Acceptance of rights replacing reflex fear of protests
Sixteen years after the Tiananmen crackdown, has it dawned on the mainland leadership that protesters may not be out to undermine Communist Party rule but often have legitimate grievances about economic inequalities and social injustice?
For the second time in a week, a top leader has openly admitted unrest is on the rise - and attributed the protests largely to economic and social, rather than political factors.
Zhou Yongkang , the public security chief and a state councillor, maintained the rising protests were 'internal conflicts among the people' that had mainly been triggered by domestic economic factors, the behaviour of cadres and by a lack of justice.
Although they could become a major source of social unrest, panic was unnecessary, he told a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on Tuesday. 'If you look into those mass incidents carefully enough, you will find few of them are confrontational and rebellious in terms of political purpose, and most of them can be properly handled.'
The right approach was to 'be fully aware of their potential threat to social stability, while at the same time avoiding extreme measures'.
The number of mass protests has shot up from about 10,000 in 1994 to more than 74,000 last year, according to Mr Zhou. His rare and frank examination of the causes and scale of protests on the mainland followed an acknowledgment of the problem by the vice-minister of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, Chen Xiwen , in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
Mr Chen said reports of recent violent protests by farmers were the tip of the iceberg. The incidents showed farmers knew how to protect their rights and interests, he said, and hailed their willingness to speak up against injustice as a sign of democracy.
Political scientist Hu Xingdou said the pair's remarks reflected Beijing's new-found readiness to address mass protests.
'Now they begin to stop the sort of paranoid thinking that every protest aims to subvert their leadership. '[They have started] realising most of the time it's as simple as people wanting some access to basic economic resources,' said the Beijing Science and Technology specialist on social justice issues.
'I think the government may improve its methods of handling riots by trying to solve problems via dialogue instead of hardline measures.'
