At least seven people were killed and 42 injured in central Henan province after a car accident involving an ethnic Han Chinese and a member of the Hui Muslim minority sparked rioting over the weekend.

"I can see police and armed police everywhere. But people can go out and school has started. But we don't dare to walk too far," said one resident.

Another villager who gave her surname as Zhou said she had heard that police would remain in the area for two months.

"The cadres and police are on the streets. They are staying in the villages," she said.

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman played down the ethnic dimension of the protest.

"China is a country with ... many minorities, but we have a healthy and good policy toward them. So this kind of problem is only a single problem, just between the villages. It should not be exaggerated," Zhang Qiyue told a news conference.

"This is a problem that happened in China, so it's not necessary for foreign countries to know about it."

The southwestern province of Sichuan was grappling with another protest that a resident said had killed at least one when tens of thousands of farmers took to the streets in anger over a hydroelectric dam project that will flood 100,000 people out of their homes.

"Many people were on the streets. There were some injuries and one young man died," said resident Cao Zhengquan.

ANGER OVER COMPENSATION A worker at a hotel in the area who gave her surname as Zhou estimated up to 30,000 people had been involved in the protest that began on Friday.

"People rushed to the main building of the local government but all the officials ran away," she said, adding that the protest dispersed when city and provincial leaders arrived.

Residents said they were angry about compensation being offered by the Pubugou dam project to move their homes from a river basin to a mountainous area of poorer farmland.

The hotel worker said residents had been offered 320 yuan ($39) per square meter for their houses. Another resident said the compensation had not been decided and the demonstration began after rumors of compensation circulated.

Despite strict government controls, more than 3 million people staged about 58,000 protests across China last year - a 15 percent jump from the previous year - according to Outlook magazine, a mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

Dissent is usually quickly quelled and leaders jailed, but analysts said protests were becoming more common and word of them leaking out more regular as technology makes it increasingly difficult to block news.

"It is a coincidence that we see them appear in a short time. But at the same time, I think it reflects deeper issues in Chinese society and political make-up," Nicolas Becquelin, based in Hong Kong with Human Rights in China, said of the protests.

"There is a social momentum that is really breaking new ground ... there is a level of sophistication that was not there before," he said.

The city government in the Henan capital, Zhengzhou, said 18 people had been detained for their role in the clashes there.

Last month, rioters in the western region of Chongqing, burned police cars and looted government buildings after a quarrel between residents escalated into a clash that was finally dispersed with teargas and rubber bullets.

An official said at the time more than 10 people had been detained.