China has deployed hundreds of security force personnel and shut down the internet in a rural part of Sichuan province after street battles between police and residents protesting against a decision not to build a railway line through their county.

The demonstrators in Linshui county were incensed by a decision to change the railway route to pass through the nearby town of Guang’an, the birthplace of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, considered the architect of modern free-market China.

Residents complained that Guang’an is already served by several rail lines despite having half the population of Linshui, while Linshui does not have any. They accused the government of favouring Guang’an for purely sentimental political reasons, according to state media reports. Mr Deng died in 1997 but there is a long tradition of Beijing building monuments and heaping largesse on remote locations favoured by current and former senior Communist party leaders.