Fear in the Forbidden City

Unrest is rising in the Chinese countryside. The New York Times reports on the latest sign that Beijing is worried:

BEIJING, July 31 – The Chinese government has warned citizens that they must obey the law and that any threats to social stability will not be tolerated, a sign that top leaders are growing increasingly worried about unrest in the countryside.

The warning came in a front-page commentary published last Thursday in People’s Daily, the chief mouthpiece of the Communist Party. The prominence given to the editorial suggested that leaders wanted to send an unmistakable message.

“Protecting stability comes before all else,” the editorial cautioned. “Any behavior that wrecks stability and challenges the law will directly damage the people’s fundamental interests.”

The commentary then attempted to explain the growing inequality in Chinese society, noting that during a period of rapid expansion, some inevitably accumulate wealth must faster than others. This much is true, of course.

What the editorial doesn’t explain is why the means of production continues to be a near wholly-owned instrument of senior party members and those closely connected to them. It doesn’t explain that if China were truly capitalist and marginally democratic, the poor would have more opportunities to get rich and apparatchiks would not be forcing them off their land, taxing them to within an inch of their lives, and drawing their kids to slave-wage factory work into the cities out of sheer necessity.

What would Kim Jong Il do if the Chinese government were overthrown, or if a power shift brought on by popular unrest forced dramatic policy changes? There is a historical precedent for satellites outliving their great-power benefactors.