Chinese villagers listed as dead in welfare scam

China - Hundreds of Chinese villagers are protesting after they were registered as dead and struck from village lists. The taxes villages pay to higher levels of government and the social warfare payments allocated by the central Government are both based on the number of households. By recording the false deaths, local officials held back payments. And the victims are also deprived of newly established medical insurance and pension schemes. The 300 members of Zhouzhuang village - a sixth of the population - discovered they were ?dead? when a man tried to apply for a new identity book for his parents. ---...More