20110222 Mideast revolution seems to have little impact on China

Mideast revolution seems to have little impact on China

AFP, BEIJING

Like many Arab nations, China has one-party rule, corruption and soaring food prices — but experts say that its stunning record of economic success militates against pressure for revolutionary change.

A fear of social chaos among a population who suffered through the Cultural Revolution and the feeling that there is a better future, even under the current political system, also make revolt unlikely, they say. A Web campaign calling for demonstrations on Sunday in 13 major Chinese cities similar to those that brought down the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia was met with a massive security clampdown and the arrest of several top activists.

The Chinese Communist Party has seemingly learned the lessons of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests, which ended in a bloody crackdown that saw hundreds, if not thousands, killed by army fire in the heart of Beijing.

“I don’t think China will be the next domino,” said Perry Link, a China academic at the University of California at Riverside. “If you add together the parts of the population who are intimidated, who have been bought off, who have been indoctrinated or are in the dark, who would rebel, but are not organized ... there just isn’t a big enough part of the population left to make a domino.”

The leaders in Beijing have watched with concern as revolution swept through Tunisia and Egypt, and then spread to Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco and Libya, where dozens and maybe hundreds may have been killed in days of unrest.

In response, the government has detained up to 100 leading rights activists and lawyers, according to campaigners. It has also forcefully censored media reports about the unrest and restricted Internet chat.

Officials are especially wary of the power of social media — a major factor in the organization of the Arab protests — as more than 450 million people are now online in China, or about one-third of the population.

Jean-Louis Rocca, a sociologist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the situation in China does not closely resemble that in the Middle East and North Africa despite some similarities, making a revolution unlikely.

“There is strong support for the regime here, even if the people are not happy. There is no will for regime change,” Rocca said.

Daniel Bell, a professor of political philosophy at Tsinghua, agreed, saying there was a “desire for social change — for more openness, more freedom of speech, more social justice and so on,” but not for “revolutionary change.”

The Global Times, a nationalistic sister newspaper to the party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, downplayed the protest call, likening the small turnout to “performance art” and saying the public did not back the movement.

“Neither throwing jasmine flowers in Beijing nor hyping social disruption in Western media will stir up public interest in overturning social progress,” the paper said in an editorial published yesterday.

Thanks to the country’s spectacular economic growth over the past 30 years, the government has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty and sparked the emergence of a middle class with money to spend.

While massive difficulties remain, “overall we don’t have a feeling of deep crisis in China comparable to that in Egypt or Tunisia,” Rocca said.

“There is neither despair nor an impression that there is no future,” he said, despite the high levels of unemployment, especially among young university graduates.

The people, whose national pride stems from China’s re-emergence as a major world power, mainly want Beijing “to do what it has promised” — bridge the rich-poor divide, establish rule of law and guarantee pensions and healthcare, Rocca said.

For Bell, “there are opportunities in China for social mobility which were lacking in the Middle East ... opportunities for entrepreneurs to succeed.”

“The conditions are very different,” Bell said.