There are 500 riots, protests or demonstrations per day in China. "The volatile society unleashed against the state by Mao almost 50 years ago bubbles like a caldron," Roderick MacFarquhar, New York Times, May 20. Yeah, right?
So why do I continue to write that China is "stable" and that the government has the support of the people? I really, really believe the number of riots and I really, really don't believe Professor MacFarquhar's bubbles.
How can those two be reconciled? One answer obviously is that they can't, I am wrong, and Professor MacFarquhar is right. That is perhaps the leading contender. I couldn't reconcile them so I did a little research:
"About a week after protesters in the southeastern Chinese village of Wukan forced out all police and political officials, establishing a brief independence from Beijing, they taped a sign to the wall of the makeshift press center where foreign reporters congregated. It instructed journalists, in English and in Chinese, not to call their movement an uprising. 'We are not a revolt. We support the Communist Party. We love our country,' it read."
-Max Fisher, The Atlantic, January 5, 2012.
I believe the sign too.
Mr. Fisher goes on to write,
"Protests appear to part of the system not a challenge to it-- a sort of release valve for popular anger that, if anything, could have actually strengthened the Party by giving them a way to address that anger while maintaining autocratic rule. In the absence of real democracy, this give-and-take between state and society could actually help maintain political stability in China -- for now."
I don't know if that is true, Mr. Fisher does not appear to know ("appear") either, it is his informed theory but maybe there's something to it. Maybe the People's Liberation Gendarme are like the gendarme in Casablanca, shocked, shocked that protests are going on in their establishment. How did the Brothers Chen escape? It's a Chinese thing, we wouldn't understand. I believe Fisher's signs and valves more than I do MacFarquhar's bubbles. I really believe the sign.
Image: Rioting in Wukan, Guangdong Province, September, 2011 (There were riots in Guangdong yesterday, too).
