Senior official attacks protesters who want to 'stir things up'

A senior Communist Party official yesterday dismissed an anonymous internet call for a 'jasmine revolution' on the mainland as a malicious prank that was doomed to fail, but defended the authorities' heavy-handed crackdown on such rallies.

Ye Xiaowen, party secretary at the Central Institute of Socialism, also criticised some foreigners for trying to 'create chaos and subvert Chinese [rule]' by supporting the calls.

Ye is the second high-ranking official to condemn the fledgling protests, after Zhao Qizheng , a spokesman for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said the 'jasmine' revolts in Egypt and Tunisia would never spread to China.

Ye said on the eve of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress that although the campaign urging people to emulate protests in the Arab world was only 'a joke' and 'behavioural art', the authorities would be quite wrong to let down their guard.

'These people use the crying wolf tactic ... they keep harassing you, they make you tired but they don't come out. In the end when you let your guard down, it will really happen,' said Ye, a party conservative who headed the State Administration for Religious Affairs for 14 years.

Thousands of police across the mainland have been mobilised to break up crowds who have gathered in busy city centres the past two Sundays in case they escalated into bigger protests.

More than 100 activists and rights lawyers have been detained or put under house arrest and several influential bloggers who had relayed the appeal on microblogs have been arrested on subversion charges. The censorship of internet social networks and Twitter-like services has been stepped up and foreign journalists have been warned that they face losing their visas and possible arrest if they continue to cover the events.