Chongqing protest and the political scandal at the upper levels of the Chinese government, telling The Associated Press that angry crowds had gathered in Wansheng to protest a recent municipal merger with a neighboring county this year that had exacerbated the economic woes of many residents.

“I want to eat. Return Wansheng district to me,” read one banner, The A.P. report said.

Photos posted to Chinese microblogs and collected on the Chinese activist site Molihua.org showed crowds and scenes of violence said to have taken place on Wednesday. Several people were shown bloodied, apparently from clashes with security forces.

In one photo, a group of riot police in fatigues defend themselves with plastic shields as protesters appeared to hurl projectiles from a highway overpass. The site also published similar images of large numbers of security forces along with others, presented as bloodied protesters, that were said to be from Tuesday.

A video uploaded on Wednesday showed baton-wielding police striking people as a huge crowd looks on at a blocked road that is described, in the video’s title, as being in Wangshen.

Molihua.org, a site whose name means Jasmine in reference to the failed attempt to spark street protests in China last year under the banner of a “Jasmine Revolution,” included an essay that underscored the “sensitive” timing of the protests just before the scandal took flight late Tuesday.

There was no evidence on Wednesday of street protests in connection to the scandal. But as my colleagues Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere report, the Communist Party sought on Wednesday to close ranks and reduce the fallout, issuing guidance in the form of a front-page commentary in The People’s Daily, a government mouthpiece.

That commentary was excerpted and translated by the official Xinhua news agency, which described its call “to maintain a high level of ideological unity with the CPC Central Committee with Hu as the general secretary, and hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

The report continued:

Urging people to stick to the overall work principle of “seeking progress while maintaining stability,” the commentary says people should focus their attention on economic and social development, and work together to overcome difficulties. “We should strive to safeguard the favorable situation concerning China’s reform, development and stability, make new achievements in building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects, and speed up the socialist modernization drive, thus to welcome the 18th CPC national congress,” adds the article.

The Chinese government moved to censor mentions of Mr. Bo’s name, as well as that of his wife, Gu Kailai, and nicknames for both of them that are used to evade censors. According to William Ferris, a Beijing lawyer who tracks online censorship, the banned words include:

Bo Xilai (薄熙来)

BXL

Gu Kailai (谷开来)

Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜 – Bo’s son)

Heywood

Wang Lijun (王立军 – the person who made the murder allegations)

Searches for Bo Sogou, the son of the disgraced politician, were also being blocked from China’s most popular search engine on Wednesday, Mr. Ferris said in a post on Google Plus.

It appeared to be a continuation of the heavy censorship of Web discussion that has surrounded scandal since it began in February. On Tuesday, as reports of Mr. Bo’s expulsion from the Politburo gripped China, a list of the top 10 searches on Baidu did not include a single mention of the biggest story in the country.

The top uncensored search was the story of a woman who died after a Beijing sidewalk collapsed and she fell into a pool of scalding water.