IT'S okay for the mandarins to commit arson, but a big no-no for ordinary folk to light an oil lamp. That aphorism encapsulates the mentality of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership when it made the decision the past week to detain at least 10 dissidents.
There is a good likelihood three of them, Zhou Guoqiang, Yuan Hongbing and Wang Jiaqi, will be slapped with ''counter-revolutionary'' charges.
One reason for the crackdown on the eve of visits by senior American State Department officials is spiting the ''China bashers'' in the United States Congress. Having already been assured by Washington that China would get Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status - and even ''permanent MFN'' - the CCP leadership was eager to demonstrate its ability to ward off ''interference in its domestic affairs'' by neo-imperialists.
A more fundamental reason for the imposition of what many intellectuals call a ''regime of white terror'', however, is fear. The administration is genuinely horrified of the prospect of a replay of the 1989 democracy movement.
Even casual China observers know something will be afoot the moment patriarch Deng Xiaoping answers the call from Marx. For the first time since the mid-1970s, there is a meeting of the minds among different generations and factions of dissidents.
There are signs that firebrands active in the four watershed events in China's fight for democracy - the April 5, 1976 Tiananmen Square campaign; the Democracy Wall Movement of the late 1970s; the December 1986 student protests; and the 1989 crusade - have strengthened liaison, and in some instances, pooled resources.
