The Chinese government faces a turbulent time of domestic unrest and challenges from “hostile Western forces” that it will fight with more sophisticated controls, a Communist Party law-and-order official said. Read the article in Reuters here:
Chen Jiping, deputy secretary general of the Communist Party’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee, gave the toughly worded warning in this week’s issue of Outlook Weekly, and blamed Western democratic countries for fomenting unrest.
He did not mention the protests that have rocked authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and his words reflect the Communist Party’s own homegrown fears.
But the uprisings that deposed Egypt‘s long-time president Hosni Mubarak and are now threatening Libya’s strongman Muammar Gaddafi are likely to reinforce the views of Chinese security officials like Chen.
“The schemes of some hostile Western forces attempting to Western and split us are intensifying, and they are waving the banner of defending rights to meddle in domestic conflicts and maliciously create all kinds of incidents,” Chen told the magazine, which is published by the official Xinhua news agency.
