After Internet messages calling for demonstrations in 13 cities surfaced on Saturday, apparently from overseas sites used by Chinese living abroad, there were reports of activists being preemptively hauled away.
Very few Chinese responded, and in only a couple of cities, but Beijing’s authoritarian regime still mobilized large teams of police to ensure all remained quiet.
The heavy response by Chinese officials was a reminder of the government’s low tolerance for any hint of political discord. The country’s combination of surveillance, sophisticated management of information, and a willingness to deploy large numbers of security forces has so far allowed it to cut off even the most remote of challenges to the Chinese Communist Party.
After online messages spread on Saturday using the phrase “Jasmine Revolution,” a reference to the unrest in Tunisia that ousted the president there and inspired uprisings across the Arab world, Chinese police beefed up their presence. Users on Chinese messaging sites, and those able to access Twitter through special software, posted notes saying that university students were warned to stay away from trouble.
In the previous two days, state media had signaled that the government is looking to further exert its considerable capacity to maintain order.
On Friday, a key architect of the country’s Internet monitoring software told a state newspaper that the program, already regarded as among the most stringent in the world, should be strengthened.
The next day, President Hu Jintao urged a conference of officials in Beijing to improve “social management.” The state news service Xinhua said that “Hu stressed the importance of information network management, urging an improved management of the ‘virtual society’ and a better guidance of public opinions on Internet.”
When Sunday came, the protests fizzled into almost nothing. The overwhelming majority of Chinese residents probably had no idea they’d even been called for -- the websites used to advertise the protests are either blocked or heavily censored in China.
I'll give the Chinese this much, they're not stupid. They see the unmanaged, raw internet as a direct threat to Communist Party rule and they damn well know it. If there ever is a revolution in China, it's not going to be one that gets too much traction on Twitter. The events of the last month have not been lost on Party officials there.
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