he spoke with frank langfitt from n.p.r.'s shanghai bureau earlier today via skype.arning: some viewers may find the report disturbing. >> sreenivasan: thanks for joining us. tell us what happened in the most recent incident in the human province. >> what happened was there had been a battle over developments. basically they're building a park as part of a $1.6 development project to boost local economies. you see this all over china. and in order to do this they had to knock down a village. and one of the farmers was asking for a fair bit of money, there's some dispute over that but the government was only willing to give about $33,000. and the farmer like other farmers we have talked to and others we've talked to, they're going lose their land, they're in their 40s, they don't have much else going for them and it appears he snapped and lit himself on fire. he's still alive, in a coma. but what's striking about it is that he's not the only guy. since 2009 there are over 50 cases of this. >> sreenivasan: why are they doing this? >> i think when we've talked to people