China is ripe for its own Occupy protests

Occupy Wall Street protests have not spread to China, but Beijing's crackdown on media coverage and Internet activity related to OWS isn't surprising. What's less predictable are ways that Occupy protests could shake up China?s internal politics, especially among neo-Maoists.

Occupy Wall Street protests have not spread to the People?s Republic of China. But word of the protests has, and the Chinese authorities are trying to figure out how to respond.?

Skip to next paragraph

Their reactions have run the gamut: from gloating denunciations of American capitalism, to a crackdown on all media coverage of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Of course, there is no real surprise in this sequence of responses. More interesting, and less predictable, are the ways in which the Occupy Wall Street? protests could substantively shape China?s internal politics.

In the early days of the OWS movement, when protests were confined to US cities, a China Daily OpEd (Sept. 30) harshly attacked the American media for journalistic hypocrisy, for not giving coverage to protests in their own country even as they had relished covering protests in the Arab world just a few months earlier. A couple weeks later, state-run Xinhua News was harsher still, arguing that the protests in New York's Zuccotti Park ?laid bare malpractices of the US government and ailments of its political and economic systems.?

But as the Occupy movement spread globally, the Chinese response shifted. Assault on the silence of the American press gave way to anxiety about the possible effects Chinese media coverage might have on their Chinese audience.

On Oct. 17, a spokesman for China?s foreign ministry, after remarking that the issues raised by OWS may be ?worth pondering,? cautioned the Chinese media, saying that their ?reflections should be conducive to maintaining the sound and steady development of the world economy.? On the same day, editors of the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times called for people to ?calmly observe the protest movement and the global situation, and not be confused by extreme points of view.?

A few days later, on Oct. 19 and 20, Beijing authorities ? setting aside any ambivalence they might have had about the Occupy movement ? issued an order to the Chinese media to cease all reporting and commenting on the OWS movement.

What happened? Perhaps Beijing had examined the numbers in the intervening three days, and been reminded that as high as the income gap in the United States is, China?s income and wealth inequality is right up there as well, even higher according to some estimates. Or perhaps recognition had set in that China?s elite 1 percent just might ? like America?s 1 percent elite ? be open to charges of greed and corruption.

Given, too, that 36 percent of the Chinese people (that?s 481 million people) live on $2 a day or less, the Beijing leadership might have become worried that the Chinese would not remain as ?calm? in the face of news about the US protests as the Global Times might wish.

Cyberspace censorship quickly followed after the media gag order. Searches for ?Occupy Wall Street? and, more pointedly, for ?Occupy Beijing,? ?Occupy Shanghai,? ?Occupy Guangzhou,? ?Occupy Zhongnanhai,? and ?Occupy Lhasa,? among a growing list of banned terms, now yield blank screens on microblogging sites like Sina Weibo (China?s version of Twitter).

Such a crackdown was predictable. Since the Arab Spring uprisings, the Chinese leadership, vigilant about any signs of civil unrest at home, has been aggressive in promoting the ?harmonious society? that is the Community Party?s mantra.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/9bf6GGJjXNA/China-is-ripe-for-its-own-Occupy-protests

while you were sleeping while you were sleeping happy halloween happy halloween history of halloween eagles cowboys eagles cowboys