Coming just after the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the launching of Deng Xiaoping's reform programme, the jailing of three dissidents this week has pointed up once again the stark difference between the pace of economic and political reform on the mainland.
Hopes that the so-called 'Beijing spring' would lead to a political loosening-up, particularly after China signed the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, have once again proved illusory when they came up against the Government's fears of any challenge to the Communist Party.
Those hopes had rested in part on the calculation that action against dissidents would be a serious setback to Beijing's growing ties with the West which the central Government would not wish to risk.
But the reaction from the Foreign Ministry to international protests yesterday shows that the leadership is not going to let foreign disapproval divert it from the strict maintenance of party control.
The ministry insists that the trials were an internal matter in which no foreign nation has any right to interfere. But progress towards greater freedom should be part of China's development, and would undoubtedly help to develop its international role and status.
The prosecutions and the length of the sentences raise, once again, the question of why the central Government is so worried about a tiny group of people who represent no threat to its power. The emergence of real political dialogue would be in the broader national interest, and could act as a safety valve at a time of momentous change.
