The mass protest in Shifang, Sichuan, this month over an infrastructure project feared to be polluting was not new. Similar concerns also mobilised residents in Xiamen in Fujian, Panyu in Guangdong, and Dalian in Liaoning. Like in these earlier protests, the people of Shifang won a victory, at least temporarily, when officials agreed to suspend the project.
But two things made Shifang different. First, the rally turned violent and the police used batons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Second, many students openly took part in the demonstration. For these reasons, the Shifang movement was more overtly political, and carried shades of the one 23 years ago in Tiananmen Square.
Of course, the rally was political. Politics has everything to do with how a government makes its decisions, how it attracts investors and award projects, how it protects the environment and how corruption may fester, hidden behind these government functions. A protest against a government decision is a political act.
But politics has become taboo since the Tiananmen crackdown. Out of fear, people steer away from talk of politics to focus on 'livelihood issues'. Take a look at the media companies set up over the past 20 years or so. Almost all of them proclaim a concern for people's livelihoods. The unsaid message is: their priority is to help readers improve their lives, nothing to do with politics. With these word games - which the authorities tacitly encourage - they delude themselves and others. The result is a cowardly and weak media.
Protesters use the same word games. In the name of protecting the environment - which is an issue that concerns their living conditions, nothing to do with politics - they can take to the streets in protest without fear.
In 2009, I was in Panyu when residents rallied to oppose plans for an incinerator. In one discussion in an online forum - at the time a focal point for protest activities - both the moderator and forum users were extremely aware of the sensitivity of references to politics. Anyone seen to be steering the conversation towards the taboo areas, such as by talking about democracy and corruption, would be immediately reported and expelled from the forum. In Shifang, protesters who called for the protection of their rights at the same time held up slogans of 'We support the Communist Party of China'.
Officials find themselves in a bind. On the one hand, they are only too happy to go along with the people's aversion to politics, because this means they can avoid dealing with a 'political incident' on their watch. But on the other hand, they cannot resist deliberately politicising the protests to intimidate protesters. So officials said that while they understood that the protesters themselves had no political motive, they feared the protesters could have been made use of by foreign hostile forces.