EGYPT - As Seen From..... China

"China and unrest in the Arab world" by Tom Lasseter, China Rises Blog, McClatchy News 2/15/2011

I recently did a podcast interview about "What Beijing hears in Egypt's revolution" (using Russia as a sort of triangulated point of comparison). The conversation can be found by clicking here (opens in new page).

For many people watching the events unfold on Tahrir Square in Egypt during the past several weeks, there's been a quick flashback to Tiananmen Square in 1989 -- the spectacle of an ocean of protestors confronting an authoritarian regime and its tanks.

Other parallels floated around news analysis pieces and blogs -- Egypt's 1952 revolution was billed domestically as a victory against Western imperialist forces. The secular nationalist government of Hosni Mubarak, the third* in line after that revolt, slid into very deep corruption and became a regime held in place by at times brutal suppression of its own people. Political challenges were, to say the least, not encouraged. Above all else, Mubarak said that stability had to be maintained and he was the man to do it.

China's 1949 revolution was also seen as triumph over imperialist subjugation. Today's China has serious problems with corruption. And need one spell out the ways in which the Chinese government emphasizes stability and discourages political variety?

It's worth mentioning that beyond the question of corruption, the list of issues lurking beneath China's economic boom is a long one:

There are profound shortcomings with rule of law. There is growing discontent about the country's massive gap between rich and poor. It is a society with little recourse for those who have been wronged by big companies or government officials. Attempts at political dissent are not tolerated. Life in the countryside can be particularly bleak. The details of the history of the Chinese Communist Party itself are tightly controlled. Public pressure release valves, even in the coded guise of cartoons, are slammed shut by censors.

So ... Mubarak has been toppled. Could the People's Republic of China go the same way as the Arab Republic of Egypt?