Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, February 21, 2011

China is not Egypt

Jeremiah Jenne is an American grad student doing research and teaching in Beijing. A Chinese guest poster on his blog Jottings from the Granite Studio offers these ideas about China in an age of populist revolutions in the Muslim world.

A Chinese Perspective on the “Jasmine Revolution” (Another guest post by Yajun)

On Saturday, an anonymous letter circulated online calling for Chinese people to follow after the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and launch a “Jasmine Revolution” in 13 different cities in China. The McDonald’s at Wangfujing in Beijing was one of the locations.

(I have to say that this choice of the location is beyond my understanding. First, since Wangfujing is one of the most populated shopping center in town, how do you tell who is protesting and who is shopping? Second, McDonald’s? Really? The revolution may or may not be televised, but apparently that didn’t stop us from soliciting corporate sponsors. Too bad Groupon blew their ad budget on the Super Bowl.)

In the end, there were a lot of police and a handful of foreign correspondents. Unfortunately, somebody forgot to tell the protesters, because they didn’t show…

Did anyone really think a couple of posts on Boxun was was going to start a revolution? Let’s make this clear: China is not Egypt.

First of all, not all that many Chinese people actually care about Egypt or Tunisia…

Yes, China has many social problems, including corruption, unemployment and inflation, some of which may be even more severe than is the case in Egypt, but I still argue that the chances of a “Jasmine Revolution” – never mind anything on the scale of the 1989 Tian’anmen Square protests – are quite small at least for the foreseeable future. The main reason being that discontent towards the government in China hasn’t translated into meaningful opposition.

Yet.

China today is different from 1989. Over the last twenty years, rapid economic growth has raised the standard of living to an unprecedentedly high level… Few urban Chinese seem eager to trade their chance at prosperity for dreams of revolution…

[T]he majority of Chinese do believe that this government can lead them to a better life…

The Tian’anmen generation – some of whom starved themselves in order to see a better future for their country — is long gone. This generation, actually my generation, keeps ourselves very busy with trying to make our lives better, and frankly…there is nothing wrong with that. This is a phase many countries and societies go through. Mao’s been dead for 35 years, is it okay if we don’t have to think about revolution every day and night?

All that said, there is a growing demand among many in China for better protection of personal property and personal interests, and this is what the government should be concerned about…