Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Disharmonious society?

Chinese leaders might applaud actions by British, Syrian, and US officials to restrict social networking and texting communications, but they are not totally successful in preventing protest in their authoritarian regime.

Protest Over Chemical Plant Shows Growing Pressure on China From Citizens

More than international prestige or even economic might, the top priority of China’s leadership is to maintain stability among this nation’s vast and varied population…

In the aftermath of a large protest on Sunday in… Dalian, that craving for rigid orderliness appears increasingly ephemeral. In the face of ever more sophisticated efforts to control and guide expression, significant protests… appear to be becoming regular features of life…

China’s embrace of wireless communications… has fueled such protests, allowing the disaffected to share grievances in a way never before possible…

But more broadly, scholars speak of a revolution of rising expectations in which Chinese citizens, growing more educated and wealthier, think their government should better protect their health, safety and other interests…

“The power of civil society is growing, but it is still very weak,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics at Beijing Institute of Technology.

By the last available official count, so-called mass incidents — a term that appears to cover group actions ranging from minor work stoppages to serious riots — numbered 74,000 in 2004, up from 10,000 in 1993.

In a February article in Economic Observer, a Chinese weekly publication, Sun Liping, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, wrote that a government academy estimated that such cases had doubled between 2006 and 2010, reaching 180,000 last year…