Ian Johnson reacts to a series of protests taking hold in villages across China:
[O]bservers say that the vast majority of these disturbances are handled peacefully—the government sends in an inspection team, money is tossed around (to pay back wages or unpaid pensions, for example) and local officials often arrested. The protests usually end quickly and often without violence once the specific issues are solved. … Academics have a term for this: “adaptive authoritarianism.” As Peter L. Lorentzen of the University of California, Berkeley, has written, officials view protests as way to gauge popular discontent. Small-scale protests function as a feedback mechanism for the government of a country without an active civil society or elections. Far from being a harbinger of regime change, Lorentzen argues that, in China at least, they can stabilize the regime.
Perry Link highlights the ways in which the legacy of the Mao endures in modern China. Christina Larson reports on discontent among urban elites.
The Dish 