IN THE end, the call for a Chinese response to uprisings in the Middle East fizzled out, but leaders are clearly rattled by how quickly the Jasmine Revolution spread online and have called for new ways to defuse unrest.
There were no signs of protests in Beijing on Monday, and the prospects of the Middle East’s revolutions spreading to China look thin.
China’s economy grew by more than 10 per cent last year, and there appears to be broad support for the Communist Party. However, rising prices and flagrant abuse of privilege by elites have led to dissatisfaction. High-profile speeches in the last week or so, including remarks by President Hu Jintao, show that the Communist Party is taking this seriously.
Mr Hu has warned of the need for better “social management” and provincial and ministerial officials have been meeting in Beijing to discuss how to cope with strains within the system.
Zhou Yongkang, the party’s top law-and-order official, became the latest to issue a statement on the issue. Rather than blame a lack of democracy or widespread corruption, he said that North Africa and the Middle East had failed to get to grips with economic and reform issues.
“Strive to defuse conflicts and disputes while they are still embryonic,” he told an official meeting on Sunday.
Disgruntled citizens did gather in China’s major cities after the internet call went out, but the authorities were ahead of them. On Saturday they rounded up the major dissidents not already in jailand were a major presence in areas where protesters gathered.
China’s annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, meets next month. It will be interesting to see if it deals with the issue.
One striking aspect about the calls for a revolution were the requests for people to meet every Sunday afternoon at the same time, which echoes the Monday meetings in the former East Germany in the run-up to regime change there.
In one of the more surreal footnotes to the weekend’s gatherings in many Chinese cities, a theme from Puccini’s opera Turandot has apparently fallen foul of censors because it is based on a folk song, Mo Li Hua, which translates as “jasmine flower”.