Guobin Yang writes in The New York Times how Chinese activists have adapted to their ever-present government and its attempts at control. Read the article here:
About a week after Egyptian protesters forced out President Hosni Mubarak, anonymous calls demanding a similar revolution in China appeared on Web sites hosted outside of China. The unnamed activists asked people to gather every Sunday at designated spots in 13 Chinese cities.
The Chinese government responded swiftly, rounding up prominent dissidents and installing a heavy police presence in the cities. On the following Sunday, police officers at the designated spots herded people away and detained resisters. Foreign journalists were roughed up.
That’s how the Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” has turned out so far. But while it’s true that sudden, radical change is not likely to happen in China, that’s no reason for despair: change has been under way in China for years, but in forms more subtle than most people outside the country understand.
